What to know about Tuesday’s House hearing on foreign influence in American nonprofits: ‘Follow the money’

The Republican-led House Committee on Ways and Means is set to hold a hearing on Tuesday morning digging into foreign influence in American nonprofits, with several NGOs and far-left funding networks expected to be on the hot seat. 

At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, House Committee on Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith will oversee a hearing, “Foreign Influence in American Non-profits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond.” The hearing will be broadcast online at the committee’s website.

Witnesses at the hearing will include Capital Research Center president Scott Walter, Americans for Public Trust Executive director Caitlin Sutherland, Narravance CEO Adam Sohn, Dubinsky Consulting founder Bruce Dubinsky and Public Citizen co-founder Robert Weissman.

In a press release, the committee said the hearing will focus on the “ways foreign actors have funneled millions of dollars through networks of tax-exempt organizations to create, support, and fuel disruption and illegal activity across the country.”

FAR-LEFT GROUP WITH FOREIGN TIES UNDERMINING US UNDER GUISE OF PROTEST, REPORT WARNS

The hearing is expected to examine a network of nonprofits, including organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon and self-styled Marxist-Leninist, living in Shanghai. Singham has funded nonprofit groups, including the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough BT Media, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which have worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America in dispatching socialist, Marxist-Leninist and communist foot soldiers into the streets to disrupt federal immigration law enforcement agents and stoke chaos.

“For too long, foreign actors have gotten away with abusing our tax-exempt sector to [sow] division and chaos in our country,” Smith posted on X on Tuesday morning. “Today, we’re putting them on notice. Going to be a late night in China for Shanghai Singham!”

Over the past year, Fox News Digital has documented a pattern of coordinated protests by socialist, communist and Marxist groups, revealing a synchronized ecosystem of funding, media amplification, ideological framing and street-level mobilization that aligns with the strategic interests of hostile foreign governments, including the People’s Republic of China.

“Tax-exempt status is a privilege not a right,” Smith told Fox News Digital. “Nonprofits must remain accountable and refuse to act as instruments of hostile foreign governments.”

CCP-CONNECTED MILLIONAIRE ALLEGEDLY BANKROLLS MINNEAPOLIS AGITATOR GROUPS THROUGH DARK MONEY NETWORK

The Ways and Means Committee “continues to investigate how foreign money and foreign-linked networks are funneled through tax-exempt entities to sow discord and unrest in our society,” he said. “That’s why we’re demanding answers from Tricontinental and BreakThrough about their funding streams, activities and communications with CCP-linked individuals, including Neville Roy Singham.”

Hours before the hearing, Fox News Digital reported that Smith escalated his investigation into Singham, who has allegedly been “sowing chaos and spreading Chinese propaganda, possibly in coordination with a foreign government.”

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In separate letters, Smith demanded records from BreakThrough and Tricontinental, warning that both tax-exempt organizations may be operating outside their lawful purpose as possible unregistered foreign agents, while helping to fuel domestic unrest under the guise of journalism and academic research.

Congressional investigators say the Singham network sits at the center of a malign foreign influence operation that allegedly exploits U.S. nonprofit laws to inject anti-American propaganda into domestic protest movements and sow discord from within the United States.

The letters describe a full-spectrum operation, with funding aligned with foreign interests flowing into tax-exempt nonprofits that produce ideological research, media narratives and social media messaging, which are then deployed onto U.S. streets through tightly choreographed protests.

“If the evidence shows these groups are acting as conduits for CCP-aligned propaganda or functioning like foreign agents while enjoying U.S. tax benefits, their tax-exempt status should be revoked immediately,” Smith said. “We’re going to follow the money and demand accountability to put a stop to Beijing’s exploitation of our tax-exempt sector.”

Anti-ICE ‘digital Minutemen’ use military-grade surveillance tactics against feds

Early last week, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the bureau is investigating the use of the encrypted Signal messaging platform by “ICE Watch” activists to track and block federal immigration enforcement.

Just days later, Jill Garvey, co-founder of a group called “States at the Core,” logged into a Zoom webinar to train a new crop of “rapid responders” on a military-grade intelligence gathering method called “SALUTE.” An acronym for Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, Equipment, SALUTE is a mnemonic device that typically instructs soldiers how to systematically track details about enemies. Garvey framed the work as operational surveillance against agents she had called “mercenaries” in an interview days earlier.

“We are all ICE Watch!” declared Garvey, whose group is funded by the Hopewell Fund, a dark-money organization aligned with the Democratic Party. She added a boast that she’s taught 40,000 “rapid responders” this past year.

Garvey is just one of hundreds of anti-government operatives training agitators to interfere with federal law enforcement. Last Saturday, Manola De Los Santos, co-founder of the People’s Forum – a Marxist-Leninist organization funded by a China-based tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party – hosted an all-day “People’s Assembly for ICE Out of NY!” at the group’s headquarters on W. 37th Street.

“Adopt a corner!” leaders urged, instructing attendees to conduct surveillance tactics at fixed locations.

That same day, at about 4 p.m. ET, a user on one of 37 Signal chats operated by the “Seattle Area Rapid Response” network shared a copy of the “Mini-Manual Of The Urban Guerrilla,” a 67-page Marxist manifesto outlining the use of “mobile units,” “surprise,” “knowledge of the terrain,” “occupation,” “mobility and speed,” a “clandestine press,” “popular support” and “street tactics,” such as “constructing barricades,” “throwing bottles” and ultimately using lethal weapons, to wage a “revolutionary armed struggle” against the United States.

The user directed fellow “rapid responders” to page 35 for “security level questions.” There, the manual advised recording a “daily information service” on “what the enemy appears to be doing, where the police net is operating and what points are being watched.”

A Fox News Digital investigation reveals these groups are part of a nationwide web of at least 200 anti-ICE organizations that are building a civilian intelligence-gathering and “rapid response” system that trains, mobilizes and activates civilians to act as on-the-ground scouts, using the SALUTE method to collect data on federal authorities they cast as the “enemy,” raising serious national security concerns. 

In intelligence circles, they would be called “collectors” in the craft of “human intelligence, or “HUMINT.”

Fox News Digital has established that these national operations feed data about the movements of law enforcement and immigration authorities into at least 13 sophisticated databases, storing highly sensitive information, including license plate numbers, timestamps, geolocation data, uniform details, photographs, behavior patterns and, in at least one case, the names, email addresses and phone numbers of federal authorities. The network operates through at least 18 hubs nationwide in largely Democratic states and cities, coordinating traffic, verification and reporting.

GUN-WIELDING ICE AGENTS BRUSH BACK MINNEAPOLIS AGITATORS

“This is mind-blowing. We have an entire nation of collectors against our country’s law enforcement. It’s extremely dangerous,” said retired U.S. Army Green Beret Eric Schwalm, who first learned the SALUTE framework as a newly enlisted Army private, later applying it during patrols in Iraq as he fought an insurgency and then in Afghanistan as he trained Northern Alliance fighters to defeat the Taliban government. 

After reviewing the civilian training, operations and databases uncovered by Fox News Digital, he said, “If Iraqi resistance ran this level of operation against us, we couldn’t have stayed past 2007. They didn’t even need to shoot at us. Protests like this would have created a narrative nightmare.”

Indeed, these stakeouts have not only become deadly, with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but they have led to many confrontations and most often put federal authorities on the losing end of a narrative war. On Tuesday, a group of “rapid responders” in “Minnesota Ice Watch” tailed ICE agents so closely with their vehicles that agents ordered them — at gunpoint — to stop their cars, before handcuffing and detaining them.

At a recent anti-ICE training webinar, Gabe Gonzalez, a co-founder of “Protect Rogers Park,” a neighborhood anti-ICE group in north Chicago that pioneered the “rapid response” alerts, coaxed the webinar’s attendees to take risks, complimenting them as “courageous.” His group includes SALUTE in its “SOP,” or standing operating procedures, to “protect targeted locations,” like churches and food pantries, and organize “Remote Responders” stationed at “cafes and shops,” “near windows of major throughways” and other “sensitive areas.”

CCP-CONNECTED MILLIONAIRE ALLEGEDLY BANKROLLS MINNEAPOLIS AGITATOR GROUPS THROUGH DARK MONEY NETWORK

Raising particular national security concerns, the network includes foot soldiers and leaders of the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, two professional protest organizations in the Singham network that openly support the People’s Republic of China as an ideal state and declare they seek to dismantle the “hyper-imperialism” of the “American empire” from inside the “belly of the beast.” The organizations didn’t return requests for comment.

Several congressional committees are investigating Singham’s network, which now includes “ICE Out of New York.” That group tells donors online: “Yes, your donation is tax-deductible. We are collecting donations through The People’s Forum which is a 501(c)3 not for profit organization. . . .” As part of its efforts, its leaders created a slick “Migra Whistle Instructional Zine,” with the SALUTE method detailed under the header: “SPREAD INFORMATION, NOT PANIC.”

“FORM A CROWD. STAY LOUD,” the flyer instructed its scouts.

In upstate New York, Rafael Concepcion, a former assistant teaching professor of photography at Syracuse University, told Fox News Digital he plans to launch “a score” of new ICE tracking databases built from a mapping platform he published last year, called “DEICER” for “Diversity Equity Inclusion Community Engagement Reporter.”

Concepcion said he wanted to build a “network of digital minutemen,” the elite hand-picked rapid-deployment force who were part of the New England colonial militia, ready at a “minute’s notice” to scout British Army locations during the American Revolution, often times before skirmishes broke out.

In today’s scenario, U.S. federal authorities are the target. Concepcion said “the use of the SALUTE method” is to differentiate between local police and federal immigration officers. 

“One of the things that our constitution has tried to be able to provide is an avenue for individuals to make sure that they are aware of any kind of tyrannical government,” he said. “If we are supposed to be able to guard against foreign and domestic, there should be a mechanism for us to be able to identify that.

Already, Siembar NC, a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit based in Charlotte, N.C., with $2.5 million in revenue in its last tax filing, has launched the DEICER database in North Carolina on a platform called OjoNC. “Ojo” means “eyes” in Spanish. Further north, LUCE Immigration Justice Network of Massachusetts, a project of Neighbor to Neighbor MA Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has activated Concepcion’s mapping database. In Chicago, he developed “Windbreaker” for local groups to use. The groups didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In a near-identical training last week, Garvey’s session unfolded like a field briefing. She pressed new recruits to assess whether they were observing “a tactical unit,” identify “types of munitions and how much” and determine whether officers were moving in “four, two, four, or six-man formations.” She emphasized the importance of corroboration, instructing participants to “gather more people to confirm what you’re seeing.”

Garvey outlined three defined operational roles — recorder, supporter and monitor — and instructed participants to carry whistles with coded signals. Three blasts indicated an ICE operation in progress. Participants were told to wear the whistles visibly, so others would recognize that they were “part of the team.” Garvey urged them to rehearse at home what to do if stopped by police.

WATCH: HARDCORE SOCIALIST GROUPS STAGE-MANAGE ANTI-ICE PROTEST IN WASHINGTON

Unassuming in appearance, with well-coiffed blonde hair and a soft-spoken, timid delivery style, Garvey defended the surveillance during the webinar, saying the targets were “public officials.”

A spokesperson for the Hopewell Fund said in a statement, “States at the Core provides training for people to lawfully and peacefully observe law enforcement in their communities, and Hopewell is proud to be their fiscal sponsor.”

Some of the databases have drawn the attention of a counterforce of independent programmers and technology specialists — including anonymous X users with handles such as @astrarce and @b****uneedsoap — who have attempted to disrupt or shut them down. At least one database has gone offline. Others remain active and continue to grow.

The activities of these surveillance networks potentially violate multiple federal laws. Federal statutes, such as 18 U.S.C. § 115 and 18 U.S.C. § 2261A, protect federal agents from threats and stalking, and violations connected to obstructing, striking or resisting federal agents are felonies. 

In Washington State, the Seattle-area rapid response network has spawned 35 separate Signal chats. In Minnesota, there are at least 20 Signal chats. In Rhode Island, the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance sends out alerts over the WhatsApp messaging platform.

From there, the intelligence flows into databases.

Last June, Dominick Skinner, reportedly an Irish immigration activist based in the Netherlands, first published one of the most egregious databases, “ICE List,” documenting the names, photos, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of ICE and Border Patrol agents, in a bid to hold them “legally accountable.” The list has grown to an estimated 4,500 entries.

He calls the database a new “journalistic” project of “Crust News,” a Substack newsletter that has published articles against the “dictatorship” of “the USA’s fascist regime” and the “terrorism” of its “modern Gestapo.” 

In his “incident” report, Skinner specifically asks for “clear views of agents, uniforms, vehicles or locations.”

Within minutes, Skinner responded to a request for comment but refused to answer any questions, including about his ideological motivation or funding sources, instead railing against the “fascist media sphere in the USA” and noting “your questions will be shared with the public.”

THE FAR-LEFT NETWORK THAT HELPED PUT ALEX PRETTI IN HARM’S WAY, THEN MADE HIM A MARTYR

In Minnesota, the developers of the “MN ICE Plates” database use the language of socialist and communist networks to describe themselves as operating in “occupied Minnesota.” It’s supported by “Defend the  612,” the area code for Minneapolis, and its dispatchers sent “rapid responders,” including local resident Alex Pretti, to the Glam Doll Donut shop on Nicollet Avenue, in the hour before his confrontation with federal officials and killing, according to Fox News Digital reporting.

Over the past week, since the FBI investigation launched into the backend surveillance tactics on federal officials,  the database entries have almost doubled to 5,397 records of “confirmed” and “highly suspected” ICE vehicles and agents, with photos, locations, timestamps, and cross-referenced sightings. The database says it is “documenting & resisting against ICE, police, & all colonial militarized regimes,” inspired by “movements towards liberation.”

The data crisscrosses the nation. This past Sunday, at 7:03 p.m. ET, a user filed a “Critical” report on IceOut.org, a web-based reporting platform run by the Pueblo Project Foundation as part of its “People Over Papers” initiative, documenting “possible ICE activity.” 

Earlier that day, on Arnett Street in Elizabeth, N.J., a user alleged that “3 men took a female. There were 4 different cars,” reporting the incident as “Immigration Enforcement” and uploading photographs of the vehicles and alleged agents. Pueblo Project Foundation didn’t return a request for comment.

The “RESIST” platform, whose developers say their database “flips the script on surveillance,” using “facial recognition and biometric tracking.” 

“Mask or not, they can’t hide anymore,” the platform promises, calling itself “civilian-powered intelligence” that “exposes bad actors” and “empowers direct action, public exposure and psychological disruption.”

Another platform, ICEInMyArea.org, created by anonymous developers who didn’t respond to a request for comment, says it has 4,000 daily visitors with human reviews of new reports, making it “one of the most reliable tools for tracking ICE activity nationwide.” 

But its developers promise users “completely anonymous” privacy.

Under “Recent Reports” over the past 24 hours, it details “ICE sighted in New Britain, CT,” on Corbin Avenue near a McDonald’s, “ice agents using the target parking lot” on Colorado Boulevard in Los Angeles “as a base” and a silver Ford Explorer with “no front plate, whited-out/covered rear plate” on N. Aviation Boulevard in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

FBI INVESTIGATING MINNESOTA ANTI-ICE SIGNAL GROUP CHATS, PATEL SAYS

On the East Coast, Ahmad Perez, a former Biden administration political appointee and founder of Islip Forward, launched “Long Island ICE Tracker” to document “individuals and vehicles” in public, with “no reasonable expectation of privacy.” He “strictly prohibited” the use of the information to “harass, threaten, intimidate, stalk, doxx or interfere” with “any person” or their “lawful activities.”

Thursday on the site, Perez bragged “574 Verified Sightings” in the database, with a new listing at 1 p.m. of a weathered black Ford vehicle on Nottingham Avenue in Patchogue, N.Y., a decal saying “POLICE INTERCEPTOR” on the rear back door.

“Attempts to label community transparency efforts as ‘illegal’ or ‘surveillance’ often reflect discomfort with accountability rather than genuine concern for ethics or safety,” Perez told Fox News Digital. “Oversight, documentation and public awareness are not threats to democracy — they are foundational to it.”

Online tools even generate QR-codes for SALUTE templates that standardize civilian intelligence collection nationwide. 

In Minnesota, the Workers Defense Alliance of Twin Cities, a socialist group whose website features a graphic of Minneapolis police’s Third Precinct on fire, teaches SALUTE and a Spanish alternative, “ALERTA,” for “Activity, Location, Equipment, Response requested, Time and date, Appearance.” It pitches the framework as “community defense” while explicitly teaching structured surveillance. Its leaders didn’t return a request for comment.

“ICE Watch RI” and Alerta de Migra operate in Rhode Island with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, combining protest mobilization with logged sightings of federal officers.

The creator of another database — “Deportation Tracker” — said he puts in place “strict policies and moderation” so that any content that violates anyone’s privacy is “rejected immediately.” Identifying himself as Sam Fletcher, a high school student, he said, “The platform does not represent any civilian intelligence and surveillance operation. Everything that is submitted must go through a human review before being posted to the site. We don’t allow any names, images or licence plates allowed on the site. Nothing that is personally identifiable to anyone.”

“Any doxxing, harassing or stalking is unacceptable,” he said.

Still, critics say, the database has the information for users to violate Fletcher’s “terms of service.”

Meanwhile, in Portland, “Anti-Facist Aktion” hosts a “PDX ICE/DHS License Plates Community Surveillance Database,” claiming to host 627 records. Its developers couldn’t be reached for comment. It notes: “WARNING: THIS INFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO AUTHORITY.”

Garvey, the blonde anti-ICE mom, leads new trainings every several days. In an interview with Wajahat Ali, the host of a podcast called “The Left Hook,” Ali lauded Garvey’s strategy: “Your camera is your weapon.”

Overnight, local residents in the Seattle Signal chats got alerts that they would have their first “Seattle rapid response drill” on Sunday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time.

The announcement will “follow the standard SALUTE format” to instruct responders where to go.

The alert warned: “don’t be running red lights to get there first, don’t be blowing whistles once you arrive.”

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WATCH: Hardcore socialist groups stage-manage anti-ICE protest in Washington

A network of self-described socialist and communist organizations staged carefully coordinated protests across the country Friday targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but their call for a nationwide shutdown of work, school and commerce mostly fizzled out.

Several of the groups behind the demonstrations are linked to a constellation of nonprofits funded by tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, according to an ongoing Fox News Digital investigation. Singham, who lives in China and has publicly espoused Marxist ideology, has used his extensive network to promote pro–Chinese Communist Party messaging.

Fox News Digital was on hand in Washington, D.C., as activists converged near the Gallery Place–Chinatown Metro station at 7th and H Street NW. At 2:49 p.m. A vehicle drove up to an alley near a Walgreens, where a small group of activists from the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation unloaded dozens of bright yellow protest signs stapled to wooden pickets.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a self-described Marxist organization that has played a central role in past anti-police and anti-ICE demonstrations.

DOZENS ARRESTED AFTER PROTESTERS TAKE OVER NYC HOTEL LOBBY DURING ANTI-ICE DEMONSTRATION

The foot soldiers handed out the signs near the Chinatown Metro station, next to a Planet Fitness. 

