From Austin to New York, pro-China network fuels week of anti-US protests as Xi meets Trump
Lawmakers warn ‘AstroTurf’ protests by nonprofits funded by tycoon Neville Roy Singham project an image of US instability
2026-09-22 20:27:06 EDT / Fox News
By Asra Q. Nomani, Michael Dorgan, Preston Mizell, Fox News
Published September 22, 2026 8:27pm EDT | Updated September 22, 2026 8:31pm EDT
Far-left groups believed to have organized Austin protests: ‘These are ideologues’
Fox News Digital senior investigations editor Asra Nomani discusses her team’s investigation into far-left groups allegedly coordinating anti-ICE protests across the country, including the latest demonstrations in Austin, Texas. She breaks down the group’s findings, the organizations involved and coordination behind the protests on ‘America Reports.’
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NEW YORK, N.Y. – As President Donald Trump readies for high-stakes negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a network of pro-China organizations funded by pro-communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham is taking to the streets from New York City to Austin, creating the image of rolling street unrest that lawmakers warn China can exploit to project a perception of chaos in the United States.
Yesterday, Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, wore a trademark fuchsia straw hat and protested across the street from the United Nations on E. 47th Street, between First and Second Avenue, under an arch at Katharine Hepburn Garden, smiling widely next to agitators from the far-left CodePink nonprofit she co-founded and her American-born husband helped fund from his base in Shanghai. As part of their elaborate weeklong calendar, the activists railed against the U.S. military and its “all-out climate and environmental devastation.” and then they marched to the offices of Open AI to demonstrate against data centers they allege “drive war” and “economic degradation.”
The week’s protests reflect a pattern of rapid mobilization around breaking news and political flashpoints. The sequencing of events — combined with messaging sharply critical of the United States and silent about China’s human-rights, environmental and civil-liberties record — raises questions lawmakers debated last week about whether some activists function as “Trojan horses” for foreign adversaries such as China. Recently, Evans posted a video lauding China for building an economy that helps citizens “grow and thrive.” Last year, Singham delivered a speech in China supporting the Chinese Communist Party and Xi’s “new world order.”
SOCIALIST, COMMUNIST GROUPS COORDINATE, PROMOTE ‘SPONTANEOUS’ ANTI-ICE PROTESTS IN AUSTIN
On Feb. 14, 2018, Jodie Evans, co-founder founder of CodePink, and Neville Roy Singham, founder of Thoughtworks, attend V20: The Red Party, a 20th anniversary celebration of V-Day and The Vagina Monologues, featuring a performance by playwright Eve Ensler and an after-party at Carnegie Hall in New York City.(Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images)
Lawmakers have warned that the cumulative visibility of such actions shape public perceptions, project an image of instability and give foreign adversaries a potential messaging – and negotiating – advantage as Trump prepares for high-stakes talks with Xi this week.
“The American people need to know that this is not just an organic movement,” Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Fox News Digital. “There has to be more transparency across all areas with these kinds of activities.”
Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., chairman of the House Select Committee on China, told Fox News Digital the network’s grassroots image belies the serious funding infrastructure behind these groups. “In these situations where you have groups that portray themselves as grassroots, it’s really more Astroturf, very fake,” he said.
A split image of Chinese President Xi Xinping and President Donald Trump.(Maxim Shemetov-Pool/Getty Images; Artur Widak/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He said the protests “raises serious concerns” about malign foreign influence in the U.S., especially “when you see them actively speaking out against American interests.”
The protests are publicly framed as separate events involving immigration, climate change, artificial intelligence, militarism and Israel. But their shared sponsorships show how organizations within the broader Singham network move quickly from one issue to another, using national organizations, local chapters, social-media promotion and shared venues to create a cumulative impression of coordinated street activism.
Moolenaar called for “clarification and transparency” regarding the organizations’ finances and questioned whether they should continue receiving tax-exempt status, adding that their political involvement may violate “campaign rules and political rules here in the United States.”
LAWMAKERS RAISE ALARM OVER NEVILLE ROY SINGHAM’S $278M NETWORK SPREADING CCP PROPAGANDA IN THE U.S.
