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Dark Money Red Herrings

Feb 12

Written By Travis Nichols

Dark Red Money Herrings

February 11, 2026

TLDR:

House Republicans just created a formal Congressional record labeling progressive nonprofits as national security threats.

The February 10 Ways and Means hearing built justification for IRS audits, donor investigations, and FARA prosecutions against any organization left of MAGA.

The spectacle is the point, the process is the punishment, and the hypocrisy is wild.

What?

On February 10, House Republicans used a Ways and Means hearing, dubbed "Foreign Influence in American Non-profits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond," to escalate their campaign to kill progressive nonprofits.

Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) led the hearing with witnesses from right-wing opposition research shops: Scott Walter (Capital Research Center), Caitlin Sutherland (Americans for Public Trust), and Adam Sohn (Narravance).

The witnesses labeled donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsorships, and nonprofit opacity mechanisms as "vectors" for China-linked networks to allegedly route money through U.S. tax-exempt organizations.

One of the central case studies for these right-wing partisans was philanthropist Neville Roy Singham, whom the GOP claims has Chinese Communist Party ties based on his media investments and support of anti-imperialist journalism. Capital Research Center’s Scott Walter called him a “Maoist Billionaire.”

As Ken Klippenstein and others have pointed out, Singham has become a primary vehicle for broader attacks on progressive nonprofit infrastructure and left-of-MAGA opposition, including Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America.

The hearing attempted to build a case that nonprofits funded by people like Singham enable “malign foreign influence” through structural vulnerabilities like donor anonymity on Schedule B, fiscal sponsorship arrangements, and porous 501c3/c4 boundaries.

Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-MA) challenged witnesses and raised IRS capacity concerns, and Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman did his damndest, but the Republican story dominated the Republican-controlled committee.

That story? Progressive nonprofits, particularly climate non-profits, are national security risks requiring “enhanced scrutiny.”

So What?

The 119th Congress is famously useless, but even this grandstanding spectacular is part of a wider strategy to smother the opposition that has been, sad to say, pretty effective.

MAGA operatives are using the powers of government to start subpoenas, document holds, and financial record flags to punish opposition groups through grinding legal processes. This has the ancillary benefit of scaring the bejezus out of anyone in the blast zone who can’t afford a six-figure legal team.

Recall how DOGE went after USAID, not through legitimate audits or investigations, but through “viral waste” case studies trumpeted on www.X.com.

Even though “condoms for Gaza” was false, it spooked everyone into scrubbing “diversity” “equity” and “inclusion” from their websites, and led, by some estimates, to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

They didn’t need facts or even plausible accusations to do damage. Just bad faith.

And speaking of bad faith!

The witnesses! Good lord! Caitlin Sutherland of Americans for Public Trust spent her testimony attacking disclosed foreign foundation grants to climate groups, all visible on public 990 forms, while her own organization is a 501(c)(3) that discloses none of its funders.

And Adam Sohn, of the Network Contagion Research Institute, admitted the Democratic Socialists of America 'received no direct foreign funding' but argued they're guilty anyway because of “narrative convergence with hostile foreign states.”

But Scott Walter was the true belle of the bs ball. Walter comes from Capital Research Center, a right-wing opposition research shop that seems to exist solely to attack progressive organizations and make poorly-designed PDFs.

Walter spent his testimony bemoaning "dark money" and nonprofit "opacity" while extensively citing the Washington Free Beacon, a publication owned by the Foundation for American Freedom, itself funded by Donors Trust, neither of which disclose their funders.

Golly!

Curiously, in their testimony on the harms of foreign influence, neither Walter nor the other witnesses ever mentioned the fossil fuel lobby (dominated by Saudi, Russian, and multinational oil interests), Leonard Leo's foreign-funded judicial network (famously partisan), or the Heritage Foundation's elaborate dark money shell game, all of which have influenced our current political landscape far more than Code Pink could ever dream of doing, even for all the tea in China.

(Not to belabor the bad faith point, but the Heritage network has a 501c3 Foundation, a 501c4 “Action” group, and a PAC, the exact same fiscal sponsorship and opacity structure Walter attacks, when progressives use it.)

And if that weren’t enough, Scott Walter’s own organization, Capital Research Center, is a 501c3 charity organization bankrolled by the Bradley Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, and the Koch family. It feeds no children, offers no medical supplies, or even maybe pays it forward at Starbucks every once in a while. Capital Research Center’s entire mission is to produce bullshit opposition research disguised as charity watchdog work. If progressive nonprofits are "too political," what is testifying to Congress to defund your political opponents?

At long last, MAGA goons, have you no shame?