At 3 p.m. sharp – the scheduled start time – one of the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s leaders carried a pile of signs to the corner and yelled instructions.

“Into the streets,” she shouted.

MINNESOTA RESTAURANTS BY THE DOZENS PLANNING TO SHUT DOWN FRIDAY TO PROTEST ICE ENFORCEMENT

The protesters, with new signs in their hands, followed quietly behind. 

The broader protest action was promoted as part of a “National Shutdown” scheduled for Friday, urging “no work, no school, no shopping” in opposition to ICE operations nationwide. Promotional materials accused federal immigration authorities of “terror” and demanded an end to ICE funding.

“STOP ICE TERROR NOW,” one sign read in bold black letters, with the “PARTY FOR SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION” in smaller letters below.

MINNESOTA SOCIALISTS TELL WORKERS TO FAKE SICK LEAVE FOR ANTI-ICE PROTESTS

Along with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, several of the organizations behind the protests were the People’s Forum, CodePink and BreakThrough News – all groups that are part of the communist ecosystem funded by Singham. CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans is married to Singham.

Other explicitly socialist and communist groups listed as endorsers or organizers included the Revolutionary Communists of America, Communist Party USA and its regional branches, Socialists Without Borders, Socialist Equality Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative, Democratic Socialists of America chapters, Marxist student organizations, like the George Washington University Socialist Action Initiative, and revolutionary groups aligned with anti-capitalist causes.

Propaganda experts say these types of protests are meant to create a media narrative of a failed state, one of the key tactics of insurgencies, and a convenient narrative for U.S. rivals, such as China.

TWIN CITIES MUSEUMS SLAM THEIR DOORS FRIDAY AS THEY TAKE SIDES IN ‘ICE-OUT’ STRIKE

In addition to far-left groups, the protest coalition also included organizations aligned with the Democratic Party. Notably, multiple chapters of Indivisible, a national activist network that frequently donates to Democratic political campaigns, endorsed the protest.

Other left-leaning civic and advocacy groups, including unions, with ties to Democratic politics also signed on, blurring the line between grassroots protest and partisan activism.

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Throughout the event, demonstrators took selfies, mugged for cameras and filtered away not long after, as the police returned the regular day back to the streets. 

“Where do you want to go for drinks?” one protester was heard asking another.

The far-left network that helped put Alex Pretti in harm’s way, then made him a martyr

The skirmish that led to Saturday’s fatal shooting of an agitator by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis and the response that followed were driven by a complex network of far-left organizations with a wide range of causes, a Fox News Digital investigation found.

A coordinated web of encrypted chats, street alerts and tracking of ICE “Abductors” in a sophisticated database reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that agitators were already mobilized at the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed minutes before any shots were fired. 

ICE and Border Patrol agents were there to arrest an illegal immigrant criminal, and Pretti and others were there, outside a donut shop, to meet them as part of a strategic pattern of organized interference with law enforcement operations.

Over the following hours, a national network of socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist cells in the United States leveraged the tragic fatality into a nationwide protest operation. While grief and outrage over Pretti’s death is genuine, the network’s real-time rapid response, using short sensational video clips and emojis as weapons of propaganda, offers a window into the disciplined logistics, messaging and coordination of far-left warriors fomenting insurgency-like confrontation with authorities.

VANCE CALLS MINNEAPOLIS UNREST ‘ENGINEERED CHAOS’ AFTER DEADLY SHOOTING

“This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities,” Vice President JD Vance observed in a Sunday post on X.

The encrypted Signal messages obtained by Fox News Digital in real time show that anti-ICE “rapid responders” were actively tracking, broadcasting and summoning “backup” around federal agents outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue, where the shooting happened. Local “rapid responders” made at least 26 entries into a database called “MN ICE Plates” in the critical hours before and after the killing, documenting the license plate numbers and details of alleged ICE vehicles they claimed to see around Nicollet Avenue.

The entry at row 344 read, “At the nicollet [sic] murder,” chronicling a black Jeep Wagoneer at the location with agents allegedly “involved in shooting.” Row 338 had a “Glam Doll Donuts” entry, tracking a black Ford Taurus. 

BONDI BLAMES MINNEAPOLIS LEADERS AFTER ARMED SUSPECT KILLED, UNREST ERUPTS DURING ICE OPERATION

At 9:50 a.m. ET, just before the killing, a user identified as “Willow” shared a 22-second video on an encrypted Signal chat for anti-ICE “rapid responders.”

“26and 3rd,” wrote “Willow,” quickly following up with, “Outside Glam Doll.”

The video showed two agents, one wearing a vest marked “POLICE,” studying the front door of Glam Doll before walking away, past a sign in the window that read, “ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA.”

As the camera rolled, the person filming yelled, “No!”

The camera followed the agents as they returned to a maroon Dodge Durango, passing another sign in the window that read, “ALL WELCOME HERE.”

In the video, someone shouted, “Get out of here!”

Just three minutes later, at 9:53 a.m. ET, a second Signal user, “Salacious B. Crumb,” escalated the alert, summoning additional responders and citing the same vehicle and agents.

“Backup needed at the Black Forest Inn parking lot on Nicollet Ave just south of 26th Street,” the message read.

DHS SAYS ICE AGENTS RAMMED BY VEHICLES AMID MINNEAPOLIS ENFORCEMENT SURGE: ‘AGGRESSIVELY ASSAULTED’

“Multiple vehicles with many agents appear to be staging there,” the alert continued. “One confirmed ICE vehicle seen was a maroon Dodge Durango [plate number], but it has driven away northbound on Nicollet.” Fox News Digital has redacted the Florida license plate number included in the original message.

ICE Assistant Director Marcos Charles said Sunday that the violence on the streets was “not a coincidence,” considering the “chaos and mayhem” that agitators are fomenting in Minneapolis. At the same press conference, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino confirmed that Pretti was “on the scene several minutes” before the fatal shooting.

Video of the scene shows that as Pretti stepped into the middle of Nicollet Avenue to direct traffic, fellow agitators could be heard blowing whistles to alert locals that ICE officers were around. Soon after, Pretti ended up in a street confrontation with CBP agents, across the street from Glam Doll Donuts outside a worn storefront marked “NEW AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT CENTER,” a nonprofit focused on immigration entry programs for Somalis.

Within minutes, at about 10:05 a.m. ET, at least one CBP agent shot Pretti, killing him.

MINNESOTA ICE OFFICIAL URGES PROTESTS TO REMAIN PEACEFUL AMID TENSIONS ‘LIKE NOTHING I’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE’

At 10:18 a.m. ET, the Signal network erupted.

Using a red phone emoji to signal an all-points alert, a message blasted out: “☎️ easy. URGENT: observers urgently requested at glam doll donuts @ 26th & nicollet [sic],” the alert continued. “an observer has been shot by ice, unknown condition, emts [emergency medical technicians] present, please be safe. EDIT: medics requested to join perimeter in case agents start gassing. be aware there are many agents and mpd [Minneapolis Police Department] officers present.”

Within minutes, far-left activists descended on Nicollet Avenue. Soon after, a video showed corrugated boxes of supplies apparently lined up on a Minneapolis sidewalk for protesters, including boxes marked “DESINER MASKS” [sic] and “FREE WINTER HATS,” next to piles of bottled water.

MINNESOTA AGITATORS STALK, PELT BORDER PATROL AGENTS WITH FOOD AND SPIT AT GAS STATIONS, DHS SAYS

Within hours, socialist leaders turbocharged their “rapid responders” in Minneapolis and mobilized street protesters from New York City to Los Angeles. 

Media outlets, including CNN and MSNOW, described “angry protesters” but failed to identify the ideological networks behind the mobilization, even as protesters flashed their signs with their logos and names, touting socialism, communism and Marxism, on camera.

The Minneapolis activation marked the beginning of an almost instantaneous weekend surge by far-left organizations, including hardened socialist and communist groups operating in an ecosystem that national security experts describe as an insurgent-style operation designed to exploit tragedy to wage a domestic political war.

The strategy mirrors past mobilizations, including the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in May 2020, and exploits well-intentioned public sympathy by rapidly framing Pretti — an intensive care unit nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital — as a symbol of resistance, much like Renee Good, the first victim of an ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

Just as they responded in real-time to mobilize “comrades” to march on the streets within 12 hours of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in early January, socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist groups now frame their activation as an action within the “belly of the beast” against the “hyperimperialism” of the United States.

VANCE CALLS MINNEAPOLIS UNREST ‘ENGINEERED CHAOS’ AFTER DEADLY SHOOTING

Based on a digital analysis of scores of rapid-response messages following the killing on Saturday, a hub of communist and socialist nonprofit organizations emerged as key organizers of the protests. Many of them are funded by American-born billionaire Neville Roy Singham, a self-declared Marxist-Leninist living in Shanghai. Some are also offshoots of the People’s Forum Inc., a nonprofit hub Singham has funded in New York City since 2017 as an “incubator” for socialist and communist groups. The People’s Forum declined requests for comment.

At 10:48 a.m. ET, BreakThrough News, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and propaganda arm of the People’s Forum, broke the news widely of the killing, sharing a video recorded from inside the Glam Doll Donut shot of the tussle outside, punctuated by gunshots and frantic narration, “Holy s–t. What the f—!…Did they f—ing kill that guy? F—ing kidding me, dude.”

BreakThrough News put a dramatic black-and-white caption over the video: “BREAKING: Another CBP Shooting in Minneapolis.” By Sunday afternoon, the video had 4.1 million views, alongside the outlet’s calls to support the People’s Republic of China, Venezuela’s Maduro and the communist revolution in Cuba.

Before the video cuts off, someone can be heard saying, “Yo, we need people on site!”

MINNESOTA SOCIALISTS TELL WORKERS TO FAKE SICK LEAVE FOR ANTI-ICE PROTESTS

At 11:40 a.m., BreakThrough News broadcast a 39-second video purporting to show state police charging across a street with batons, some falling as clouds of breath rose in the cold air. 

Soon after, at 12:24 p.m., the Party for Socialism and Liberation – a political wing of the movement, working with shared leadership at the People’s Forum – published a quickly-made graphic, “CBP MURDERS ANOTHER IN MINNEAPOLIS,” and the message, “EXPAND THE GENERAL STRIKE!”

The call for a “general strike,” a classic communist tactic, refers to coordinated mass work stoppages aimed at paralyzing civil society to force political – and economic – outcomes.

At 12:33 p.m., the People’s Forum blasted out a bold red-and-white poster to followers, calling for an “EMERGENCY PROTEST” at 4 p.m. ET at Union Square in midtown Manhattan, with the message, “STOP ICE TERROR.”

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA IN NYC TRAINING THOUSANDS OF ACTIVISTS TO COUNTER ICE: REPORT

In lockstep, at 12:57 p.m., Democratic Socialists of America, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, posted a stark black-and-white graphic on X, calling the killing an “execution” and demanding, “ABOLISH ICE NOW.”

At the protest, Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian political operative who has led virulently anti-Israel protests with socialist organizations after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists, rallied the crowd at the 4 p.m. protest, yelling, “We will bring this country to a halt!” The People’s Forum shared the 22-second video clip with the caption: “🚨HAPPENING NOW IN NYC.”

Other groups mobilized simultaneously, including Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a self-described Marxist-Leninist group that has waved its red flag with its acronym, “FRSO,” in the middle of the protests since Good’s killing.

Also active: the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, which has led many of the rapid-response efforts and Black Lives Matter chapters, which led the recent stampede through a local Christian church.

ANTI-ICE AGITATOR ALLEGEDLY BITES OFF FEDERAL OFFICER’S FINGER DURING MINNEAPOLIS ATTACK

By early evening, the narrative had coalesced into a chorus of voices within the far-left propaganda apparatus, adopting charged historical language to brand federal officials as Nazi-like figures. At 4:12 p.m. ET, Calla Walsh, a controversial communist activist filmed this past summer in Iran shouting, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” shared a 32-second video showing barricades built with Republic Services dumpsters.

She wrote, “People of Minneapolis build barricades, trapping ICE Gestapo at the scene of their latest murder in broad daylight. Not far from where they killed Renee Good a couple weeks ago, not far from where George Floyd was killed in 2020.”

By evening, CNN was reporting from the 4 p.m. protest in New York City but did not identify the ideological affiliations of the organizers, even as activists openly carried signs from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, with the group’s full name printed across the bottom.

FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY

Another CNN segment from Minneapolis interviewed Chris Gray, describing him only as Pretti’s “next-door neighbor.” Gray spoke about Pretti while delivering a well-scripted appeal for a general strike to dismantle the “Trump regime” and promote “non-violent resistance.” The segment did not disclose that Gray is a member of Socialist Alternative, the U.S. affiliate of the International Socialist Alternative, a “global fighting organization of workers, young people, and all those oppressed by capitalism and imperialism,” seeking to create a “socialist world.”

Soon after, however, Socialist Alternative shared the interview proudly on Instagram, noting, “Chris Gray, Socialist Alternative member and next-door neighbor of Alex Pretti, speaks out.”

By evening’s end, at 9:44 p.m. ET, Gloria La Riva, a co-founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation who has described herself as “a communist,” posted a message on X, using the inflammatory language now normalized: “Alex Pretti was murdered in cold blood, everyone knows that. 10 shots in his back. All of Trump’s, Noem’s, Bovino’s lies cannot cover it up. The people’s struggle will only grow!”

TRUMP CITES ARMED SUSPECT, LACK OF POLICE SUPPORT FOLLOWING FATAL BORDER PATROL SHOOTING IN MINNEAPOLIS

The maroon Dodge Durango in the early Signal alerts from Saturday morning is Entry No. 2069 in the publicly shared database, “MN ICE PLATES.” It included a gallery of photos of alleged ICE vehicles.

At last count on Sunday, the database had 4,626 records of license plate numbers organized as “Highly Suspected ICE,” “Confirmed ICE,” “Suspected ICE,” “Cleared – Not ICE” and “Unknown.”

The total number of “Confirmed ICE” entries is 2,933 records. The total number of records labeled “Abductors” is 455.

A fine-print disclaimer states that the data is “for informational purposes only” and that its organizers “do not condone its use to forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede or interfere with the official duties of any officer or employee of the United States, or of any agency in any branch of the United States Government, while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties.”

One guide, “Best Practices Guide for Neighborhood or Area Patrol / Monitors: 612,” includes a key to emojis and the jobs they represent for rapid responders:

“🚗💨= Mobile Patrol / Commuter – In a vehicle driving around, looking for agents” 

“🚗📍= Stationary Patrol/Monitor – In a vehicle positioned at key places in the area, looking for agents”

“🏃🏻‍♀️= Foot Patrol – On foot, looking for agents”

“☎️ = Dispatch – Live on the Monitor / Patrol group call”

“📟 = Hyper-local group messenger – Ready to pass on word to individual neighborhoods and blocks”

‘🦺 = School / event safety spotters – Assigned and connected to a specific school or event”

“🍽️  = License plate checker – Ready to check a plate against the list of known license plates’

“⛑️ = Medic – Ready to offer medical care”

“❤️‍🩹 = Aftercare provider – Available to connect with responders after an event”

The maroon Dodge Durango that was allegedly outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue is listed with three prior sightings: Jan. 11 at 3 p.m. at the Whipple federal detention facility, Jan. 13 at 1:15 p.m. and a final sighting at Powderhorn Park parking lot on 35th Street and 14th Avenue.

It’s listed with the tags, “Seen in a convoy, Tinted/blacked-out windows, ICE agent(s) seen in vehicle,” and a final verdict: “Confirmed ICE.”

As socialist organizations continued to dispatch their foot soldiers to Nicollet Avenue on Sunday evening, the Signal groups were as active as ever on Sunday, an alert going out at 4:37 p.m. ET, with rapid responders now chasing a black Dodge Durango around town.

“2 confirmed ICE vehicles,” the alert read, “…at least 2 agents in each vehicle.”

Tax committee Republicans press for Treasury crackdown on nonprofits promoting fraud, ‘anti-American’ hate

FIRST ON FOX: House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith and all 25 Republican members of the committee are urging Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to crack down on nonprofits accused of exploiting the tax code to operate tax-free while promoting “anti-American and/or pro-terrorist ideals” and committing fraud at taxpayers’ expense.

The request marks one of the most aggressive congressional pushes in memory to revoke tax-exempt status, expand audits and rein in what lawmakers describe as systemic failures in policing the nonprofit sector.

In the letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, Smith and the Republican lawmakers wrote to Bessent, who is acting IRS commissioner, and Frank Bisignano, who is the CEO at the IRS, and warned of a growing pattern of tax-exempt organizations pursuing activity that falls outside legitimate charitable purposes. 

Smith and the lawmakers said they were writing to “express concern” over “significant fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer dollars” and urged the IRS to “transition from the laissez-faire approach implemented under the Biden administration and utilize a more hands-on approach” when overseeing nonprofits.

COMER VOWS MINNESOTA FRAUD PROBE WILL EXPAND TO OTHER STATES AMID MOUNTING SCRUTINY

They cited the massive fraud scandal in Minnesota, in which officials at the nonprofit Feeding Our Future were prosecuted and convicted for stealing an estimated $250 million from federal social welfare programs intended to feed low-income children. The case has resulted in dozens of indictments and criminal convictions. Amid the widening scandal, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz chose not to run for a third term.

Bessent announced last month that he was opening an investigation into allegations that some of the stolen funds may have been routed to regions of Somalia where they could have ended up benefiting Al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

The case, Smith and the lawmakers wrote, “calls into question the current safeguards in place to protect taxpayer dollars.”

“It is unconscionable that the Biden Administration’s failure to hold the United States’s non-profit sector accountable has not only resulted in the theft of billions of American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars, but the potential enrichment of foreign terrorist organizations overseas,” Smith told Fox News Digital Tuesday. “As the Ways and Means Committee continues to investigate every corner of the tax-exempt sector to root out this waste, fraud, abuse and illegal activity, it is now abundantly clear the system is in desperate need of an overhaul.”

“I applaud President Trump’s bold move to hold bad actors in the Minnesota Somali fraud scheme accountable and look forward to working with his Administration to ensure this rampant fraud is ended once and for all,” Smith added.

Along with Smith, the other 25 Republican lawmakers from the Ways and Means Committee who signed the letter are: Reps. Jodey Arrington, Aaron Bean, Vern Buchanan, Mike Carey, Ron Estes, Randy Feenstra, Michelle Fischbach, Brian Fitzpatrick, Kevin Hern, Darin LaHood, Mike Kelly, David Kustoff, Max Miller, Nicole Malliotakis, Carol Miller, Blake Moore, Nathaniel Moran, Greg Murphy, Adrian Smith, Lloyd Smucker, David Schweikert, W. Gregory Steube, Claudia Tenney, Beth Van Duyne and Rudy Yakym.

The House Ways and Means Committee has referred 11 nonprofits to the Treasury Department for investigation and revocation of their tax-exempt benefits, citing allegations of antisemitism, illegal activity, terrorism ties and foreign influence. The organizations have denied wrongdoing.

