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.

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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.

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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.

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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…”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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. 

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.

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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.”

‘Untold damage’: Global assisted suicide movement targets children

In the spring of 2022, Canadian teenager Markus Schouten’s dying wish was that no child should be forced to choose between life and death.

Markus had just learned he was about to die. His oncologist broke the news to him and his family on the eighth floor cancer ward at British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. They held each other, weeping.

Weeks later, lying on his family’s living room sofa, Markus dictated a letter to the Canadian Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, established to set guidelines on a federal law that allowed “assisted suicide” in Canada in 2016.

Markus opposed lobbying efforts to expand the law to children under the age of 18.

‘LOVE YOU FOREVER’ AUTHOR MAY SOON DIE BY ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO-LIFE GROUPS CALL DECISION ‘HEARTBREAKING’

“That’s because life is worth living and we should always work to alleviate suffering without eliminating the sufferer,” read the final letter, which was signed by his parents.

The letter closed, “Life is worth living, even when we are dying.” 

A month later, Markus died, surrounded by his family and friends, telling them, “See you in paradise.” 

Three years later, his parents, Mike and Jennifer Schouten, are carrying the torch for Markus in a mission to block efforts to allow “mature minors” the right to choose to die through assisted suicide. They now work alongside a global network of like-minded advocates, including disability rights groups, who argue the assisted-suicide industry targets vulnerable people who would benefit from assisted living services. Already, in Canada, the law is expected to expand to patients with severe psychiatric disorders, as early as 2027.

But they are up against a powerful, well-funded machine. A Fox Digital investigation reveals the Schoutens and other opponents of euthanasia face a multimillion-dollar global lobby that could be called Assisted Suicide Inc., a sprawling network changing laws worldwide, developing euthanasia services for funeral parlors, selling “suicide pods,” promoting “suicide tourism” and even training “doulas for death.”

“As we continue to expand the euthanasia regime, all the safeguards and windows have gone out the window,” said Mike Schouten. “And it becomes open season for anyone to choose death, including children.”

AUSTRALIAN MOTHER CALLS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AGE RESTRICTIONS AFTER DAUGHTER’S SUICIDE

What began as a limited effort to provide adults with terminal illnesses the ability to end pain and suffering has now grown into an international industry. According to a database compiled by the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative, at least 96 organizations worldwide are now part of this movement. 

The global lobby cloaks assisted suicide in the language of civil rights and human rights, using euphemisms in their names, such as “assisted dying,” “medical assistance in dying,” “dying with dignity,” “choice,” “end of life,” “completed life,” “final exit,” “free exit” and the “right to die.”

These groups have a presence on every continent, but are predominately found in the West, which also faces alarmingly low birth rates. There are 41 groups in Europe; 31 groups in North America, with 25 of them in the United States, four in Canada and two in Mexico; 13 in Oceania, with most in Australia and one in New Zealand; and only five in Asia, two in Africa, and three in South America.

While most of their work has focused on adults, with Robert Munsch, the Canadian author of the best-selling children’s book, “Love You Forever,” the latest high-profile person to recently announce he was approved for assisted suicide after being diagnosed with dementia. “Hello, Doc — come kill me!” he joked, sharing the news.

The boundaries are shifting. Behind the push to extend these laws to children lies a legal Trojan horse: the “mature minor doctrine.”

This concept, first established in a 1967 Washington Supreme Court case, Smith v. Seiblyonce allowed limited medical discretion for minors. But over decades, it has metastasized into a sweeping jurisdiction for granting children autonomy – and secrecy – over their medical decisions. Today, it lets minors make choices without parental involvement on gender pronouns, gender transitions, contraception and abortion. In 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, minors can even obtain abortions without parental knowledge.

FEDERAL COURT REJECTS CHALLENGE TO OKLAHOMA LAW BANNING GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS

Now, advocates are leveraging that same doctrine to argue that children should have the “medical autonomy” to choose death. The “National Youth Rights Association,” a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Hyattsville, Md., uses the “mature minors” to die by physician-assisted suicide.

Euthanasia is already legal for adults in Australia, Belgium, Colombia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and 11 U.S. states. But three countries – the Netherlands, Belgium and Colombia – have gone further, allowing “mature minors” to die by physician-assisted suicide.

In February 2023, despite the pleas of Marcus and his parents, Canada’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying recommended extending the right to some youth, declaring that parents should be “consulted” but that the “will of a minor” with decision-making capacity “ultimately takes priority.”

The same debate has now reached the United Kingdom, where a bill to allow adult euthanasia is moving through the British Parliament. Earlier this year, the British House of Commons narrowly voted 259 to 216 to bar physicians from discussing assisted suicide with youth, meaning nearly half of lawmakers supported discussing assisted suicide for youth.

Katharine Birbalsingh, a British educator known as “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress,” believes it’s only a matter of time before youth are included.

“Assisted suicide will spread, full stop,” she told Fox Digital. “And the people allowed to do assisted suicide will grow, making it younger and younger.”