Rhetorical question, obv, Trump’s own Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former registered foreign agent for Qatar, issued a memo last year gutting enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the primary tool for monitoring foreign influence.

Simultaneously, the Trump administration fired 65% of Inspectors General, slashed IRS staffing by 25%, and reduced the DOJ Public Integrity Section from 36 attorneys to two, so they can’t actually investigate things like the $187 million UAE payment to Trump's crypto company, the $2 billion Saudi investment in Jared Kushner's fund, or the $400 million Qatari jet gifted to the president.

Of course, the spectacle is part of the deterrence. A fossil fuel company initiating a SLAPP suit against a protest group, administration officials posting videos on www.X.com of an extrajudicial killing of Caribbean fisherman, or even of a legal observer in Minneapolis, it’s all part of a feed first enforcement and process as punishment strategy. Muddy the waters, and then start investigations, subpoenas, and reputational attacks to drain resources and chill activity, regardless of legal outcomes or “the truth.”

The hearing parallels the terrorism-designation threats we’re seeing in places like Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles, and fits snugly up against the departments carrying out NSPM-7 directives that enable investigations to expand from alleged "bad actors" to their employees, officers, funders, and affiliated entities based on vague national security claims.

Although framed around China and propaganda, specifically, this hearing reinforces the overall story that progressive nonprofits pose national security risks, a narrative frame that will be useful for later moves targeting tax-exempt status, banking access, and donor relationships, before courts can intervene. Maybe, if they make enough bad faith noise and gin up enough viral outrage, progressive groups will just fold of their own accord! You never know!

Regardless, through this particular hearing, Republican committee chairs now have a formal record characterizing progressive nonprofits as national security threats, which will serve as a narrative foundation for escalating financial and operational pressure on mission-driven organizations.

Now What?

FWIW, I see three major threats to progressive organizations from this hearing:

First, it legitimizes conspiratorial "follow-the-money" investigations as MAGA priorities. The national-security framing creates justification for IRS scrutiny, subpoena demands, and enforcement actions targeting not just accused organizations as legal entities but org officers, employees, funders, and affiliates.

Smith has authority to compel records and expand investigations beyond initial targets, so Ways and Means could issue letters to organizations named in testimony and their fiscal sponsors, DAFs, and donor networks. Then, committee Republicans will push Treasury and IRS for enforcement changes targeting political activity, fiscal sponsorship, or donor opacity. The hearing record would provide justification for audits, revocations, and heightened scrutiny of progressive nonprofit networks.

Again, regardless of facts or eventual legal outcomes. So, IMO, I wouldn’t bother scrubbing your sites of “trigger words” or whatever, and instead figure out how you’re going to actually fight.

Second, the hearing targets progressive funding infrastructure. Multiple witnesses spotlighted donor-advised funds and fiscal sponsorships as "loopholes" that enable foreign influence. This creates pressure for new disclosure requirements, tracking systems, lower “suspicious activity” reporting thresholds for banks, and the fear of reputational guilt-by-association for supporters. Any progressive org use of even legitimate financial structures becomes suspect when opponents claim money is "laundered" through opacity mechanisms that are themselves, you know, opaque.

(Wait, you mean like Trump is laundering foreign influence through crypto? Or taking foreign money directly for access? SHHHH! Don’t mention that to these guys! You’ll blow the whole thing!)

Third, it builds the rationale for foreign-agent targeting on a bigger scale. The hearing's "Beijing and beyond" frame combined with explicit naming of climate funders aligns with the FARA For Dummies playbook: create viral guilt-by-association claims (especially China connections) to justify stripping nonprofit status or deploying Treasury tools against climate groups.

Anyone appearing in formal testimony creates a ready-made citation for future attacks from bad-faith actors (see paragraphs re: walter above).

Because, in the meantime, the wider MAGA governance cabal will likely draft more bills creating public disclosure databases for "foreign-influenced" nonprofits that will serve as investigatory target lists for executive-branch enforcement. And, most tedioiusly, the foreign-influence narrative will likely migrate from generic China concerns to whatever hobbyhorse MAGA feels like could help them in the mid-terms.

Climate litigation and advocacy groups are explicitly discussed in prior Republican strategy documents as next-phase targets. Groups like Greenpeace and Code Pink appearing in the formal record creates ready-made citations for attacking progressive funders and their grantees as foreign-influenced, regardless of facts.

Any organizations left of MAGA on the political spectrum are now likely to face heightened exposure, especially those with international funding, fiscal sponsors serving multiple clients, or donor bases including philanthropists with global investments.

The Singham and USAID precedents show Republicans don't need any actual facts, only their feelings, vague association, and ideological opposition are sufficient triggers.