They include The People’s Forum, a New York-based nonprofit that has organized nationwide anti-ICE protests over the past two weeks with its related organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The People’s Forum is under scrutiny for alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its funding networks. Its primary donor has been Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech entrepreneur living in Shanghai who has publicly embraced Marxism and promoted China’s political and economic model.

The People’s Forum has organized a national day of protests Tuesday with other organizations, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, in their efforts to dismantle U.S. “imperialism.” 

In the letter, Smith and the Republican lawmakers said the committee is “actively investigating American non-profits operating as extensions of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Earlier this month, Smith referred the Council on American-Islamic Relations-California for investigation and potential revocation of its tax-exempt status, alleging it may have “materially supported unlawful conduct, including endorsing and assisting disruptive and illegal campus encampments that led to hundreds of arrests across California.” He also raised questions about the group’s “reported involvement in overtly political activity and protests that devolved into chaos, violence and law breaking” in “conduct that may violate longstanding restrictions on tax-exempt organizations.”

Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code was enacted as part of the Revenue Act of 1913 to encourage and formalize charitable, civic, labor and other public-interest activities by granting tax-exempt status to qualifying organizations, and today it contains 29 categories of tax-exempt entities, including 501(c)(3) charities, 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups, 501(c)(5) labor unions, 501(c)(6) trade associations and other specialized nonprofit organizations.

There are an estimated 1.8 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States, according to the IRS, with an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual revenues, making tougher oversight potentially far-reaching.

An organization applies for the special status, and, if they qualify, they are exempt from paying federal income taxes on money they receive that is related to their mission, such as donations, grants and program revenue. In addition, contributions made to these nonprofit organizations are also tax-deductible for donors, making the status especially valuable.

CONGRESS OPENS ‘INDUSTRIAL-SCALE FRAUD’ PROBE IN MINNESOTA, WARNS WALZ DEMANDS ARE ‘JUST THE BEGINNING’

Last week, Bessent announced the launch of IRS audits of financial institutions that “facilitated the laundering of Minnesota funds,” along with the creation of a task force focused on fraud and abuse involving 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

In their letter, Smith and Republican lawmakers urged Bessent to “use your authority at the IRS to hold tax-exempt organizations accountable” and to ensure that schemes like Feeding Our Future “cannot happen again.”

Together, they said, the cases illustrate a systemic failure to police the nonprofit sector.

Nonprofit organizations drew particular scrutiny after they led anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists. In late September 2024, Smith sent a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James urging an investigation into The People’s Forum and the Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation, known also as WESPAC, alleging they had “aided and abetted riots and unauthorized encampments across the country.”

“This conduct is designed to sow chaos and discord in our society,” Smith wrote, adding that it had “involved illegal activities.”

The committee has also urged the revocation of the nonprofit status of Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation and American Muslims for Palestine, warning about “alarming conduct” by the two groups in their anti-Israel protests. 

On July 24, 2024, Zaid Mohammed Mahdawi, 26, a leader of the Richmond chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, climbed atop a monument at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station and spray-painted an ominous message: “Hamas is Comin’.” He included the inverted red triangle, which is a symbol that Hamas terrorists use to designate enemy targets. The FBI arrested Mahdawi for destruction of government property, and he was sentenced to 10 days in prison. The ANSWER Coalition, which works closely with The People’s Forum, obtained the permit for that day’s protest, where a U.S. flag was also burnt. 

Smith has also asked for the revocation of the tax status of the People Media Project, which publishes “The Palestine Chronicle,” alleging the group may have been “circumventing its tax-exempt charitable purpose by supporting the terrorist organization, Hamas.” The concern followed reporting that a contributor to the outlet allegedly participated in holding Israeli hostages in Gaza.

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He has also urged revocation of the nonprofit status of Jewish Voice for Peace, a co-organizer of many anti-Israel protests that have turned antisemitic, and the Alliance for Global Justice, a 501(c)(3) that served as the fiscal sponsor for Samidoun, a group designated by the Treasury Department as a “sham charity” that allegedly raises funds for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

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In November, former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams shut down her nonprofit, the New Georgia Project, after the Way and Means Committee raised questions about the 501(c)(3) organization contributing funds to Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial race.

Red-Washing: How the media sanitizes a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary as a ‘preschool teacher’

When police in Michigan arrested Jessica Plichta live on air as she finished a TV news interview supporting Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, she became an instant protest hero, seen as a victim of the heavy hand of law enforcement.

The 22-year-old from Grand Rapids was widely described in media reports as a “preschool teacher,” an “anti-war activist” and protest “organizer.” And while those descriptions are not wrong, they were hardly comprehensive. A Fox News Digital investigation reveals they are part of a pattern in the media in which the radical ties of leftist agitators are ignored, depriving readers of a deeper and more accurate picture of their sinister goals.

“Preschool Teacher, 22, Arrested on TV After Condemning Trump,” blared a headline in The Daily Beast, above an article that noted cynically, “Welcome to America.” The UK-based Guardian published an article framing her as a progressive “anti-war” activist. And Democracy Now, an anti-Trump platform, lamented, “Grand Rapids Police Arrest Protest Antiwar Organizer After She Condemns Trump.”

Few outlets reported that Plichta is a dedicated revolutionary in the radical Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a self-described Marxist-Leninist “organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States.” The FBI in 2010 investigated the group for alleged ties to terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It is part of a sprawling network of Marxist-Leninist groups funded by a China-backed billionaire and committed to sowing chaos on American streets, using issues from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Elon Musk and President Donald Trump to fan the flames of discord.

But while the media worked to downplay or even hide Plichta’s radical ties, she has not been shy about her associations.

“I’m a proud cadre member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization!” Plichta declared at a pro-Maduro protest Jan. 3, just hours after U.S. military forces had captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, for alleged narcoterrorism.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Plichta didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Plichta’s case is one in a series in which the media glosses over – essentially red-washing – the radical ideologies of far-left people and organizations involved in protests and agitation against the Trump administration. Similarly, the media has largely described anti-ICE protester Renee Nicole Good, killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last week, as a “37-year-old mother of three” and “an amazing human being,” with little scrutiny of her participation in a militant anti-ICE group called “Minnesota ICE Watch,” which trains members to aggressively obstruct the work of ICE officers.

For the far-left, sanitizing protesters accomplishes an organizing strategy that its consultants recommend in information warfare: “lead with sympathetic characters.” The goal is often to disguise coordinated revolutionary activity as grassroots activism.

“It seems there is a widespread practice in the media of identifying conservatives by their political or group affiliations,” said Walter Kirn, a veteran journalist and editor-at-large at County Highway, a pioneering media publication. “They’re ‘MAGA.’ They’re ‘Trump supporters.’ They’re ‘far right.’

“Meanwhile, on the left,” Kirn said, “people are described sympathetically by their roles. They’re ‘moms.’ They’re ‘protesters.’ It’s an obvious double standard that should be corrected, particularly when membership in specific activist groups is involved.” Kirn also edits a Substack newsletter, “Unbound.”

In most cases, the activist groups are transparent about their work and proud of their objectives. The stated goal of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which planted its red “FRSO” flag on the street where Good was killed, is to subvert the U.S. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization receives 501(c)(3) nonprofit benefits through the Lucy Parsons Institute for Social Research, a small Chicago nonprofit which last reported $264,004 in revenues. 

Plichta’s arrest on Jan. 3 came soon after she led the pro-Maduro protest through the streets of Grand Rapids, blocking intersections. Despite multiple warnings from police, the group refused to move to the sidewalk.

She read her speech from her phone, a megaphone in her hand, and the young revolutionary didn’t mince her words. 

“Free Maduro! Free Maduro!” she shouted. “We demand his safe return to Venezuela!” 

“Join us in the struggle against imperialism!” she continued.

FAMILIAR PROTEST GROUPS MOBILIZE IMMEDIATELY AFTER ICE SHOOTING OF MINNESOTA PROTESTER

“Brick by brick…wall by wall…one struggle will free us all!” she yelled.

Soon after, at about 5:30 p.m., outside the Fountain Street Church, Plichta was giving an interview to the local TV station, WZZM 13 On Your Side, when two Grand Rapids police officers came up behind her and arrested her for obstructing a roadway and failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer. Her mouth fell open, and she slowly put her hands above her head, saying, “I am not resisting arrest. I am going peacefully.”

Local media immediately reported the story, describing Plichta simply as a “preschool teacher” and protester. On Monday, she complained in an interview that police put her in their cruiser “without buckling my seatbelt.” The interview was staged with her comrades behind her, including one carrying a signed branded “Freedom Road Socialist Organization.” There was no mention of Plichta’s radical ideological orientation in the story.

VENEZUELAN-AMERICAN JOURNALIST SOUNDS ALARM ON PRO-MADURO PROTESTS, CALLS THEM A ‘THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY’

National and international media soon followed suit, making Plichta a darling of the left. But to her self-described “comrades,” she and Freedom Road Socialist Organization were new stars in a sprawling movement, all under the International People’s Assembly, an umbrella group for about 200 communist, socialist and Marxist-Leninist groups worldwide. That group has more on its agenda than stopping the Trump administration from arresting illegal immigrants or even toppling South American dictators.

The International People’s Assembly is supported by controversial U.S. tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, currently under investigation by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee as an alleged propagandist for the Chinese Communist Party. Singham finances a number of groups in the U.S. in the socialist-communist network, fomenting anti-American sentiment on the streets, including The Answer Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, BreakThrough News and Code Pink, co-founded by his wife, Jodie Evans. 

In recent days, these groups have been actively mobilizing socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist members nationwide to protest U.S. “imperialist” policies against immigrants, Venezuela, Palestinians and a host of other issues. Even there, major news outlets are largely ignoring the role of far-left groups in organizing the protests and describing them instead with sweeping statements framed as national consensus. CNN called the protests a “nationwide outcry,” while the New York Times described the demonstrations as a “mounting outrage. Neither CNN nor the New York Times described the demonstrations’ openly socialist organizers, even though the New York Times published two photos of the trademark black-and-white signs of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, its name in bold letters across the signs, and it even published one photo with “FRSO” and “Freedom Road Socialist Organization” across the bottom.

In its investigation of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, according to internal documents made public, the FBI launched its query in 2010 to see whether U.S. activists associated with the organization provided material support to foreign groups designated by the State Department as terrorist organizations. That investigation resulted in raids of activists’ homes and offices that the group called “repression” but didn’t lead to criminal charges.

CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION PROMOTES VENEZUELA REGIME CHANGE PROTESTS ORGANIZED BY SOCIALIST GROUPS

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization and its network of socialist organizations hosting the anti-ICE protests believe the U.S. capitalist system must be abolished, and they support the communist governments of Cuba, China, Russia and North Korea.

It framed Plichta’s arrest as part of a pattern of “repression” against revolutionary activists. 

Plichta’s case illustrates how revolutionary groups can embed themselves within mainstream protest movements, like an insurgency, leveraging popular causes to advance a far more radical political agenda.

Whether the media was oblivious or purposeful, the clues to Plichta’s ideological radicalization were all there. She emerged from her brief stint at Kent County Correctional Facility with a red shirt with “FRSO” visible behind her winter jacket. 

Inside the Fountain Street Church, the group’s organizational secretary, Tom Burke, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 26, gave the local chapter a pep talk in its defense of Maduro, its members leaning on their protest signs as they listened intently. One sign read: “Regime change begins at Home.”

Burke advised them to join other chapters and send a delegation to Maduro’s courtroom for his trial to “create havoc, make the country ungovernable for Trump and his friends and just stir it up everywhere we can.” 

“So, comrades, please join me, and we’re going to defeat Trump and his minions,” Burke said.

Next to him, Plichta nodded in agreement.

“Solidarity!” Burke closed.

Plichta joined the chant: “Solidarity!”

Familiar groups mobilize immediately after ICE shooting of Minnesota protester

Within hours of a Minnesota protester being fatally shot after allegedly attempting to run over ICE agents, a familiar network of far-left protesters for causes ranging from communism to climate change mobilized across the country.

The deceased, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by the Minneapolis City Council on Wednesday afternoon, was killed at the wheel of her SUV just after 11 a.m. ET. 

Federal authorities said she had tried to run over ICE agents who were part of a 2,000-strong team sent to the Twin Cities to round up and deport illegal immigrant criminals.

“This appears to be an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a news conference late Wednesday in Minneapolis. “The ICE officer, fearing for his life and the other officers around him and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues.”

MINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF BLASTS ICE AFTER AGENT SEEN DRAGGING WOMAN THROUGH STREET, KNEELING ON HER BACK

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Good was shot in the head, and later pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center.

“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.”

Almost immediately, various groups with causes as diverse as socialism, communism, climate change, Palestinian rights and the Democratic Party launched what seemed to be coordinated protests online and in American streets, using similar language. 

The effort by left-wing groups with no obvious shared cause echoed protests over the weekend, when many of the same groups sprang into action in the hours following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

“It’s the same network of people that have thousands of Americans blocking the streets, waving communist and terrorist flags and attacking law enforcement and innocents,” said Brandy Shufutinsky, director of the Education and National Security Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They are stoking the grievance industry that they built.”

While authorities said an investigation was underway, the protest groups were quick to brand the killing a murder. A sentiment analysis of relevant social media posts by left-wing groups showed the graphic and emotional language used in the posts was designed to provoke moral outrage and mobilize people to take to the streets. For example, posts told people to “get in the streets now,” “hit the streets” and “get to the White House ASAP.”

ICE OFFICERS INJURED AFTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT STRIKES AGENTS, RAMS VEHICLES DURING ARREST ATTEMPT

“The state is the enemy, the state is the murderer! Resistance is justified,” wrote Fight for a Future, an organization who openly advocates communism.

At 1:24 p.m., the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression, a fixture in left-wing protests, announced an “emergency rally” in New York City’s Foley Square for Thursday. The rally was also promoted by a group dubbing itself “NYC ICE Watch.”

Indivisible, the Democratic Party-aligned nonprofit and PAC that was at the forefront of protests against Tesla and the Trump administration, shared a picture on Instagram of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees ICE, with two Xs over eyes, a symbol often used to portray someone as dead.

HOMAN VOWS TO ENFORCE IMMIGRATION LAWS IN TWIN CITIES ‘WITHOUT APOLOGY’ AMID MAYOR OPPOSITION

“Kristi Noem get the f*ck out of NYC right now,” the post read in both English and Spanish. The post was shared by 50501, a newly established organization that played a lead role in the #NoKings protest against President Trump.

“EMERGENCY ALERT. THIS IS AN ALL HANDS ON DECK MOMENT!” wrote 50551 on Instagram at 11:50 a.m.

Indivisible’s post echoed the language of Frey, who had moments earlier called on ICE to “get the f— out of Minneapolis.”

ICE SAYS POLITICO REPORTER JOSH GERSTEIN IS ‘INCITING VIOLENCE AGAINST FEDERAL AGENTS’ AFTER X POST

At 2:44 p.m., Refuse Fascism, a socialist organization active in protests against Israel and the Trump administration, posted a message on Instagram decrying the incident.

“From Venezuela to the streets of Minneapolis, the trump [sic] regime murders and demonizes whole peoples and countries without any pretense of the rule of law,” the group wrote.

At 3:33 p.m., the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Columbus, Ohio, called for an “emergency protest from Columbus to Minneapolis.”

“ICE out! ICE has murdered a legal observer in Minneapolis,” the Instagram post read. “We fight back!”

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At 3:06 p.m., the Palestinian Youth Movement, which organized campus protests following the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas, weighed in.

“The time is rise and resist is now (sic),” the group posted on Instagram.

Second front: How a socialist cell in the US mobilized pro-Maduro foot soldiers within 12 hours

As the U.S. military carried out a daring operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, a second front opened up within minutes in the United States: an information warfare, psychological and propaganda operation run by a hardened cell of self-described Marxist, socialist and communist leaders.

For years, this cell has fomented anti-American hate in the U.S. under the cover of “anti-war” protests, rallying activists after the 9/11 attacks to condemn the U.S. response, appropriating “anti-racism” protests after the 2020 killing of George Floyd, marching with Antifa agitators, organizing antisemitic campus encampments after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and activating “working-class Americans” to support Maduro and his regime in a war against “U.S. imperialism.”

A Fox News Digital analysis of their minute-by-minute moves overnight reveals how this network activated a coordinated ideological and information warfare campaign, moving through digital social media channels with quickly produced posters to mobilize foot soldiers to the streets for an “EMERGENCY DAY OF ACTION” in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and an estimated 100 other cities, moving with the speed and discipline of an organized military operation.

At 1:35 a.m., as U.S. special forces teams had just landed in Venezuela, BreakThrough News, a socialist propaganda arm of the network, published some of the first video from the U.S. military strikes, blasting the Trump administration for waging an “illegal bombing campaign of Caracas,” the capital of Venezuela. It was a talking point that was going to stick.

TRUMP REVEALS VENEZUELA’S MADURO WAS CAPTURED IN ‘FORTRESS’-LIKE HOUSE: ‘HE GOT BUM RUSHED SO FAST’

Ten minutes later, at 1:45 a.m., one of the key leaders of this network, Manolo De Los Santos, executive director at The People’s Forum, a proudly socialist 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New York City, echoed the narrative on social media of an “illegal bombing.” 

Less than an hour later, at 2:29 a.m., the ANSWER Coalition, a nonprofit co-founded by a proud Marxist, Brian Becker, published a red siren alert on the social media platform X with a slick new poster, calling supporters to the streets in Times Square for a protest Saturday to support Maduro.

“NO WAR ON VENEZUELA! STOP THE BOMBINGS,” the poster screamed, on brand.

EXPLOSIONS HEARD IN VENEZUELAN CAPITAL OF CARACAS: REPORTS

Minutes later, at 2:34 a.m., The People’s Forum shared the call-to-action, screaming: “EMERGENCY PROTEST”

Soon after, at 2:43 a.m., the Party for Socialism and Liberation shared the poster on X, saying, “Stop the bombings…!” 

Congressional lawmakers are already investigating this socialist network for its ties to Neville Roy Singham, a United States-born technology executive who relocated to Shanghai after selling his software firm and starting work that critics say is aligned closely with interests of the Chinese Communist Party. Singham didn’t respond to a request for comment.

MADURO MET CHINESE ENVOY HOURS BEFORE US CAPTURE FROM CARACAS AS BEIJING SLAMS OPERATION

By 3:21 a.m., Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, a research institute chaired by Singham that examines issues through the lens of “national liberation Marxism,” posted a message, denouncing the military action, declaring, “Down with US imperialism.”

Within a few hours, at 6:09 a.m., CodePink, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, condemned the “terrorist United States…”

MADURO JAILED AT NEW YORK DETENTION CENTER THAT HELD DIDDY, GHISLAINE MAXWELL, AND SAM BANKMAN-FRIED

From a military intelligence perspective, experts say the overnight sequence bears the hallmarks of a pre-positioned influence network executing a rapid-response operation. The synchronization of messaging, the staggered release of content across aligned platforms and the immediate transition from online agitation to physical mobilization point to an ecosystem designed not for spontaneous protest, but for ideological warfare.