Birbalsingh argues that Western societies have fallen for the dangerous illusion that “the child must lead,” leading to thinking such as “Oh, he wants to change his gender, or he wants to commit suicide.”

“Once upon a time,” she said, “adults used to say, ‘No, the child is not capable of leading, because he is a child.‘ In the West, we have forgotten that we’re meant to be in charge as adults.”

“There’s just a million reasons why young people would want to choose death,” said Birbalsingh, the founder of the Michaela Community School in London. “You know, young people are compulsive, they make whimsical decisions. They make irresponsible decisions. They’re young. That’s sort of the definition of a child.”

“That’s why they need looking after,” Birbalsingh added. “That’s why we need to look after them as adults. That’s our job. It’s our role in life, to keep and protect them, sometimes from themselves. The people making these decisions just don’t understand young people.” Lawmakers said there was a “very real risk” that proposed assisted suicide legislation, called the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill,” would be expanded to include children if they didn’t vote for her amendment.

ITALIAN LAW WOULD REGULATE GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS

British Labour Party MP Meg Hillier voiced similar concerns during parliamentary debate, warning that teen brains make them particularly “susceptible to being influenced, including into dangerous and risky behavior.”

She said, “In a number of countries, assisted dying laws have been expanded to allow children and young people to end their lives. We need to be alert to that very real risk.”

Another MP, Sorcha Eastwood, cited social media’s toll on youth brain health, saying, “If we throw this into the mix, it has the potential to do untold damage.”

So far, pro-euthanasia groups in the U.S. have remained quiet about extending assisted suicide to minors, but critics fear it’s only a matter of time.

The British Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza warned that the proposed changes would allow doctors to discuss assisted dying with 17-year-olds “deemed competent,” preparing them for the choice upon turning 18. In a May report, she said that she had convened a panel of youth to discuss the issue.

In Canada, the euphemism “MAID,” or “Medical Assistance In Dying,” has softened the conversation. But the statistics are stark. In 2023, about 15,000 Canadians died through “MAID,” about one in every 20 deaths nationwide, a 16% increase from 2022, making assisted suicide the fifth leading cause of death. 

The movement is also big business. Dying with Dignity Canada, based in Toronto, reported $3 million in expenses in 2024, including $803,555 for advertising and promotions. It publicly argues that “mature minors should be allowed the right to choose MAID,” calling it “unfair” to deny a 17-year-old what a 70-year-old is granted.

The British Columbia Humanist Association, the Canada chapter of Humanists International Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New York City, likewise demands MAID access for “mature minors” and “those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness,” It insisting there is “no moral or ethical distinction between a mature minor and a young adult.” It argues: “Ensure Dignity in Death.” The “high priestess” of euthanisia, Dr. Ellen Wiebe, also supports extending assisted suicide to children. 

The Netherlands offers a preview of what comes next. Legal since 2002, Dutch euthanasia laws permit doctors to end lives of children as young as 1, including newborns “suffering unbearably with no prospects of improvement.” 

By 2024, euthanasia accounted for 9,958 deaths in 2024, or 5.8% of the country’s deaths.

DEMOCRATIC STATES SUE TRUMP ADMIN OVER ENDING SEX CHANGE SURGERIES FOR MINORS

A recent study published in the International Journal of Psychiatry found that among Dutch euthanasia applicants, 73% were young women with psychiatric diagnoses including major depression, autism, eating disorder, trauma-related disorders and a “history of suicidality.” The researchers acknowledged there is an “urgent need” to study “persistent death wishes” in this “high-risk group.”

In one chilling case, a boy with autism, aged 16 to 18, ended his life after describing it as “joyless” and “lonely,” according to the 2024 annual report of the Regional Euthanasia Review Committees, which approves medical-assisted suicides. His doctor “had no doubt about his decisional competence.”

Last year, 14 Dutch psychiatrists urged prosecutors to investigate a case involving a 17-year-old girl, Milou, who died by euthanasia after years of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, following childhood sexual abuse. They warned against the “widespread promotion of euthanasia” leading to “unnecessary deaths.” The Royal Dutch Medical Association scolded the psychiatrists, and prosecutors declined to act.

In 2014, Belgium became the second country in the world to allow child euthanasia, requiring parental consent. The Belgian Federal Euthanasia Review and Evaluation Committee says that six youths have requested euthanasia between 2014 and 2024. Last year, one young person made the request. 

The industry has faced allegedly criminal revelations. In Australia, one alleged “euthanasia ring kingpin,” Brett Daniel Taylor, faces prison for selling vulnerable people lethal veterinary drugs nicknamed “the Green Dream.”

Back in Canada, Mike and Jennifer Schouten remain committed to fulfilling their son’s wish. 

Michael remembers Markus lying on the sofa, dictating the words that became his son’s final message to lawmakers.

One day, in his final days, Markus said to his parents, “I can see what you are doing with your work is connected to what we’re going through. If we can share our story, we should.”

Now, Michael says, “I feel he is blessing our work.”

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].”