In this framework, experts say, the nonprofit leaders are foot soldiers in Maduro’s war on the United States, acting as civilian operatives advancing the strategic interests of a foreign ideological project. Their role is not to fight with weapons, but to contest legitimacy, shape public perception, apply internal pressure on U.S. decision-making during moments of external conflict and further the cause of communism, experts say.

At the center of this domestic front is an international coordination structure known as the International Peoples’ Assembly, which functions as an umbrella organization and political command-and-control hub linking communist parties, socialist movements, activist organizations and state-aligned media outlets worldwide. 

One of its media arms, the People’s Dispatch, has explicitly framed its mission as mobilizing global resistance against “American imperialism,” including repeated calls to action on behalf of Venezuela. It lists Singham’s Tricontinental as one of its “partners.” The North America members of its “coordinating committee” include CodePink; the Popular Education Project, an initiative of The People’s Forum; and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Its Venezuelan member is a group called Francisco de Miranda Front, which works closely with its U.S. allies.

At 7:49 a.m., the International People’s Assembly shared the poster for the “EMERGENCY DAY OF ACTION.”

It quickly published a statement condemning the U.S. military action as reflective of the country’s “increasingly militaristic and hyper-imperialist orientation” and calling on members to “resist this pursuit of hegemony by any means necessary.”

TRUMP VOWS US WILL ‘RUN’ VENEZUELA UNTIL ‘SAFE’ TRANSITION OF POWER

The assembly operates in close alignment with Tricontinental, the SIngham organization that functions as an ideological production center, generating narratives, research and messaging disseminated through aligned media platforms and activated through street-level organizations. Singham’s wife, Evans, sits on the International People’s Assembly, tightening the operational loop between messaging, mobilization and leadership.

Experts say the ideological doctrine guiding this network is shaped in part by Prashad, who also serves as editor of People’s Dispatch. 

On the operational side, De Los Santos, executive director at The People’s Forum, has emerged as a visible field organizer. He is listed as a researcher at Tricontinental and has repeatedly appeared at regime-aligned events in Venezuela, functioning as a liaison between the ideological center and street-level mobilization abroad and at home.

MADURO GAVE STATE TV ADDRESS AS US STRIKES IN VENEZUELA BEGAN: REPORT

In 2003, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez backed a new group in Venezuela, the Francisco de Miranda Front, laying the groundwork for an international solidarity apparatus that joined the International People’s Assembly, working with U.S. groups. That infrastructure matured over time into a durable support system for Maduro when he was elected president in 2013.

By March 2019, that relationship was well-entrenched when De Los Santos organized a pro-Maduro protest outside Venezuela’s consulate in New York, physically denying opposition figures access to the building.

TRUMP CASTS MADURO’S OUSTER AS ‘SMART’ MOVE AS RUSSIA, CHINA ENTER THE FRAY

That month, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Claudia De la Cruz jetted to Venezuela for a four-day conference of the International Peoples’ Assembly in Caracas, urging socialists to “collectivize” their efforts to fight the “capitalist crisis” in the world, according to a video shared from the meeting with the hashtag #HandsOffVenezuela..

“Venezuela is the epicenter,” she declared. “Venezuela is the personification of the anti-imperialist struggle.”

The next month, The People’s Forum hosted Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza during a talk in which he demanded the U.S. end sanctions on the country, according to an article in “Fight Back! News,” a publication by members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. “The evening concluded with Arreaza thanking the crowd and urging people to keep fighting and protesting,” the article noted. “Manolo de los Santos, the executive director of The People’s Forum, took up Arreaza on his request and called the crowd to action.”

WHAT IS DELTA FORCE AND WHAT DO THEY DO? INSIDE THE ELITE US ARMY UNIT THAT CAPTURED MADURO

In May 2019, when a coup attempt failed, De Los Santos appeared on teleSUR, the state-funded TV network in Caracas, saying he’d organized a press conference with religious leaders in New York City to “engage in the battle of ideas” against “imperialist aggression.”

Two years later, in November 2021, Prashad and De Los Santos shared a photo with Maduro, all of them flashing a thumbs-up, with Prashad writing, “Elections in Venezuela today!” He noted that he stood with De Los Santos and Maduro, supporting “sovereignty against imperialism.” 

The next month, De Los Santos participated in a Caracas conference livestreamed on Maduro’s X account, speaking at the 59-minute mark and holding up a manifesto, “Plan para salvar la humanidad,” or “Plan to save humanity.”

He returned to Caracas in April 2022 for the International Anti-Fascist Summit, posting a photo with Eugene Puryear, a senior figure in the Party for Socialism and Liberation, further reinforcing the operational linkage between U.S.-based activists and foreign political structures.

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The pattern intensified the next year when De Los Santos and De la Cruz attended a conference sponsored by the Maduro government to explicitly preserve the ideological legacy of “Comandante Chávez,” their term of reverence for Chávez.

In late April 2024, Maduro even recognized De Los Santos as he thanked attendees of a conference of the “Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America,” established by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 to unite communist economic interests.

This past fall, a wide network that included the Communist Party USA, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Struggle for Socialism Party supported an “urgent call for a week of coordinated protests” to support Maduro. Last month, the network took action again, organizing “NO WAR ON VENEZUELA” protests.

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The newest overnight campaign to support Maduro will likely send foot soldiers into the streets to support Maduro and his wife during any trials they face, not just as an expression of protest but as a continued campaign of information warfare on the domestic front. 

Experts say the network that spent decades legitimizing and defending communist regimes abroad and now functions as a rapid-response influence force inside the United States is a new threat matrix that amounts to something the FBI and intelligence agencies investigate as malign foreign influence.

Its members operate as ideological foot soldiers, advancing a foreign-aligned narrative during moments of conflict, seeking to fracture public consensus, delegitimize U.S. action and apply pressure from within.

SEE PICS: VENEZUELANS WORLDWIDE CELEBRATE AS EXILES REACT TO MADURO’S CAPTURE

By daylight Saturday morning, at 8:49 a.m., CodePink invoked a slogan used last year as a theme in anti-Trump protests, declaring, “HANDS OFF VENEZUELA,” and issuing a statement dismissing criminal proceedings against Maduro as a “sham” prosecution. 

By 8:57 a.m., the Democratic Socialists of America, which just saw its star politician, Zohran Mamdani, inaugurated as mayor of New York City, shared a message from U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a member of the organization, condemning the U.S. strike as “illegal.” 

At 10:29 a.m., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another member of the Democratic Socialists of America, chimed in, saying, “It’s about oil and regime change.”

On cue, at 1:06 p.m, Mamdani repeated the refrain established overnight by the socialist network that brought him to the mayor’s office in New York City, blasting the U.S. for the “military capture” of Maduro, calling it an “act of war” and “blatant pursuit of regime change.” 

The talking points of politicians, activist groups and foot soldiers in the socialist, communist and Marxist network in the U.S. echoed the statements that the two strongest communist powers in the world expressed about their ally, Maduro. China issued a statement saying it opposed the “blatant use of force” by the U.S. in Venezuela. Russia called the news an “act of aggression” against Venezuela.

By afternoon, within 12 hours of first hearing about the military operation in Caracas, the pro-Maduro network started churning out fast clips of its information war on the Trump administration.

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At 1:34 p.m., the social media team at the ANSWER Coalition posted a closely cropped video of protesters, holding the ANSWER Coalition’s distinctive yellow-and-black signs and chanting in front of the White House, “Stop the war machine!” The Party for Socialism and Liberation immediately shared the video.

A little over an hour later, at 2:42 p.m., The People’s Forum shared a video of Becker, the co-founder of the ANSWER Coalition, from Times Square in New York City, a camera filming him from behind, as he declared, “This is a capitalist war! It’s a rich man’s war! The kidnapping of Maduro is an imperialist war for a capitalist class!”

MS Now, the new name for MSNBC, reported from the Times Square protest and its reporter only shared a throwaway line about the ANSWER Coalition having a “speakers’ program going on behind us,” without cluing viewers into the group’s proud Marxist politics. 

Online, at 3 p.m., wearing a black-and-white checkered collared shirt, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Puryear hosted a YouTube livestream, joined by Tricontinental’s Prashad and others. BreakThrough News promoted the livestream with a new piece of graphic propaganda, showing Trump with a mouth gaping open and Maduro with his chin high, appearing stoic and regal.

IRAN AND MADURO TIES SUFFER MAJOR BLOW FOLLOWING US OPERATION AND CAPTURE OF VENEZUELAN DICTATOR

At 3:02 p.m., The People’s Forum shared a video clip on its X account of De Los Santos at the Times Square protest, a microphone in his hand as he scanned the crowd and railed against the U.S., calling the Trump administration a “criminal enterprise” for “kidnapping” Maduro.

“Shame!” the crowd responded, in a typical refrain for the group’s protests.

Back on the BreakThrough News livestream, Puryear asked Becker about the “quick turnaround” on organizing the protests.

NYC MAYOR STRONGLY CONDEMNS TRUMP’S CAPTURE OF VENEZUELAN LEADER MADURO AS ‘ACT OF WAR’

Becker spoke about the night before like a field marshal. 

“A few of us stood up all night last night when we heard the news, conferring with each other, conferring with other organizers and, by 3:30, 4 o’clock this morning, we put out the call for demonstrations to happen today, Saturday, Jan. 3,” he said. 

Between 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., he said, leaders of anti-Trump groups, including 50501, which organized “HandsOff” and “TakedownTesla” protests, reached out to the pro-Maduro organizers to join their protests, and the protest numbers swelled with the “entrance” of the groups more closely aligned with the Democratic Party.

Now, he bragged, the results were protests in “100-plus cities.”

As the jet with Maduro and his wife touched down in the U.S. at Stewart Airport in New Windsor, New York, agents with “DEA” across their jackets boarding the plane, the caption on the livestream said proudly: “ANTI-WAR PROTESTS SWEEP U.S.”

“We should be raging!” Becker declared, stoking the “working class” to join the “class war, global war, anti-imperialist war.” 

The protests today, he warned, “are a harbinger of what’s coming.”

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FBI probes possible ties of National Guard shooter to shadowy group, a ‘catalyst’ for jihad

Late last month, when former Afghan commando fighter Rahmanullah Lakanwal vanished without warning from his home in Bellingham, Wash., his wife, Khamila, called his phone, trying to learn where he had gone, according to people familiar with the matter. 

“Where are you?” she asked in one call, speaking in their native language of Pashto, according to people briefed on the communications. 

He told her, “I’m busy with some friends.”

Hours later, she called again. This time, he allegedly answered differently.

FOUR YEARS AFTER ABBEY GATE, VETERANS WHO SAVED CIVILIANS DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY

“I’m with Tablighis.”

He continued, “I’m doing Tabligh,” according to sources.

To his wife, the word “Tablighi” had immediate meaning, family contacts said, setting off alarm bells that she shared with Lakanwal’s older brother, Ismail Khosti. In Afghanistan, surnames may vary among family members as they choose different tribal or geographical affiliations. The family is from Lakan district in Khost province.

Tablighi is an Arabic word that means to “inform” or “convey” and it refers today to Tablighi Jamaat, a global Islamic missionary movement established in 1926 in British India as a revivalist wing of the strict Deobandi religious school of thought that today fuels the tyrannical interpretation of Islam practiced by the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militant groups. Much like its sister group, the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928, and other Muslim groups preaching the extremist Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam, counterterrorism experts say it acts like a conveyor belt to extremism.

Based in Pakistan and India, Tablighi Jamaat’s influence is transnational, with networks operating in mosques and informal religious circles in at least 150 countries, including the U.S. It denounces terrorism publicly, but a report, “Tablighi Jamaat and Its Role in the Global Jihad,” by Brussels-based think tank the South Asia Democratic Forum warned the group serves as a “catalyst, gateway, springboard or antechamber” for Islamic radicalization. Several Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran, have banned Tabligi Jamaat, along with Russia, which disbanded a terror cell in 2020. In 2021, Saudi Arabia called the group a “danger to society.” In the U.S., its missionaries operate freely.

Fox New Digital has learned that Lakanwal’s brother has shared details from the phone calls, previously unreported, with FBI agents. Now, FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators are scouring the country to see if anyone tied to the Tablighi Jamaat network radicalized Lakanwal, facilitated his cross-country trip or offered assistance, encouragement or financial support for his Thanksgiving eve ambush of West Virginia National Guard service members Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, as they quietly patrolled 17th Street NW, near the White House. Beckstrom died from her injuries. Wolfe remains critically injured.

TRUMP ADMIN ‘ACTIVELY RE-EXAMINING ALL OF THE AFGHANS IMPORTED INTO THE COUNTRY’ FOLLOWING DC SHOOTING

On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem hinted at this new information, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “We believe he was radicalized since he’s been here in this country. We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state.”

Amid reports that Lakanwal was isolated, depressed and psychologically distressed, counterterrorism experts said the new details add a critical dimension to the investigation,  noting that untreated trauma, isolation and grievances can create psychological conditions for extremist ideology to gain a foothold, creating “wound collectors,” a term that retired FBI special agent Joe Navarro coined to describe extremists, from Usama bin Laden to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who use perceived injustices to justify violence with “no statute of limitations on their suffering.”

Flashback: Tablighi to American Taliban

While Tablighi Jamaat’s leaders say their movement is apolitical, focused on , an Arabic word for evangelizing or proselytizing, counterterrorism experts have said the movement’s insular missionary culture has appeared along the early radicalization paths of some extremists, including “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, a convert to Islam who attended Tablighi Jamaat retreats in northern California in the 1990s, including at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds.

After U.S. forces dropped bombs in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, CIA paramilitary officers captured Lindh in a prison near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, among imprisoned Taliban militants who revolted, overpowering guards and killing CIA paramilitary officer Mike Spann, the first U.S. casualty of the war. Convicted in 2002 for serving as a soldier for the Taliban, Lindh was freed from jail in 2019 and is free on probation in the U.S. today, tracked by the FBI.

While the Trump administration issued an executive order last month to designate some of Muslim Brotherhood’s chapters as terrorist organizations, Tabligi Jamaat hasn’t been on its radar for action.

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Ironically, Deobandi Islam is the religious ideology of the Taliban fighters that Lakanwal and his brother battled for years as members of the “Zero Units,” covert forces within the Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, funded, trained and supported by the CIA’s secret “Special Activities Division” to fight the Taliban. 

While these Afghan fighters battled extremist interpretations of Islam in Afghanistan over the past 24 years, following the 9/11 attacks, counterterrorism experts note that organizations and mosques established by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood and Tablighi Jamaat have spread worldwide. Tablighi Jamaat representatives in Pakistan and India didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Brother’s Shame

The irony is not lost on Lakanwal’s brother, Khosti, a former company commander in NDS-03, known as the Kandahar Strike Force, where his brother worked as a paramilitary officer, former colleagues said. Over the past several days, he has told former Afghan military and intelligence veterans that he is “ashamed” of his brother’s murderous rampage and he wants the full truth to emerge of how he ended up on 17th Street NW, turning his weapon on the very troops he had spent years protecting. 

Literally translated, Lakanwal’s brother said, “This was a wrong action,” using the Pashto word to describe something that is wrong to do.

He told his former colleagues, “I am ashamed of this action,” using the word , a derivative of the Pashto word for shame, a powerful dynamic in the honor culture of Pashtunwali in which many of the men grew up.

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Afghan Lt. Gen. Haibatullah Alizai, 40, the final commander of the National Defense and Security Forces after the president and defense minister fled Afghanistan in mid-August 2021, told Fox News Digital that he was sickened by the news of the attack and solving the mystery of Lakanwal’s path to extremism is now a personal quest.

“It’s a serious question how Rahmanullah Lakanwal became radicalized in the United States,” Alizai said. “I feel responsibility for this. I was overall commander of the Afghan armed forces. We must get to the bottom of this because we cannot allow this kind of violence in America or anywhere. We fought Islamic extremism every day against the Taliban. It is our duty as Afghans to help America get justice.”

It’s understood Lakanwal’s wife has since moved with her five sons into the home of her brother-in-law and sister-in-law in the San Diego area.

Countering social media rumors, Lakanwal’s brother also told former colleagues that his only other brother, Mohammed Rasul Khan, is not working for the terrorist Haqqani network and died of a heart attack in 2021 in Dubai.

Now, as federal investigators zero in on Lakanwal’s final words to his wife about being with the “Tablighi,” they are examining his life in the U.S. over the past four years. 

In recent days, media reports have pointed to two emails shared by a volunteer caseworker working with Laknawal to highlight possible psychological issues Lakanwal might have faced, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. After receiving the two emails from the case worker, Shawn VanDiver, president of a nonprofit, Afghan Evac, said he shared them with journalists to highlight unmet needs among Afghan military and intelligence veterans who worked beside U.S. forces.

HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE SAYS ‘NATIONAL SECURITY BLUNDERS’ OF PAST 4 YEARS HAVE EMBOLDENED TERRORISTS

Secretive ‘Manic’ Road Trips 

The emails, shared with Fox News Digital on condition they not be published fully, reveal something else: eight references to “manic” road trips and periods when Lakanwal vanished for days with little communication. While investigators haven’t yet established a direct link between the travel and any religious activity, analysts note that Tablighi work requires men to take small-group mission trips, called , lasting from a few days to several months, to mosques and communities.

According to the emails, after U.S. forces flew Afghan fighters from the “Zero Units” out on Aug. 15, 2021, Lakanwal and his family were moved to the furthest corner of the continental U.S. in Bellingham, a small seaside town, in January 2022. By March 2023, a volunteer case manager wrote in the emails that Lakanwal had lost his job, and he started engaging in “reckless travel,” “manic” bursts, where “he will take off in the family car and drive non stop to A. Chicago B. Arizona this time.” 

In an email on Jan. 11, 2024, she lamented, My Afghan families, now in WA almost two vears are not thriving.” She added, “No matter how many Pashto interpreters we use, and interventions, they are steering their families in ways that in the USA will lead to catastrophe.’

She noted, “They have 3 of us White, American women volunteers trying to patch benefits together and chase [Department of Social and Human Services] requirements and English classes that none of them attend.”

Overwhelmed, she wondered, “Perhaps is there a Pashto speaking Afghan male leader or advisor or resource that we can bring to these men to help them collectively and individually make better choices for their families ?”

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By Jan. 31, 2024, the caseworker wrote a series of bullet points, including this: “He drives day and night, and sends map pins to one of the volunteer sponsors, and we can grab photos from Instagram stories, but no other communication. His family generally does not know where he is or when he will be back.”

She added, “As far as we can tell, these trips are not for any productive purpose.” She said he paid for gas with the EBT stipend he received from the government.

She continued: “The last time he came home from a trip, (chicago) he demanded that his wife divorce him, (in front of sponsors who witnessed this).” He apparently deployed a Thabligi interpretation of Islam that says husbands can say, “I divorce you,” three times to end a marriage.

Her last bullet point was: “Right now, since he is off on a manic trip that has taken him from Bellingham to Phoenix to Indianapolis, his wife, Khamila, has been home with the boys in a period of relative stability.”

Khosti now tells Afghan friends that he wonders how his brother financed the 2,800-mile one-way trip from Bellingham to Washington, D.C., and how he obtained a firearm. 

A Company Commander’s Grief

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When Lakanwal’s company commander, Mohammad Iqbal Selanee, learned the news of the shooting, he was on the job as a janitor in a San Diego-area hotel. He wasn’t embarking on life-or-death missions, like he’d been doing beside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but he was grateful to America for the gift of a new, safe start for his family. 

Looking at the photos of the National Guard soldiers shot by Lakanwal, he said he recalled the faces of U.S. servicemembers he’d fought beside. He also thought of his daughter, 11, as he focused on the image of Beckstrom, the young woman from West Virginia murdered. Spread across the U.S. at far-flung posts, he was hundreds of miles away from Lakanwal as his former charge had fled his home for secret road trips. 

Now, he has spent the past several days piecing together Lakanwal’s alleged descent in the U.S. into a new army of zealotry with the Tablighi Jamaat.

“He’s been with Tablighi Jamaat,” in the U.S., he said. “He isolated himself. He was away from his friends and family. Some people hurt themselves. He hurt the whole nation.”

“I’m not a commander anymore in the military, but as a human being, this is my responsibility to uncover what happened to Rahmanullah, for the safety of everyone. This is a big tragedy. For 20 years, we have fought beside Americans like brothers, and Rahmanullah betrayed that friendship. It is inhumane what he did.”

Lakanwal attended the Bellingham Masjid, operated by the Islamic Center of Whatcom County, blocks from his apartment, mosque officials confirmed. In a statement issued on Saturday, mosque officials said Lakanwal was “not an integrated part of our community.”

‘A Cover for Jihadists’ 

For Ismail Royer, this investigation hits home on another level. A convert to Islam, Royer went to Pakistan in the 1990s after embracing an extremist interpretation of Islam and joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. He later pleaded guilty to weapons charges related to violating U.S. neutrality laws and served 14 years in a maximum security prison. While behind bars, he crossed paths with Muslims convicted of terrorism charges, including Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane over the Atlantic by lighting explosives in his shoe, and Lindh, the “American Taliban.” 

Working now to counter extremism, Royer said Tablighi Jamaat can serve “as a cover for jihadists” and it can be “a waystation, a stage in the path of someone from irreligious to religious,” and then, sometimes, violent extremism.

Alizai, the final commander of Afghan military forces, said he fears that religious fundamentalists stoked Lakanwal’s frustrations and urged him to lash out with violence.

“Lakanwal was not a terrorist in Afghanistan. He was fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. We know how these mosques and these Tablighis can play a role to radicalize anybody.”

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An easy path would be to shame an Afghan military veteran, he said, by saying, “You worked with the U.S.? You were a soldier? So, you killed the Afghans? You killed Muslims? Now they have brought you here. You have no job. You have nothing. You must restore your honor. They act like well-wishers, but they are actually your enemy.”

After hunting Taliban extremists in Afghanistan with American soldiers, Alizai said he and fellow Afghan veterans, including Lakanwal’s brother, his company commander, Selanee, and members of the NDS-03 unit are on a new quest.

“We are on a mission to uncover the truth that led to the tragedy on the streets of Washington, D.C.,” he said, one West Virginia family in America’s rural hinterland grieving and the other keeping vigil by a hospital bedside. 

Socialist group ‘By Any Means Necessary’ escalates campaign to ‘stop’ Turning Point USA

In a Sunday afternoon meeting called a “tribunal,” Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley, Calif., public school teacher and a local fixture among self-professed “anti-fascist” agitators, joyfully led about 40 members of the socialist organization By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) in an after-action report on the group’s “victory” last week in a bloody battle at the University of California, Berkeley against supporters of Turning Point USA. 

At the meeting’s end, Fox News Digital learned Felarca, once arrested for inciting a riot, moved for a vote on the next phase of the operation: to “stop” Turning Point USA chapters, not only on college campuses but also in public K–12 schools, beginning with Berkeley High School, where she teaches.

The motion passed unanimously to “stop fascist recruiting in schools” by amplifying the work of “By Any Means Necessary,” which collects tax-deductible donations under the 501(c)(3) nonprofit umbrella of the Detroit-based nonprofit, Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality.

The members closed the 90-minute meeting with one-word salutations.

UC BERKELEY TPUSA MEMBERS NAVIGATE POLARIZED CAMPUS FOLLOWING PROTESTS AND ARRESTS

“Solidarity!” said Felarca.

This year, Democratic activists and far-left groups have increasingly exploited the term “fascist” as a sweeping label to justify denying political opponents their constitutional rights. The word was allegedly scrawled on the bullet casing left by the man arrested for killing Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, in a chilling reminder of how language can be weaponized to rationalize violence.

In November 2019, the Sacramento district attorney dismissed felony assault charges and misdemeanor rioting charges against Felarca and two co-defendants after requiring them to complete 90 hours of volunteer work. A video from a protest showed Felarca hitting and yelling at a man she opposed as a “Nazi” and “White nationalist” until he fell and Felarca’s allies pummeled and kicked him.

At Sunday’s meeting, Felarca told fellow members that her response to Turning Point USA organizing at Berkeley HIgh School was, “What, no, no way.”

Using the “fascist” term to vilify youth, Felarca continued: “And so, you know, I just think it’s super incumbent on us to, like, work, talk to, obviously, other teachers, but also, most importantly, students to really stop this and prevent Turning Point or any fascist organizing to take place.”

The group talked about a protest activated this month against a new youth Turning Point USA chapter at Royal Oak High School in Royal Oak, Mich.

Representatives from Berkeley High School and Berkeley Unified School District didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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“I know it’s possible to stop it, and if we take the same approach that we took to protesting Turning Point last week – to not just ignore this, because then they’ll just go away or, you know, but to also use collective action, and it was crazy, like, find ways to express collectively the power of the movement and not just leave it and hope that the administration will take care of it, because they’re clearly not,” Felarca said. “They’ve already approved the group. Then it’s super, super important that we do that.”

The group’s members also voted unanimously to move forward with a plan to “stop and block” law enforcement officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In one plan, they agreed to order “ICE whistles,” increasingly used in neighborhoods in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City to alert residents that ICE officers are in the area. Felarca said they would brand the whistles with the “By Any Means Necessary” name.

The escalation comes at a moment of intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, which has opened a federal investigation into whether “By Any Means Necessary” and allied groups engaged in an organized conspiracy to deny Turning Point USA participants their free speech rights through coercion and disruption at last week’s UC Berkeley event.

Far from a spontaneous gathering, Fox News Digital reporting reveals the protest was premeditated and coordinated by a network of seven organizations, most of them enjoying tax-free benefits, at least six days before it occurred, signaling advance coordination. 

U.S. Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who flew to Berkeley to lead the civil rights investigation into the case, is well familiar with Felarca and “By Any Means Necessary.” In 2018, her former law practice, Dhillon Law Group, won a lawsuit against Felarca for filing a frivolous restraining order against then-Berkeley College Republican president, Troy Worden, as Felarca led protests on campus against Trump, and an Alameda County Superior Court commissioner ordered Felarca to pay Worden $11,100 in legal fees.

Earlier, in February 2017, “By Any Means Necessary” leaders bragged that they got right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos canceled from a talk on the campus of UC Berkeley. 

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show” and spokesman for Turning Point USA, said the new escalation by Felarca and “By Any Means Necessary” is “fundamentally un-American” and represents a “conspiracy to silence the free speech of others.”

CALIFORNIA WOMAN CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH DISRUPTING APRIL TURNING POINT USA EVENT ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS

“Turning Point USA has grown over the years not because we tried to silence others or that we engaged in some operation to shut the voices of others,” said Kolvet, who was a close friend of Kirk. “We grew because Charlie believed that our ideas were better, and that if more young people heard them they would be convinced and persuaded to believe them too.”

Kolvet directly addressed the campaign by leaders of “By Any Means Necessary” against the constitutional rights of Turning Point USA members, saying, “Any organization formed or animated by a guiding mission to harass, heckle and attack events hosted by other groups — just because they don’t agree with their ideas — is fundamentally un-American and is engaging in a conspiracy to silence the free speech of others. This is especially egregious given that Turning Point USA’s events involve minors. These are young kids being attacked by left-wing radicals who are adults! This 100% should be investigated by authorities.”

During the Sunday meeting, Ronald Cruz, an attorney for “By Any Means Necessary,” described moving from classroom to classroom across the UC Berkeley campus, including at a class on environmental racism, to mobilize opposition not just to Turning Point USA’s viewpoints but to the physical presence of Turning Point USA speakers and attendees on university property. 

“We’re ‘By Any Means Necessary.” We’re a militant organization,” Cruz said.

Cruz heralded activists for pivoting quickly as police attempted to contain last week’s demonstration.

“I’m very proud that we were very intelligent about how we approached the day and made it as militant as possible,” he said, congratulating the group for being “unfazed” by the Justice Department’s investigation. “We were able to lead that day,” he said. “We were the unquestionable leadership of the day.”

Felarca did not respond to a request for comment.

INSIDE THE CHAOS OF BLOODY BERKELEY AS PROTESTERS GO WILD DURING TURNING POINT USA EVENT

The escalation by the group “By Any Means Necessary” also reveals a deeper structural concern first surfaced in earlier reporting: the group’s formal financial and legal infrastructure is housed inside the “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund,” a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The metadata on the protest flyers directly identify “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund” and Cruz as the owners and creators of the posters designed to coordinate the protest and smear Turning Point USA. This relationship raises questions about how the nonprofit sector is being used as a legal shield for activities that appear non-charitable and also potentially unconstitutional, including coordinated attempts to suppress one political viewpoint, intimidate political opponents and interfere with lawful assemblies. 

Federal law grants 501(c)(3) charities tax-exempt status to support education, research and legitimate public benefit, not to wage political operations under the banner of intimidating opponents “by any means necessary.” Experts warn this case highlights a growing vulnerability in the nonprofit regulatory framework: ideological organizations leveraging the credibility and financial protections of charitable status while engaging in conduct that would disqualify traditional nonprofits and undermine core constitutional rights.

The distinction between lawful protest and unconstitutional coercion is central to federal case law. Courts have repeatedly ruled that public institutions — including K–12 schools and universities that receive federal funding — can’t block specific viewpoints outright or allow administrators and staff to encourage or enable mob pressure that suppresses a single perspective. 

If one viewpoint can be suppressed as dangerous, legal scholars note, then all viewpoints are vulnerable to governmental suppression, mob censorship or the “heckler’s veto,” as legal experts call it. 

During the clash, police arrested a protester, Jihad Dphrepaulezz, 25, for allegedly stealing the chain necklace of an attendee wearing a “Freedom” T-shirt, similar to the shirt worn by Kirk when he was assassinated. Authorities say police made multiple arrests of protesters.

The seven organizations involved in the efforts to intimidate ticketholders at the Turning Point USA event come from the world of nonprofit philanthropy, the global socialist network and the international “anti-fascist” network, operating with militant tactics, even if few adopt the Antifa name formally.

UC BERKELEY’S BLOODY PROTEST OF TPUSA ALLEGEDLY FUNDED BY FAR-LEFT NONPROFIT 

The seven groups involved in the coordinated campaign against Turning Point USA are: 

• “By Any Means Necessary,” a far-left initiative operating and collecting donations under the umbrella of a Detroit-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund, tax ID number 38-3626850.
• “Gabriela Berkeley,” a chapter of an international organization, Gabriela: Alliance of Filipino Women, aligned with the communist National Democratic Front of the Philippines, dedicated to removing U.S. military presence in the Philippines and bringing a socialist system to the Philippines; it is listed as a fiscal sponsor of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Tides Foundation, tax ID number 51-0198509, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire Warren Buffett’s Novo Foundation, also a 501(c)(3).
• “JVP UC Berkeley,” the Berkeley chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that seeks to eliminate the state of Israel and rename it Palestine; the national group last reported about $3.3 million in annual revenues under its nonprofit, with tax ID number 90-0018359.
• “Koreans 4 Decolonization UCB,” a Berkeley student chapter of “Koreans 4 Decolonization,” aligned with organizations that want to expand North Korea’s communism to South Korea and dismantle U.S. military presence in South Korea;
• “Students for Socialism,” the student wing of “Party for Socialism and Liberation,” a self-described Marxist-Leninist group that runs candidates for U.S. president and vice president and leads national protests against the U.S.; its tax status is unclear.
• “Young Democratic Socialists of America,” the youth wing of Democratic Socialists of America, opposing America’s free enterprise system, as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit, with the tax ID number 13-3109557; it last reported $6 million in annual revenues.
• “Students Organizing for Liberation,” a Berkeley student organization that is opaque about its funding, leadership and organizing structure.

Hatem Bazian, a co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel group that has gotten 501(c)(3) tax benefits and tax-deductible donations through a fiscal sponsor, the WESPAC Foundation, took video of the protests, building support among his followers. The organizations didn’t return requests for comment.

Details discussed at the Sunday meeting and a timeline of events reveal a coherent, coordinated strategic campaign behind the bloody Berkeley battle last week, including several elements that federal investigators can investigate as a possible conspiracy: coordinated classroom canvassing on the UC Berkeley campus to get students to the protests; pre-advertised flyers designed to produce confrontation “by any means necessary” and intimidate attendees; and physical intimidation to shape political outcomes. 

Felarca said she plans to make Berkeley High School inhospitable to youth members of Turning Point USA. Felarca immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines at the age of three with her parents, who she said, in a first-person narrative, “left to get away from the authoritarian Marcos regime,” of Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1972, saying that he faced communist and Islamic insurgencies.

In April 2019, a judge ordered Felarca to pay the organization, Judicial Watch, $20,000 in legal fees for challenging a public records request that Judicial Watch had filed in 2017 with Berkeley Unified School District, seeking all emails related to Felaraca and the words “antifa” and “BAMN,” the acronym for “By Any Means Necessary.”

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As she took the vote on Sunday, Felarca invited anyone who opposed their escalated campaign against Turning Point USA to speak up. 

She was met with silence.

UC Berkeley’s bloody protest of TPUSA allegedly funded by far-left nonprofit

Last month, a band of demonstrators marched across West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles in the national anti-Trump #NoKings protests, carrying a banner that read: “DEFEAT TRUMP’S FASCIST TAKEOVER. Stop ICE raids and deportations by any means necessary.”

In one corner, four bold letters stood out: “BAMN,” an acronym for “By Any Means Necessary.” The rest of the banner spelled out clues to the group’s full name in smaller print: “Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary.”

That organization – one of 266 groups with combined annual revenues of $2.9 billion identified by Fox News Digital leading the #NoKings protests – would soon reappear at this week’s flashpoint on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

On Monday night, the group proudly broadcast videos on its Instagram channel of its leaders stoking an angry mob on the streets again, this time on the Berkeley campus, staging a protest that turned into a bloody brawl outside a Turning Point USA event, leading to the arrest of several people.

‘NO KINGS’ ORGANIZER DISCOURAGES VIOLENCE FOLLOWING COAST-TO-COAST ARRESTS

A flyer circulated before the demonstration urged participants to “End Fascist Turning Point’s Youth-Oriented Campaign of Incitement to Violence!” It announced a rally outside Zellerbach Hall an hour before doors opened for the event.

At first glance, the flyer appears like many other activist handouts. But its digital trail tells a deeper story.

A QR code printed on the flyer leads to a page on BAMN.com, a domain displayed on the #NoKings banner weeks earlier for the group, “By Any Means Necessary.” On the page, visitors could directly download a “PDF of flyer” and “PDF of poster.” Journalist Andy Ngo, the author of a book on far-left violence and the Antifa network, shared the flyer on social media, warning that “By Any Means Necessary” is a long-standing fixture within the chaotic ecosystem of groups associated with the “anti-fascist” movement.

TURNING POINT LEADER DEMANDS REPERCUSSIONS FOR UCHICAGO PROFESSOR ARRESTED AT ANTI-ICE RALLY

Fox News Digital examined the metadata embedded in both documents to follow the money on “By Any Means Necessary.” Each file was created on Nov. 9, a day before the protest, and both listed the “owner” as “ronald.cruz@ueaa.net.” The email domain, ueaa.net, links to a far-left Detroit-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund,” which “By Any Means Necessary” describes as its nonprofit “affiliate.” They act as a seamless entity at protests, from #NoKings to anti-Israel actions after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas terrorists.

Ronald Cruz, a licensed attorney in California, is listed in state bar records as a counsel for “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund.” Tax records show it has been federally tax-exempt since March 2022. Cruz didn’t return a request for comment.

What’s more, under a label for “Storage Used,” both documents note the files are “Owned by UEAA Legal Defense Fund.” By Any Means Necessary and the United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund didn’t respond to a request for comment.

MEET THE RADICAL DC ACTIVIST MOBILIZING GANG MEMBERS, ‘HARDCORE MEN’ TO TARGET FEDERAL TAKEOVER: ‘REAL ENEMY’

On its official “Donate” page, the leaders of “By Any Means Necessary” confirm the connection. They instruct visitors on how to make a tax-deductible donation, enthusiastically noting, “You can make a contribution to our 501(c)(3) affiliate, United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund (UEAALDF)! Money goes toward our legal cases and broader organizing and education.” With one click, visitors are directed to the “UEAALDF website” at “ueaa.net,” legitimizing the activist network under the guise of charity.

While the organization’s balance sheet is small, with reported tax-deductible “public support” totaling $99,348 over five years from 2018 through 2022, the most recent year available, the implications are significant.

As experts note, the case illustrates how organizations leverage nonprofit status to claim moral and legal legitimacy while allegedly fomenting organized street violence, sectarian division and communal hate, activities outside the boundaries of “charitable” purpose.

MILLIONS EXPECTED TO FLOOD STREETS AT ‘NO KINGS’ PROTESTS TARGETING TRUMP ACROSS ALL 50 STATES

In the wake of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance called for closer scrutiny of nonprofits that receive tax benefits while allegedly promoting political violence.

The convergence of tax-exempt organizations, campus unrest and politically motivated violence underscores an emerging challenge in the nonprofit sector. Groups like “By Any Means Necessary” allegedly exploit the credibility and financial protections of charitable status while acting as de facto political operatives, often in coordination with broader ideological movements like Students for Justice in Palestine, first established at UC Berkeley by Palestinian American academic Hatem Bazian.

The metadata and cross-linked digital trails for the UC Berkeley protest reveal a well-coordinated infrastructure beneath the seemingly spontaneous protests, raising questions about accountability, transparency and the weaponization of the tax code for political warfare.

ANTI-ISRAEL RADICALS FROM ‘GLOBAL INTIFADA’ MOVEMENT JOIN ‘NO KINGS’ PROTESTS

The contrast between “By Any Means Necessary” activists marching relatively peacefully in last month’s #NoKings protest and the violent clash their protests helped incite at UC Berkeley this week highlights how some groups exploit nonprofit status to appear charitable one day while allegedly fomenting chaos, sectarianism, hate and violence the next day.

The UC Berkeley protests also raise questions about malign foreign influence. On its “Affiliates” webpage, “By Any Means Necessary” includes a link to the website for the “International Trotskyist Committee for the Regeneration of the Fourth International,” which is organizing “militants” who support early 20th century Soviet communist leader Leon Trotsky and the rise of a global “revolutionary Marxism.” The committee includes the Revolutionary Workers League and the Revolutionary Internationalist League, both self-declared communist groups.

A flyer, “Victory to the Palestinian Struggle,” includes the logos for “By Any Means Necessary” and the communist groups.

The violence at Berkeley prompted Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon to open a federal anti-terrorism investigation into the agitation. In a letter to UC Berkeley administrators and the UC Berkeley police, Dhillon directed officials to preserve all records related to the protest as she investigated whether the university violated federal civil rights or free speech protections. She told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the protesters exercised a “heckler’s veto” against Turning Point USA, and she would be investigating whether university officials and agitators conspired to deny political conservatives equal protection under the law.

In its most recent tax filing, “United for Equality and Affirmative Action” lists four officers: Shanta Driver, president and director; Mark Airgood, secretary and treasurer; Yvette Felarca, director; and Hoku Jeffrey, director. They didn’t return requests for comment.

One Instagram video featured a note across the front, noting, “BAMN National Organizer Hoku Jeffrey speaks out against Turning Point.” In the video, Jeffrey told the rally that he wanted the protesters to communicate to Turning Point USA attendees that “this is not a campus where they are welcome at.” “What Hitler got away with, Donald Trump and his fascist movement never can get away with,” he said.

Meanwhile, in its tax filing, the United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund claims its “primary exempt purpose” is straightforward: “Further the Civil Rights movement; educate the public on civil rights; conduct research on civil rights matters.”

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Its homepage features Instagram videos its leaders posted from the UC Berkeley protest. Its website is dominated by anti-Israel protests and calls for “Victory to the Palestinian Struggle!” It invites visitors to sign a petition to oppose a lawsuit against UC Berkeley and the University of California system for allegedly allowing antisemitism against Jewish students on their campuses.

It declares, “Defend the free speech and academic freedom for supporters of the Palestinian struggle!”

Linda Sarsour tells followers she will ‘hold Zohran accountable’ if Mamdani wins NYC mayoral race

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour issued a thinly veiled warning Saturday night to New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani, saying she will “hold Zohran accountable” to fulfill campaign promises, including dismantling an NYPD unit that polices terrorism threats, protests and riots.

In a livestream on Instagram, obtained by Fox News Digital, Sarsour told her followers that electing Mamdani doesn’t mean that the network that supports him will “let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.”

“I just want you all to know I’m not going to work for the Zohran administration,” Sarsour said. “I’m not going to work in City Hall, because, guess what? There gotta be people like me willing to stay outside.”

“Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying attention.’”

Neither Sarsour nor MPower Action, the political nonprofit she co-founded, responded to a request for comment.

INSIDE THE MAMDANI MACHINE: SOROS CASH, SOCIALISTS AND RADICAL IMAMS ENGINEERED ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S PATH TO POWER

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America along with Mamdani, Sarsour has been like a political mentor to Mamdani. In 2017, they canvassed together for a city council candidate, Khader El-Yateem, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, in a race he lost. Not long after, Mamdani joined the board of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, which Sarsour co-founded. She endorsed Mamdani’s winning race for the New York General Assembly and was an early supporter when he announced his race for the mayor’s job.

MPower Action is one of 110 groups in a wide coalition of Democratic Party affiliates working with labor unions and Muslim and South Asian groups to elect New York City’s first Muslim mayor.

In the livestream, Sarsour said she and her coalition will be vocal should Mamdani fail to meet expectations.

“When he does something when he’s in City Hall and he’s wrong, I’m going to tell him he’s wrong,” she said.

MAMDANI’S PAST ‘VISCERAL DISDAIN’ FOR POLICE ‘SCARES A LOT OF NEW YORKERS’ FOR GOOD REASON: NYC CRIME EXPERT

“Voting for Zohran is not, ‘We’re going to vote for Zohran and just let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.’ Our job as a movement is we have to hold whoever goes to City Hall accountable,” Sarsour said.

Despite Mamdani regularly invoking his religious roots through the campaign, Sarsour rejected claims that Mamdani’s campaign is centered on religion. 

“Our candidate is out there and just happens to be a Muslim,” she said.

She noted that he refrained from expressing his pro-Palestine activism.

“None of the campaign was ever like ‘Free Palestine’ or the Muslims are going to get extra rights. It just happens to be something that’s part of who Zohran is. But that’s actually not been his campaign.”

MAMDANI RIPPED BY RIVALS FOR UNPOPULAR STANCE DURING FIERY NYC DEBATE: ‘YOU WON’T SUPPORT ISRAEL’

The Mamdani campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani said he would keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and said later in a podcast that he would expect her to follow his directives, including disbanding the NYPD’s elite Strategic Response Group, which polices terrorism threats, protests and riots.

“I think everyone will follow my lead. I’ll be the mayor,” Mamdani said in the podcast.

Established in 2015, the NYPD has deployed the Strategic Response Group to anti-Israel demonstrations since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, when protests erupted across New York City, many led by the same groups now backing Mamdani’s campaign. Sarsour and Mamdani have participated in those protests. In November 2024, New York Mayor Eric Adams appointed longtime police veteran Tisch to be the city’s police commissioner.

MAMDANI’S GOD SQUAD: THE CLERICS, ACTIVISTS AND POLITICAL OPERATIVES WHO HAVE HIS BACK

Sarsour said, “I wasn’t really happy about the news that he was going to keep Tisch on for the NYPD.”

She struck the same chord as Mamdani, saying, “What’s most important is that in New York City, the police commissioner works for the mayor. They are not a separate elected official. So that means if Zohran says to Tisch, ‘You gotta do A-B-C,’ Tisch gotta do what the mayor says.”

“Now, if she doesn’t do that and goes against the mayor, then that’s when we’re going to have to go to Zohran and be like, ‘You definitely made the wrong decision here,” Sarsour continued. “What are you going to do to hold your police commissioner accountable to the plan?’”

MEET MAMDANI’S RADICAL ADVISORY CIRCLE THAT INCLUDES COMMUNIST ACTIVIST, ANTI-ISRAEL ADVOCATES

Sarsour tacitly acknowledged the messaging success of Mamdani’s seemingly contradictory alliance of the Democratic Socialists of America with controversial clerics, like Siraj Wahhaj, who served as a character witness for one of the architects of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

“You can’t be a Marxist and a jihadist and an Islamist and a fundamental Muslim, or whatever they call him, all at the same time,” Sarsour said. “You gotta pick a side. Either we’re theocrats or we’re leftists. Like these things don’t go together.”

Sarsour told her followers Mamdani will owe her and his other supporters if he wins.

“When Zohran gets inaugurated in January, and as we move forward with this mayor, we have to be the people outside,” she said. “Zohran is going to have to tell his own critics that are on the other side to basically say, ‘Look out that window, those people outside, these constituents, these activists, these organizers that are outside, I’m accountable to them, because they’re the ones that helped me get there.’”

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Sarsour also expressed support for two other Muslim candidates: Minneapolis mayoral candidate Amar Fateh, and Jersey City mayor Mussa Ali, who is endorsed by Emgage Action and CAIR Action, two 501(c)(4) Muslim political nonprofits also endorsing Mamdani.

Invoking the Arabic phrase for “God willing,” she added, “Inshallah, you know, we start a new type of politics, right?”

Mamdani’s God Squad: The clerics, activists and political operatives who have his back

When New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani stepped to the microphone outside the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx last week near Yankee Stadium, his voice broke as he spoke about “the memory of my aunt who stopped taking the subway after Sept. 11 because she did not feel safe.”

Behind him, a Yemeni-American educator in sunglasses named Debbie Almontaser nodded. 

Almost two decades ago, in 2007, she was forced to resign as principal of a city school after defending a T-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC.” 

City officials viewed it as a call to violence. She said it was benign. Her case became a rallying cry for Muslim American activists who cast her as a victim of “Islamophobia.”

FBI AGENTS FROM ’93 WTC ATTACK BLAST MAMDANI FOR EMBRACING RADICAL IMAM

Now, Almontaser was back, this time as a senior advisor to Emgage Action and a board member of Yemeni American Merchants Association Action, two of 110 political nonprofits, community groups and political action committees backing Mamdani as he alleges “Islamophobia” against him. Recently, when critics questioned Mamdani’s ties to hardline Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, she sprang to action, helping to organize a protest to defend Wahhaj. 

That rapid, coordinated response captured the modus operandi of a network of political operatives and clerics intertwined with the shared mission of catapulting Mamdani into the mayor’s office.

Mamdani’s background diverges from many of his co-religionists. In an interview, he said he is a Khoja Shia Muslim, part of a small, relatively liberal sect with roots in India. Many of his New York-area allies are religiously strict Sunni Muslims who practice more conservative interpretations of the faith. But they find common ground in politics.

“It’s a sophisticated fusion of religion, politics and identity,” said Mansour Al-Hadj, a Washington-based researcher on Muslim political movements and extremism. “The same networks that once focused on community services are now mobilizing voters and producing candidates. This is how political Islam adapts inside democracy.”

Mamdani’s God Squad includes about a few dozen key players who specialize in painting any critique as an attack on their faith, accusing critics of Islamophobia even as many of them have engaged in strident rhetoric against the U.S., Israel and capitalism.

The Original Imam: America is “filthy and sick”

Mamdani set off a firestorm Oct. 7 when he walked into Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn and later posted a photo of himself beaming beside the mosque’s imam, or prayer leader, Wahhaj.

The imam’s checkered past goes back decades. In a 1992 talk, he said American Muslims should elect an “emir” rather than choose between George Bush and Bill Clinton. Soon after, he served as a character witness in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh” convicted for plotting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people. 

“You know what this country is?” Wahhaj said in 1995. “It’s a garbage can. Filthy. Filthy and sick.”

In 2018, three of Wahhaj’s children were arrested after authorities found 11 malnourished children in a New Mexico compound tied to his family; a grandchild had died in what authorities described as an attempted exorcism. He told local news reporters, “Whatever they did wrong … it’s not acceptable to us.”

The Youth Imam: Resist “by any means necessary”

In New York, the Muslim American Society recently signed on to a letter to challenge “unmistakably Islamophobic, anti-Black, and xenophobic” attacks on Mamdani. Signatories included CAIR National, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ New York chapter, Islamic Circle of North America’s New York chapter, the Islamic Center of Five Towns, Muslim American Society of New York, Muslim Community Network, Rockaway Islamic Center and a “Syosset Muslim Community.”

Members of the Muslim American Society have long been quick to accuse others of Islamophobia even as they unabashedly call for violence against their perceived enemies.

At an Eid celebration earlier this year, a cleric at the Muslim American Society cast Muslims as victims worldwide. Mohammad Badawi, youth director at the Muslim American Society, declared the local community’s joy would only be complete when Muslims are “victorious worldwide,” adding they would celebrate “after the destruction of the illegitimate Zionist occupiers,” Israel.

He regularly organizes anti-Israel protests in a campaign against “injustice and oppression.” At one protest, Badawi urged youth to “fight back” against injustices “by any means necessary.”

The Street Protester: “Globalize the intifada”

Abdullah Akl, a charismatic organizer with the Muslim American Society Youth Center, leads many protests under the banner of “Within Our Lifetime,” with founder Nerdeen Kiswani. Mamdani joined them before his run for mayor.

Akl calls the street protests “sacred activism,” a mix of faith and resistance that will “free Palestine.” Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the Muslim American Society Youth Center has organized prayer protests on Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange and street protests for “Nakba Day,” calling the day Israel was created a “catastrophe,” and youth-led demonstrations outside BlackRock.

Akl turned a subway car into a protest zone with chants of “Globalize the intifada… There is only one solution: intifada revolution.”

When the New York Police Department arrested Akl and other activists, the Council on American-Islamic Relation’s New York chapter sent out a press release demanding their release.

During the Oct. 7 protests this year against Israel, Akl shouted, “We did not act enough! We will show up, stronger than we did the first Oct. 7.” In response to criticism, he posted a message on social media, doubling down and saying, “Saying we didn’t act enough to stop a full blown genocide against palestinians [sic] is incitement?? Saying we need to be louder and protest more and continue to speak up for gaza [sic] is a crime? Zionist tears once again for the most documented genocide in modern history.”

CAIR: ‘We will teach these folks a lesson’

For decades, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has served as an aggressive and litigious watchdog for a host of Muslim figures and causes, often at the forefront of fighting legitimate bigotry. But CAIR has also courted controversy. 

Federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terrorism-financing case against the Holy Land Foundation, a nonprofit based in Texas. In 2008, five Holy Land leaders were convicted of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas. Ultimately, no CAIR officials were charged in the case.

Years ago, Mamdani recorded rap lyrics celebrating the “Holy Land Five,” urging listeners, “My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ‘em up.” 

Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations California chapter and one of the founders of a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit, CAIR Action Inc., now seems to be pursuing a new and entirely legal means of financing causes, taking a page from the powerful pro-Israel political action committee AIPAC. He told a meeting of the Islamic Circle of North America, “AIPAC has had the run for 60 years, but it is over now.

“We will teach these folks a lesson … we are coming.” In another speech, he said, “The game has changed. AIPAC has been around since 1961…and now they have a formidable foe!”

The Former Al-Jazeera Host: ‘Make American Planes Crash Again’

This summer, Mehdi Hasan, a former host at Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV network, sat down with Mamdani for a sympathetic interview. As the campaign heated up, Hasan became a full-time defender on social media, swatting at critics and framing Mamdani as the right kind of provocateur, a “once in a generation political talent.”

Hasan’s own record includes sermons likening non-Muslims to “animals” and comparing gay people to “sexual deviants.” He has said his views have become more progressive since then.

After a series of plane crashes earlier this year, Hasan wrote on social media, “Make American Planes Crash Again.” 

He deleted the message amid criticism and said, “I deleted this sarcastic quote-tweet because MAGA and Islamophobic folks are clipping it out of context and trying to ridiculously suggest I’m inciting violence. I was obviously mocking the MAGA slogan ‘Make America… Again’ slogan and highlighting the shocking number of plane crashes under Trump and the FAA cuts. But this tweet was in poor taste, poorly worded, and has allowed people in bad faith to call me a terrorist…”

The Global Imam: Read ‘The Hoax of the Holocaust’

Yasir Qadhi, a high-profile American imam and founder of the AlMaghrib Institute and MuslimMatters.com, selling the puritanical Salafi interpretation of Islam, literally wrote the book on “Understanding Salafism.” Recently, he posted a two-part thread on X endorsing the idea of Mamdani’s win as a “civilizational victory.”

He urged Muslim Americans to move beyond “naive” religious critiques of politicians who are more socially progressive than they are comfortable.

Meanwhile, Qadhi once mocked European Jews as “white, crooked nose, blonde hairs” and “not a Semitic people.” In the same lecture, he recommended a book, “The Hoax of the Holocaust.”

Most recently, he has backed the controversial Muslim housing development outside Dallas, “EPIC City.” He noted in his Instagram post, “open to non-Americans as well.”

He touted some of its features, writing, “Islamic schools, college, masjid.”

The Popular Chaplain: Build ‘Our Own Space’

Imam Khalid Latif is a popular chaplain at the Islamic Center of New York City, a $22 million project to build a hub and “our own space” on Sixth Avenue for young Muslim professionals. He endorsed Mamdani earlier this year and has been an ardent supporter. He has called him “a bearer of compassion in a time where it is far too rare.”

In 2012, Latif led a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that included Omar Mateen, who would later murder 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest anti-LGBTQ attack in U.S. history. He has denied radicalizing Mateen, and he hasn’t faced the same type of allegations that surround other imams.

After the backlash to Mamdani’s meeting with Wahhaj, he posted, “Happy birthday to my brother Zohran… Keep showing them who we are by showing them who you are.” 

He invoked the divine to bless Mamdani’s mission, revealing the fusion of religion and politics for the Mamdani God Squad: “May your 34th year be one of clarity, courage, and closeness — to your purpose, your people, and your Creator,” ending with the Arabic word for amen, “Ameen.”

On Monday, Latif posted a sassy video from the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, saying, “The name is Mamdani, M-a-m-d-a-n-i,” with Latif mouthing the part where the narration turns to, “You should learn how to say it.”

That day, Latif delivered a speech to support Mamdani, pivoting to allege Mamdani was now a victim of “anti-Black racism,” saying, “Anti-Muslim sentiment is always” a symbol of “anti-Black racism.”

The ‘Home Girl in a Hijab’ from Brooklyn: ‘I wish I could take their vagina away’

In a glowing portrait, The New York Times called Palestinian American political organizer Linda Sarsour a “Brooklyn home girl in a hijab.” Over almost a decade, she has been a political mentor to Mamdani, inviting him into the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, which she co-founded. She later endorsed his race for the New York General Assembly, which he won.

All the while, she has been a polarizing figure, once saying about two critics, author and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali and activist Brigitte Gabriel, “I wish I could take their vagina away  – they don’t deserve to be women.” Ali is a survivor of female genital mutilation, a practice that involves cutting the clitoris of a young girl with the idea that it will inhibit sexual promiscuity.

As a co-founder of the Women’s March, Sarsour stepped down amid criticism of alleged antisemitism and not welcoming Jewish feminists who support the state of Israel, or “Zionists.”

At a rally on Sunday night with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Imam Latif told 13,000 people, “This is our city. This is our moment.”

Some Muslims beg to differ. 

“It’s not moment,” said Al-Hadj. 

“Across the boroughs, the Mamdani God Squad is banging a drumbeat of grievance after grievance, from Staten Island to Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Long Island,” he said. “Across the city’s Muslim institutions, you hear the same drumbeat: They smeared us. They silenced us. They fear us.

“In that rising volume, something is lost: Muslim pluralism. The God Squad does not speak for every Muslim in New York — nor for every Shia, every Sunni, every immigrant family, or every second-generation kid trying to thread faith and freedom. It speaks for a coalition committed to illiberal ends, with socialist capture of city politics on the one hand and puritanical religious rhetoric on the other. They insist that to oppose them is to betray the community, so they actually push their own tyranny.” 

Win or lose next week, Al-Hadj said, the Mamdani God Squad had actualized the words that had gotten Almontaser into so much trouble years ago: “Intifada NYC.”

Inside the Mamdani Machine: Soros cash, socialists and radical imams engineered Zohran Mamdani’s path to power

In late September 2017, Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, once the darling of the Women’s March and the self-declared face of the “resistance” against Donald Trump, was facing mounting criticism for antisemitic remarks and her embrace of extremist views. 

But, beaming in a photograph taken on a city sidewalk, Sarsour appeared unfazed, her iconic fist pumped in the air as she knelt shoulder-to-shoulder with campaign volunteers for City Council candidate Khader El-Yateem. The photo was posted by El-Yateem on the Facebook page he used to promote his campaign, which he lost, but among the smiling faces was a young organizer named Zohran Mamdani.

That photo would mark the start of a carefully constructed political project that, in less than a decade, would propel a now-34-year-old socialist newcomer to the precipice of running America’s largest city – even while campaigning with radical imams, some of whom have supported terrorists and terrorist financiers.

A Fox Digital investigation reveals that Mamdani’s rise was no accident. It was engineered.

SEN. SLOTKIN SAYS DEM SOCIALIST NYC CANDIDATE MAMDANI REPRESENTS ‘NEW GENERATION’ OF LEADERS YOUNG VOTERS WANT

A database of 110 groups backing Mamdani exposes a tight inner circle of organizations that identify as Muslim or socialist, working hand-in-glove with 76 Democratic Party affiliates, allied groups and unions. Particularly important in this political machine are two networks – Sarsour’s MPower organizations and another constellation of groups called Emgage, with which she works closely.

The organizations have been generously funded. In total, billionaire George Soros’s Open Society philanthropies have given MPower and Emgage nearly $2.5 million in recent years, according to tax filings. 

“We fund a range of civil society organizations that work to deepen civic engagement through peaceful democratic participation, counter discrimination including against Muslim Americans and advance human rights,” a spokesperson for Open Society Foundations told Fox News Digital. “The grants that you cite all occurred years before the mayoral race, and we are a nonpartisan organization that does not fund political candidates and their campaigns.”

Mamdani, Sarsour and the groups supporting Mamdani’s campaign didn’t return requests for comment.

MPower and Emgage have been part of a tight inner circle of 30 ethnic and religious groups, that also includes CAIR Action, the 501(c)(4) political wing of the 501(c)(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations nonprofit, the Islamic Circle of North America,“ “Muslim Action Coalition,” Yemeni American Merchants Associations Inc., the “Bangladeshi American Advocacy Group” and “Desis Rising Up and Moving.” They have pumped up Mamdani’s campaign with social media campaigns, canvassing, voters and buzz.

Altogether, they have annual revenues of about $24 million, and they have worked to promote Mamdani’s campaign with endorsements, fund-raising, social media campaigns and canvassing.

The result: a carefully constructed political career that mainstreams the socialist goals long embraced by Sarsour and fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

It’s a machine that is expressing itself in races from New York to Virginia, Minnesota, Texas and California with MPower and Emgage aligning with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party to propel candidates who may share their views. In a campaign called “Defend and Advance,” Emgage SuperPac is pushing Mamdani and Democratic Virginia Lt. Governor candidate Ghazala Hashmi as its “star candidates.”

Emgage’s “Defend and Advance” roster of supported candidates and office holders includes Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.

“I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here,” Hammoud recently told a Christian pastor who objected to a proposal to name a street in honor of a local man who had allegedly praised terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. “And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence.”

Emgage’s donations include $175,000 from a group little-noticed by political observers but important in Islamist circles: Sterling Charitable Gift Fund, based in Herndon, Va. It is part of a network of groups that FBI agents raided in 2002 as part of wider investigations into the funding of Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas. Federal prosecutors ultimately didn’t file criminal charges against any officials at Sterling Charitable Gift Fund.

MEET MAMDANI’S RADICAL ADVISORY CIRCLE THAT INCLUDES COMMUNIST ACTIVIST, ANTI-ISRAEL ADVOCATES

Over almost a decade, Sarsour and her allies have orchestrated a network of well-financed and tightly connected socialist activists, radical imams, political organizers and nonprofit organizations funded with millions of dollars by major philanthropies including Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Ford Foundation, Macarthur Foundation and the Tides Foundation.

The confluence of big philanthropy, partisan operatives and clerical authority has helped drive Mamdani’s ascent. Its architecture combines nonprofit activism with faith-based politics and the precision of a professional campaign operation. 

“To the casual observer, Zohran Mamdani’s rise might appear meteoric – a story of grassroots energy and demographic change in America’s largest city,” said Dalia Al-Aqidi, an Iraqi American Muslim who is running against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, with Omar supported by the same kind of political machine being unleashed to propel Mamdani to office.

“The data, the money trail and the affiliations, from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Islamists, tells a different story.”

“Mamdani’s ascent is the product of deliberate design: a sophisticated collaboration between socialist activism and Islamist organizing, lubricated by millions in foundation grants and political donations and normalized through a revolving door of political operatives and nonprofits who embrace Islamists, the destruction of the state of Israel and hostilities to the police, the U.S. and the West,” Al-Aqidi said.

The timeline of Mamdani’s rise tracks precisely with the growth of this network. In 2012, as a student at Bowdoin College, in Maine, he cofounded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus organization known for its rabid anti-Israel activism. By 2017, he was canvassing for El-Yateem’s campaign with Sarsour’s mentorship.

In 2018, Mamdani formally entered Sarsour’s orbit through the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, an organization she co-founded in 2013 to mobilize Muslim voters and elect progressive Democrats to local office. The Muslim Democratic Club of New York served as both incubator and amplifier for Sarsour’s political brand, one that fused progressive politics with an explicitly Islamist social identity. By December 2018, Mamdani joined the board, in an announcement in which the group said, “Help build Muslim power across the city with us!”

UNEARTHED VIDEO EXPOSES MAMDANI’S ‘UNABASHED’ COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING ANTI-ISRAEL SANCTIONS AS LAWMAKER

With his new role, Mamdani gained access to an emerging infrastructure of influence: voter lists, donor networks and organizing muscle that would later power his campaign to a seat on the New York General Assembly. The Muslim Democratic Club endorsed Mamdani.

Around that time, Sarsour was building her own empire, founding MPower Change as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit housed at Neo Philanthropy Inc. Public filings show MPower Change took in at least $2.4 million between 2017 and 2024, the latest year available, with Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society giving her organization $1.125 million and the Macarthur Foundation funneling her $450,000. It would become a flagship digital organizing hub for not just Sarsour but Mamdani. 

Meanwhile, Emgage Action was expanding its footprint nationally. Also backed by the Open Society network, Emgage Action received a share of $42.5 million that Soros’ foundations pledged to Muslim, Arab and South Asian civic groups beginning in 2021. It has received $1.8 million from the Open Society Policy Center and another $1.35 million from the Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Together, MPower Change and Emgage created an unprecedented financial and political ecosystem, leveraging big philanthropy’s dollars and digital strategy to elevate candidates like Mamdani under the banner of Muslim empowerment.

In 2020, Mamdani won his first election to the New York State Assembly, with Sarsour’s explicit endorsement and fundraising help.

By 2020, Mamdani was being featured in Sarsour’s #MyMuslimVote summit, promoted by MPower Change as the face of a new generation of unapologetic Muslim progressives. By this year, his campaign for mayor became the culmination of that project — backed by PAC money, boosted by clerical endorsements and legitimized by an activist ecosystem that had spent a decade grooming him for this very moment.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK LABELS NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATE ZOHRAN MAMDANI A ‘JIHADIST’

To push Mamdani toward the helm of the nation’s biggest city, the network extended far beyond activist circles. Central to Mamdani’s political ascent was a series of carefully cultivated relationships with clerics with some troubling views.

In January, Mamdani courted Imam Muhammad Al-Barr of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, visiting his mosque just months after Al-Barr had publicly prayed to “annihilate” Israel.

In May, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the longtime imam of Brooklyn’s Masjid Al-Taqwa, personally donated $1,000 to the Unity and Justice Fund. More recently, Mamdani met with Wahhaj and called him “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.”

Wahhaj, who served as a character witness in the trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” later convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has a long history of calling for the exploitation of America’s democracy to further a conquest for Islam.

“You don’t get in politics because it’s the American thing to do,” he said in a videotaped 1991 sermon. “You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.” 

Wahhaj has also denounced the U.S. government as “controlled by Shaitan,” the Arabic word for the devil, urged Muslims not to befriend “non-believers,” condemned homosexuality as “a disease of this society,” and supported Islamic laws that punish sex outside of marriage with 100 lashes and stoning. In 2011, Wahhaj urged Muslims to donate to the legal defense of the since-convicted Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist dubbed “Lady Al Qaeda” for attempting to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Over the years, Wahhaj’s sermons have praised “jihad” without “a gun,” called for an Islamic America governed by sharia law and urged the creation of an “army of 10,000 men in New York City.”

Other imams now backing Mamdani’s mayoral run have also been controversial. Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a cleric leading the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, co-founded the Muslim Alliance in North America, alongside Wahhaj. In 2005, Abdur-Rashid publicly defended Rafiq Sabir, an American doctor who joined Al Qaeda and was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison.

DNC EMBRACES SOCIALIST MAMDANI AS RESURFACED ANTI-ISRAEL REMARKS RAISE ALARM: ‘BIG TENT PARTY’

In 2008, Abdur-Rashid defended Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian American professor whom the U.S. later deported to Turkey for “conspiring to provide services” to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Still in the U.S., Al-Arian’s wife joined the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University.

In September, Mamdani appeared as the special guest speaker at Abdur-Rashid’s annual gala. A month earlier, Muslim Association of North America’s social media featured Abdur-Rashid visiting Wahhaj’s mosque, underscoring the continued collaboration between the two imams.

In Manhattan, Imam Khalid Latif, the executive director of the Islamic Center at New York University, has been another prominent Mamdani backer. Latif publicly endorsed Mamdani on Facebook in June, calling him “a bearer of compassion in a time where it is far too rare.”

In 2012, Latif led a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that included Omar Mateen, who would later murder 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest anti-LGBTQ attack in U.S. history. He has denied radicalizing Mateen and he hasn’t faced the same type of allegations that surround the other imams.

For many Muslim political organizations backing Mamdani, these clerics are not liabilities but assets, serving as trusted gatekeepers to the city’s growing community of Muslim voters.

After Mamdani visited Wahhaj’s mosque earlier this month, he tweeted out a photo of the two with the caption: “Pleasure to meet Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.” When a firestorm ensued, several allies rose to his defense: Sarsour, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the leaders at Emgage Action.

Sarsour shared a selfie with Mamdani, beaming, like they did back in 2017, and wrote, “May Allah continue to bless and protect you.”

A defiant Wa’el Alzayat, the executive director of Emgage Action, sent out a dispatch to followers on Tuesday, amid criticism for their political work, promising, “We are in this for the long haul.”

Back in Minnesota, Al-Aqidi closely watched the defense of Mamdani.

“For over a decade, Linda Sarsour and her network of allies have built the Mamdani machine piece by piece: the institutions, the donors, the narratives and now, the candidate. There was no way they were going to throw him under the bus for one photo with one imam whom they happen to love,” said Al-Aqidi. “Mamdani is the fresh face of a radical coalition, and I hope New Yorkers will reject him. Win or lose, one fact remains undeniable. His rise was not spontaneous. It was engineered and the machinery behind it is only getting stronger.”

Al-Aqidi said; “I hope New Yorkers will shut the Mamdani machine down.”

Public school teacher reveals years-long effort to expose alleged student abortion scandal

On a recent morning, Centreville High School teacher Zenaida Perez had a surprise visitor at the northern Virginia school where she teaches English as a second language: a high-powered lawyer investigating allegations that Perez had made public that a school social worker coaxed and funded a student’s 2021 abortion. 

The Clifton school district’s superintendent, Michelle Reid, responded to the allegations the next day, claiming the school system had just “learned yesterday” about the potential scandal. Last Thursday, Reid emailed Centreville High School parents, again claiming that the district had taken “immediate action to engage an external independent investigator to get all the facts.”

VIRGINIA SCHOOL SYSTEM INVESTIGATING CLAIMS STAFF ARRANGED STUDENTS’ ABORTIONS WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT

Perez’s visitor was Mary McGowan, a retired lawyer from Blankingship & Keith, a longtime go-to firm for Fairfax County Public Schools. In a nearly three-hour interview, Perez told McGowan how she had blown the whistle seven times about the abortion scandal since May 2022, only to be ignored and then retaliated against.

School district officials were “covering up” the alleged abortion scandal, Perez said she told McGowan. in the interview.

“Your recollection is outstanding,” McGowan acknowledged at one point, according to Perez. Indeed, a detailed review of hundreds of pages of documents, emails and records confirm Perez’s timeline. 

Perez told McGowan that she issued her first warning on May 5, 2022, in a meeting with then-principal, Chad Lehman, and an assistant principal. She said that a school social worker had allegedly facilitated and financed a 17-year-old student’s abortion the year before, without her guardian’s knowledge. 

Perez said she raised her concerns a second time in a letter sent on May 13, 2022, and she met again with Lehman in November 2022 to revisit the issue a third time, confirmed by an audio recording of the meeting.

FCPS policy states that “every effort shall be made to encourage and support students suspecting pregnancy to discuss their concerns with their parents or guardians.” However, it does not say FCPS employees should inform parents about those conversations.

“As this is an ongoing personnel matter, we are not able to comment at this time,” a spokesman for Fairfax County Public Schools said when asked about Perez’s account.

Born in Cuba, Perez migrated to the U.S. in 1990 after earning a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language, often called “ESOL.” After teaching at Sarasota Public Schools in Florida, she moved to Virginia, ultimately landing a coveted job as a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools.

The high school is “majority-minority.” Almost 20% of students are learning to speak English, according to school demographic data. About one in four students live in low-income homes and qualify for free or reduced-fee meals.

In the spring of 2022, Perez told the school board investigator she was blindsided when Lehman asked her if she’d given a pregnancy test to a student. She hadn’t, but she did learn that a teen student from Guatemala told her that the school social worker had made an appointment for the student to get an abortion at a Falls Church, Va., clinic in November 2021, and paid the expenses.

In a statement written later that fall, the student detailed what allegedly happened when she saw the social worker. “She helped me with a pregnancy termination, or abortion,” she wrote, according to a translation from its original Spanish. “[She] made the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax. She paid for the procedure and kept quiet about it, not letting my family know. I was worried that my family would react very badly if they knew about my pregnancy and the abortion.”

“When the abortion was performed, I was only 17 years old,” she concluded. The student and her guardian couldn’t be reached for comment.

Perez told Fox News Digital the student’s guardian, an uncle, didn’t know about the abortion and was “livid.”

VIRGINIA SCHOOL DISTRICT ACCUSED OF RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION IN TRANSGENDER LOCKER ROOM CASE

A week after the May 2022 meeting with Lehman, Perez says she sent the then-principal a follow-up email, dated May 13, 2022, reiterating that the school social worker had allegedly helped the student “solve the pregnancy issue.” 

Perez had another meeting with Lehman in November, a recording of which she shared with Fox News Digital. Perez asked what he had meant when he had previously told her the abortion allegations were “concerning.” Lehman responded: “I don’t remember the statement or the context of it, so I couldn’t answer that question with you right now. I don’t remember there being a conversation about that specifically.”

She reminded the principal she had repeated her concerns in a letter. When she raised her concerns again about Diaz facilitating an abortion, Lehman responded that he didn’t believe the social worker in question would have arranged an abortion for a student.

Julie Perry, a teacher at Centreville High School, recalled how she met Perez for the first time that fall, as Perry stood outside Room 222A on the school’s second floor. It was about 7:45 a.m., as students scurried into classrooms for their first period. Perry had just run on the Republican ticket for state House of Delegates, losing in a district that is majority Democratic.

“I feel strong. I have truth and God on my side.” – Zenaida Perez

“God bless Zenaida for fighting through this,” said Perry. “What’s so sad are the higher-ups. They’re not concerned about the truth. They’re concerned about keeping silent about these abortions.”

On March 7, Perez told McGowan that she raised her concerns again – now, for a sixth time – in a Zoom call with Heidi Siegmund, an attorney at McGuireWoods, a law firm based in Richmond, Va., investigating a separate issue of alleged workplace harassment at the school.

On March 19, Siegmund wrote to Perez and said: “We will also make sure the Division Counsel’s office is aware of your concerns,” according to a copy of the email.

The division counsel’s office has for years hired lawyers from Blankingship & Keith as outside counsel.

In May, Perez says she learned more shocking news: A teen told her that the social worker had offered to help her get an abortion when she was five months pregnant. The teen didn’t have an abortion and is now a young mother, Perez said.

The young mother wrote a statement about her experience, according to a copy of the letter, written in Spanish, saying a school health provider “gave me the option to have an abortion.” Perez said the student told her the same social worker had given her the advice.

Last week, as news of her allegations spread, Perez watched in disbelief as the school superintendent, Reid, claimed that school district officials had just learned about the concerns Perez had raised three years earlier and many times over. 

Early Monday morning, Perez returned to Centreville High School from summer break, armed with new resolve now that her warnings have been heard beyond Fairfax County Public Schools.

“I feel strong. I have truth and God on my side,” she said.

Global intifada movement rocked by #MeToo allegations against Jewish anti-Israel actor and accused grifter

The global intifada movement, dedicated to destroying the state of Israel, is splintering publicly for the first time, as a fiery Palestinian-American activist who made her name leading New York City protests is accusing a Jewish American actor and self-professed ally of the movement of being a sexual predator and “grifting off of a genocide.”

In a nine-point allegation published on the X social media platform Friday, Nerdeen Kiswani calls Jacob Berger a “failed OnlyFans creator” who rebranded as a “Palestine supporter.”

THE GLOBAL INTIFADA IS HERE. HAMAS-ALIGNED NETWORKS BROUGHT TERROR TO US SOIL AND WE NEED TO STOP IT

“Since then, he’s taken sponsorship deals, asked for donations nonstop and monetized every angle of his supposed activism,” Kiswani alleged.

Kiswani, whose protests shut down Manhattan’s Grand Central Station and have polarized neighborhoods, accused Berger of harassing female fellow activists.

“He sexually harasses and fetishizes Arab women, according to multiple reports,” she said. “Several women have described feeling unsafe around him, especially in activist spaces.”

Neither Kiswani nor Berger responded to requests for comment, but Berger published a video response to Kiswani in which he denied her claims. He said “some heavy allegations have been leveled against me” and called the charges a “personal vendetta” that arose after he did an interview with a podcast host critical of Kiswani. 

In a reverse Uno move straight out of a Muslim soap opera, Berger accused Kiswani of causing “baseless fitna.” Fitna is an Arabic word that means civil war and carries with it serious negative subtext among ideologues bound to a collective identity of one “ummah,” or Muslim community.

The allegations are particularly awkward because, since the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel by Hamas, Berger has become a virtual rock star in the anti-Israel scene, publishing selfies with activist luminaries, including socialist politician Cornel West, political scientist Norman Finkelstein, previously-detained protest leader Mamoud Khalil, Hollywood actor Rami Malek and rapper Macklemore.

In June, former Democratic New York U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman interrupted his own re-election rally, railing against Israel and Republicans, to give Berger a shoutout and handslap.

“Jacob Berger’s the man… He’s a brilliant artist, brilliant human! Jacob, thank you for being here. Appreciate you,” Bowman said as Berger beamed for the camera.

Last month, popular Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef, now living in the U.S., recorded a video, “Hey, Jacob BURGER!… I’m a big fan. I love you, man.”

Days later, in an Instagram Live video, Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib gushed over Berger, as he stood on the “Freedom Flotilla,” sailing toward Gaza. “Thank you, Jacob!” Tlaib said, leaning into the camera to throw him kisses.

None of these activist luminaries have issued a public statement on Kiswani’s claims.

Apologizing for his “white privilege” and “Jewish privilege” as an Ashkenazi Jew with ancestral roots in the former Soviet Union, Berger has crisscrossed the globe from the Bronx to Cairo, and he now draws 2 million followers on TikTok and a million on Instagram, publishing dozens of viral selfie sizzle reels, wearing a trademark look of a keffiyeh and baseball cap at protests and, other times, bare-chested in bed.

The clash offers a window into the murky dynamics of the anti-Israel movement, which has branded itself as moral and virtuous, calling for a “resistance” to “genocide.” While it welcomed Berger, he had previously been known for creating a library of social media content that critics say “fetishizes” not only Arab women but also cleavage-popping Hispanic, Black and Asian women.

In late February 2022, Berger had a very different business model. A former mental health and substance abuse counselor with a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, according to an official bio, Berger had switched careers to become an actor. That month, he launched a new business on the OnlyFans platform for sexually-charged video content, promoting himself as “The Instagram Cop.” He dressed in a New York Police Department uniform while performing sexual capers around town with buxom women, usually earning less than 100,000 views on TikTok.

FOX NEWS ‘ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED’ NEWSLETTER: IS COLUMBIA FINALLY GETTING IT?

“You have a right to remain silent!” OnlyFans wrote, announcing Berger’s new offering. “Prepare for a barrel of laughs…”

After Oct. 7, 2023, the Columbia University graduate made a sudden pivot. A week later, he posted an earnest video on Instagram, speaking to the camera in a NASA T-shirt, decrying the “genocide of the Palestinian people,” calling Israel an “apartheid state” and ending with a chant, “Free Palestine!” 

By the end of the month, wearing a white New York Yankees baseball cap without a keffiyeh, he joined a slow-moving protest in Washington, D.C., led by a group, Jewish Voice for Peace, aligned with Kiswani, heading from Union Station to the back of the U.S. Capitol. The crowd chanted “Ceasefire now,” as protest paparazzi took their images to post later on social media accounts in the emerging global intifada movement.

The next month, Berger posted a selfie video from another protest Kiswani led on the Williamsburg Bridge, between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Wearing a “Bronx Native” baseball cap, protesting Israel’s military response to the attacks, he chanted along with demonstrators: “Free, free Palestine.”

“He centers himself in everything,” Kiswani alleges. “Even when talking to Palestinians and on livestreams, it’s ‘me me me,’ how he suffers, how he is censored, how he gave up fame, while [he is] literally grifting off of a genocide.”

All along, Berger has been blatant about his sexual content, posting videos with scantily-clad women from his first days of anti-Israel protesting. As he joined the post-Oct. 7 protests and befriended Kiswani, he still had fresh on his social media feed a video he’d posted of a woman in a bra and thong underwear, with the caption, “When she likes it rough.” In another video he had on his public feed, he squeezed a Black woman’s buttocks, visible under lace hose and thong underwear, with the caption, “When cops stop you for being thick.”

After joining the protests, he stayed on script with his sexual content, showing two busty women spilling out of their bras, cavorting with each other behind the caption: “When wifey won’t share her girlfriend with you.” He earned 52,666 likes.

By late November 2023, Berger wrapped a black-and-white checkered keffiyeh, the symbol of the global intifada, over his shoulders, under a Pittsburgh Pirates beanie and marched near Kiswani and a banner that read, “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.” That post garnered 2.6 million views.

“Ten toes down for 🍉,” he wrote, using the watermelon emoji that’s become a symbol for Palestinians, its red, black and green colors matching the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Days later, in a show of force against support for Israel, he marched to the Christmas tree lights at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan with Kiswani, who gave her activist group the name “Within Our Lifetime,” seeking to claim Israel as the nation of “Palestine” within a generation. She established the group as an offshoot of the New York City chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, known for its virulent antisemitism.

Over the years, Kiswani has chanted, “We want to see Israel fall within our lifetime,” telling protesters: “We need allies who are gonna help us achieve a victory, not allies who are gonna tell us to be nonviolent.” She has said, “No Zionists are welcome in our city,” and she has declared, “We don’t want two states. We want ‘48,” meaning the land in 1948 before Israel was created.

Her organization’s website now hosts a “rally toolkit,” with a “roadmap for how your organization or coalition can put on a successful rally and build the movement for Palestine from wherever you are.” It offers a “rally checklist,” with “chants, logistics, outreach, materials, assigned roles, security recommendations, follow up, playlist,” with three “Palestinian resistance songs.” The “donate” button currently doesn’t work.

Kiswani didn’t publicly challenge Berger over the next two-and-a-half years, as he embedded himself deeper in the anti-Israel protest movement with often-cringey content about chasing “Habibti,” or Arab women, and declaring, “Asian Women Are Thick Now♥️,”

“It’s a handful of videos out of hundreds,” Berger says, in his video response to the allegations against him. “I’m an entertainer, comedian and a streamer. I say funny things. Her trying to haram police my content and my live stream style is just insane and out of line.”

Kiswani now faces her own backlash. A self-described “Arab alphamale” supporter of Berger says, “Nerdeen is good at being a dictator,” “acting retarded,” running a “useless organization,” storming Grand Central Station “like idiots” and making Palestinians “look stupid.”

By August 2024, Berger journeyed to Egypt to raise funds for “orphans and single moms from Gaza,” displaced by the war. 

Kiswani alleges: “He reportedly made videos with Palestinian children on a ‘field trip,’ asking people to donate for these ‘orphans’ without consent from their families. When they found out and asked him to take it down, he blocked them.”

Berger denies the charges and says: “But this is, unfortunately, a very ugly side of the humanitarian world that we, as people that work in this field, try to keep to ourselves, because it’s so messed up that if you know these kind of details, it could affect people’s trust in donating to Palestinian causes, period.”

“Jacob Berger’s the man… He’s a brilliant artist, brilliant human! Jacob, thank you for being here. Appreciate you.” – former Democratic New York U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman introducing Berger at a rally

Meanwhile, he kept posting his racy videos. In September 2024, in Dearborn, Michigan, at ArabCon, he filmed a skit promoting a dating app, Olive, throwing a keffiyeh over his shoulders as he chased attractive Arab women, with the caption, “How to find that perfect Habibti😍,” and asked the question, “Y’all wanna go free Palestine together?”

By October 2024, Berger moved to live in Cairo. Kiswani accuses him of “getting a free apartment, not paying for anything, and living comfortably while volunteers around him were actually working.” He denies the charges as “so laughable.”

The next month, Berger shared a supposed message from a follower: “As beautiful Muslim women, I feel we should give anti-zionist Jewish guys a shot. I feel like it isn’t Haram,” or Islamically illegal, “if he rides with Muslims”

By the end of the year, Berger posted a skit of himself hitting on a dark-haired woman in torn jeans, her midriff bare under a jean jacket, tube top and caption that read, “How to get a womans [sic] attention in an Egyptian club.”

Months later, in the spring of 2025, Kiswani flashed a wide smile and “V” for victory with her fingers, in a video with Berger from an anti-Israel protest, both draped in keffiyehs.

Now, Kiswani says, “If you’ve felt uneasy about him, you’re not alone… This isn’t cancel culture. It’s protecting the movement from exploiters. If your solidarity is self-promotion, it’s actually extraction.”

A few months ago, in early May, wearing a Yankees cap, Berger stood somber-faced next to climate activist Greta Thunberg, promoting a “Freedom Flotilla” to “break this siege” in Gaza. In mid-June, he celebrated Iranian air strikes against Israel.

By mid-July, now aboard a new sailing of the “Freedom Flotilla,” he debated TV host Piers Morgan over the alleged “kidnapping” of Thunberg by Israeli officials, who had detained and released her as she sailed off the shores of Israel. 

Last week, as he returned from his own aborted mission of the “Freedom Flotilla,” with “GAZA” across his military green T-shirt and a keffiyeh over his shoulders, activists lined a lobby in the arrivals lounge at JFK. International Airport, yelling, “Jacob! Jacob!” as he exchanged high-fives with them.

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“Protests in the street are not enough,” he told a cameraman. “One day we will see Falasteen free, Inshallah,” invoking the Arabic term used by Muslims for “God willing.”

“Inshallah,” the cameraman responded. 

Within days, Kiswani leveled her accusations against Berger as a grifter and sexual predator, and a detractor accused him of helping the cause of Zionism, or belief in the state of Israel, labeling him “a Zio in Kefiyeah [sic].”

Zohran Mamdani’s DSA sponsors protest with ‘death, death to the IDF!’ war cry

WASHINGTON — Here on the corner of 16th Street NW and H Street NW, just steps from the White House, across Lafayette Park, a war cry rippled out among a swarm of demonstrators against Israel’s military, the Israel Defense Forces.

“Death, death to the IDF, the IDF, the IDF! Death, death to the IDF!” they chanted.

They denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was meeting with President Donald Trump, as a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas loomed.

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Last week, British punk rapper Bobby Vylan shouted the incendiary slogan at the Glastonbury Festival, leading Secretary of State Marco Rubio to bar him from entering the U.S. Yet, his words have now crossed borders, absorbed into the militant propaganda of anti-Israel activists, including groups aligned with Hamas. The rallying cry has become the newest chant for a radical protest network spanning ideologies and continents. And despite demanding a ceasefire for months, their messaging on Monday night made one thing clear: they aren’t satisfied with a ceasefire. They want the end of the state of Israel.

According to new analysis from the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative that is tracking the professional protest industry in a comprehensive public database, a coalition of 40 organizations – with combined annual revenues of $19.2 million –  organized the “Noise Out” protests this week against Israel, with the call for “Death, death to the IDF.”

In this network, 25 organizations — or about two of three — are self-described socialist, Marxist, Leninist, communist, or socialist-adjacent. Another 15 groups — or about one of three — are Muslim or Arab organizations.

It’s an intersectional convergence of extremist ideologies — Marxist, Islamist, and radical anti-Americanism — masquerading as “social justice.”

As the crowd chanted against the IDF, local artist Rafikki Morris, a leader in the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party — which seeks to create an “all-African socialist government” — turned toward the noise and smiled.

“Death, death to the IDF!” Morris responded to the protestors who started the chant. “They’re reading my mind, you know.” The crowd cheered.

A protestor with his face covered in a black-and-white keffiyeh held a sign high — “DEATH, DEATH TO THE 🔻 IDF 🔻” – punctuated with two inverted red triangles — a symbol used by Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, to identify Israeli military targets. (The sign added the words: “Jews for Intifada.”)

One man wore the Hamas red triangle on his shirt. Another carried a sign: “RESISTANCE🔻IS 🔻JUSTIFIED.”

Hours later, the Israeli military announced Hamas fighters killed at least six IDF soldiers in an ambush near the town of Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza.

The self-declared Marxist, socialist, or communist organizations involved in the protest include:

• Democratic Socialists of America, a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit with about $6.2 million in annual revenues; member Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for NYC mayor.
• Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a 501(c)(3) hardline Marxist-Leninist group “recruiting and building towards the creation of a new Communist Party.” Its members were at the demonstration, “FRSO” across their shirts.
• Party for Socialism and Liberation, tied to an American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, aligned with the Chinese Communist Party; it churns out trademark black-and-white protest signs.
• American Party of Labor, which describes itself as a “Working Class Communist Party.” Its member
• All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, which seeks the “total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African Socialist Government.”
• Diaspora Pa’lante Collective, whose founding constitution declares it “dedicated to popularizing Socialism as the correct path after national liberation” in Puerto Rico.

The Muslim organizations involved in the protest include:

• Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, the “9/11 mosque,” known for ties to al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Council on American-Islamic Relations, a 501(c)(3) with $7.9 million in annual revenues; its cofounder Nihad Awad said he was “happy” about the October 7 massacre by Hamas. It was founded in 1994 in a Philadelphia meeting where CAIR leaders referred sympathetically to Hamas using coded language and euphemisms, including saying its name backwards as “Samah.”
• Muslim American Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with almost $1 million in annual revenues; it has been repeatedly scrutinized for its ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim American Society has promoted interpretations of Islam that are hostile to LGBTQ+ rights and women’s equality, and its members have been tied to terrorism.
• Palestinian Youth Movement, a fiscally-sponsored program of WESPAC Foundation Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; it stylizes protest with fashion-forward keffiyehs and Instagram-friendly branding, while promoting a hardcore agenda to destroy the “ongoing Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland.”
• American Muslims for Palestine, reportedly tied to Hamas.
• Virginia is for Palestine, a decentralized, grassroots Muslim network across cities including Alexandria, Arlington, Blacksburg, Fairfax, Harrisonburg, Lynchburg, Richmond, Roanoke, Winchester, and the Shenandoah Valley.  Its model is the grassroots cell system — difficult to track, but strategically effective.

The involvement of the Democratic Socialists of America is particularly important politically. With Mamdani’s win as the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, the Democratic Socialists of America are poised to shape the political future of America’s largest city, as it aligns with a movement that supports Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, revolutionary Marxism and chants of “Death, death to the IDF.”

In front of Lafayette Park, Morris led chants of “Smash Zionism! Smash Zionism!” Earlier, a local leader of Jewish Voice for Peace — a protest co-organizer also opposed to the existence of Israel — explained that Zionism is simply the belief that Jews should have a homeland. “I’m thinking maybe we’ve reached the point where we need to be doing something we wouldn’t normally do,” Morris added cryptically. The crowd interpreted it as a call for violence — and cheered.

A white-haired man in a “STOP THE GENOCIDE” T-shirt pushed back: “Violence doesn’t work either!”

Morris snapped: “We will not stand idly by as violence is perpetuated against us!”

Nearby, demonstrators pounded pots and pans and hurled shoes at a large cutout of Netanyahu. “Oh my gosh, he deserves so much more,” said a man who identified himself only as Mohammad, after spitting on the cardboard portrait.

Another protester waved an oversized key — a symbol of the network’s demand for a “right of return,” which would allow millions of Palestinians and their descendants worldwide to move into Israel. If implemented, this demand would drastically alter Israel’s demographic makeup. Today, about seven million Jews and two million Arab citizens live in Israel. But an estimated 15 million Palestinians worldwide, including those in Gaza and the West Bank, claim the right to return. Granting this would make Jews a minority and effectively erase Israel’s identity as a Jewish state — a goal openly promoted by this protest movement.

Underscoring this demand, the crowd chanted in Arabic, “Palestine is Arab! Palestine is Arab!”

Behind the protest signs and slogans lies a broader political campaign powered by malign foreign influence — propaganda, funding, and messaging rooted in authoritarian regimes and global networks that seek to destabilize America from within.

U.S. lawmakers are now investigating three of the protest’s organizing groups — CodePink, the ANSWER Coalition, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — for alleged financial ties to American tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, profiled by the New York Times for funding a “global web of Chinese propaganda.” CodePink, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with $1.2 million in annual revenues, denies receiving Chinese Communist Party money, but its cofounder, Medea Benjamin, refused to answer my questions about how much she allegedly receives from Singham. 

Earlier in the day, officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations stood at Lafayette Park, shoulder-to-shoulder with CodePink and a wider coalition of anti-Israel Muslim organizations, demanding the U.S. end its support for Israel and furthering their claim of the nation for Palestinians.

Online, their messaging is polished. On the streets, the mask comes off. One regular Palestinian American anti-Israel activist, Haitham Arafat, stormed at an international tourist inadvertently riding a scooter through the protest, shouting at her repeatedly: “Get the f— out of here!” He didn’t return a request for comment.

The night before, at a precursor event to the main Monday night protest, a man, who refused to give his name, led the crowd in chants: “There is only one solution! Globalize the revolution!”

He continued: “From D.C. to the Philippines, stop the U.S. war machine.”

As I reported on the protest, Michael Beer, director of Non-Violence International, a D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit with $3 million in annual revenues, blared his megaphone into my ears, while others shoved a Palestinian flag in my face and also shouted in my face.

Meanwhile, the crowd chanted: “It is right to rebel! Israel, Israel, go to hell!”

By Monday night, the full network was activated. 

Benjamin, the CodePink cofounder, appeared like a field marshal entering the fray — petite, stringy blond hair, ballet flats. She hugged a journalist with a Pacifica Radio press pass, while her partner, Tighe Barry, posed in a Netanyahu mask and prison uniform.

Collectively, these groups are not just agitating against Netanyahu. They are part of a long-term effort to mainstream Islamist political narratives in American discourse.

Zuhdi Jasser, cofounder of the Clarity Coalition, a group fighting political Islam, or Islamism, summarized the danger clearly: “What we’re seeing in these protests isn’t just street theater — it’s a warning. Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America is part of a movement that’s teaming up with radical mosques like Dar Al-Hijrah — the same mosque where 9/11 hijackers prayed.”

“His Democratic Socialists of America are marching side-by-side with Islamists and communists who hate everything America stands for. This isn’t about justice. It’s about power.”

During the protest, comrades in the Party for Socialism and Liberation passed out flyers with the headlined, “WE NEED A NEW SYSTEM.” Another friendly local comrade from the Progressive Labor Party handed out a write-up on its work with Democratic Party organizations in the recent #NoKings actions, protesting Trump. And she handed out copies of “Challenge,” the “Revolutionary Communist Newspaper” of the party, with a call-to-action: “Join the International Fight for Communist Revolution.”

The radicalism of the Marxist ideology on the left is matched by on the Islamist flank.

Among the most concerning participants is Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, widely known in counterterrorism circles as the “9/11 mosque,” practicing an interpretation of Islam aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization that seeks to establish a global caliphate. One imam, Shaker Elsayed, even publicly supported female genital mutilation. 

When I asked Benjamin about the mosque leader’s position on female genital mutilation, she paused and said: “I don’t know anything about this.” It was widely covered by the media.

When I asked her about how much the tech millionaire Singham gives CodePink, she refused to answer, saying, “Can we talk about genocide, which is what we’re here to talk about?”

In 2001, 9/11 hijackers prayed at Dar Al-Hijrah before launching their attacks on America, and a young imam, or prayer leader, Anwar al-Awlaki preached there, before decamping to Yemen and becoming a top propagandist and recruiter for al-Qaeda. His sermons radicalized a generation of extremists, some of whom later joined the Islamic State.

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The contradictions within this network are startling. 

A protest leader, Red Canary Song, describes itself as a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, advocating for the full decriminalization of “sex workers.” Since 2021, Iranian-American eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam have funneled at least $400,000 to the group through Democracy Fund Inc. Red Canary Song is allied on the same protest flier as Muslim American Society and Dar Al-Hijrah, whose leaders preach strict religious codes for women.

After last year’s protests, Netanyau quipped in an address to the U.S. Congress: “Some of these protesters hold up signs proclaiming ‘Gays for Gaza.’ They might as well hold up signs saying ‘Chickens for KFC.’”

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That day, the protests in D.C. against Netanyahu ended with vandalism at the Columbus Memorial at Union Station, where a leader from American Muslims for Palestine painted “HAMAS IS COMIN” in blood-red letters. A member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation stole an American flag from the flagpole and burned it to ashes. The FBI arrested both men last year for destruction of property. 

Both are now free, able to circulate again in protests like the one this week in front of the White House, where the new war cry echoed on a loudspeaker, as demonstrators twirled in dance: “Death, death to the IDF.”