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HASAN PIKER DEFENDS PRO-COMMUNIST, ANTI-ICE SINGHAM NETWORK ACTIVISTS AS ‘WONDERFUL PEOPLE’
The significance of the week’s activity is heightened by the scale of Singham’s financial support for the network. A Fox News Digital investigation has documented how Singham has pumped $285 million through a donor-advised fund and shell companies into a broader network of six major nonprofits, media outlets and activist organizations that have promoted anti-American and pro-China messaging.
In that network, Singham has given CodePink $1.33 million, while doling out $22.44 million to the People’s Forum, a hub for the protest activity this week, and $1.098 million to BreakThrough BT Media, a media arm of the network that is flooding social media with images and videos from the coordinated protests this week.
As Fox News Digital reported exclusively, the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York has convened a federal grand jury investigation into Singham’s financial network, sources say. Prosecutors are examining whether Singham, the organizations he funded or their leaders engaged in alleged wire fraud, bank fraud or money laundering, according to sources. Singham hasn’t been charged with a crime, and the investigation doesn’t establish that he personally directed each protest. Singham, the People’s Forum, CodePink and BreakThrough News haven’t responded to repeated requests for comment.
The sequence began Sunday night in Austin, where socialist and communist organizations rapidly promoted an anti-ICE protest after the shooting of Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez. The Democratic Socialists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Party for Socialism and Liberation amplified calls for demonstrators to gather at 8121 Research Blvd. in Austin.
Although media accounts described the protest as organic, the mobilization moved through an existing national activist infrastructure. The Singham network’s Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization circulated video and protest messaging, while Democratic Socialists of America promoted the gathering as “spontaneous” and called supporters to the streets. The protest later spread beyond Austin, with activists in Pearsall, Tex., pledging to put “boots on the ground.”
In response to Fox News Digital’s reporting on the protests, the Party for Socialism and Liberation published a video with an activist “rejecting” criticism of its Austin protests as a “nefarious” coordinated event and called the protests the result of “righteous anger.”
The Party for Socialism and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America and Freedom Road Socialist Organization didn’t respond to requests for comment.
On June 4, 2024, CodePink’s Medea Benjamin interrupts a Capitol Hill news conference in Washington, D.C., organized to commemorate the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and to discuss the “ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy in China.” Her sign says, “China is not our enemy.”(Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
CHINESE PROPAGANDA, SINGHAM NETWORK, FOREIGN DARK MONEY LINKED TO CAMPAIGNS AGAINST DATA CENTERS
On Monday, the network’s actions moved to New York City, where Singham’s wife, Evans, and her cadre of CodePink activists began a week of demonstrations tied to Climate Week and the United Nations. CodePink co-founder Susan Medea Benjamin has led previous protests, including demonstrations supporting China.
After the environmental activism led by Evans outside the UN, CodePink agitators joined an “Unplug OpenAI” protest outside OpenAI’s offices on Lafayette Street, linking artificial-intelligence data centers to the “military-industrial complex.” The group’s weeklong schedule promised “disruptions” and “bird-dogging,” a tactic in which seemingly regular people plant themselves in restaurants, conferences and other events to heckle and harass public officials and even ordinary citizens, peppering them with questions and shaming rhetoric without any real interest in a dialogue.
Early Tuesday, CodePink celebrated its “fearless cofounder” Evan’s birthday with an Instagram collage of photos from her decades of activism, including the image of a smiling Evans in her pink straw hat, standing beside fuchsia balloons from a campaign called “China Is Not Our Enemy” that the group launched after receiving the donations from Singham. Another photo included her beaming smile next to controversial Marxist influencer Hasan Piker, as the two joined a caravan to support the Communist Party of Cuba.
Later in the day, CodePink activists moved their campaign inside the People’s Forum, a Manhattan hub for communist organizing for a screening of a film, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” by a fiercely anti-U.S. film company, Watermelon Pictures, chronicling the U.S. military as “one of the most significant drivers of environmental destruction,” the “world’s largest institutional polluter.”
Back in Austin, a short while later at about 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time, the Singham network’s BreakThrough News propaganda network posted edited video clips from the Austin protests, headlined: “SECOND DAY OF PROTESTS IN AUSTIN AFTER ICE SHOOTS VENEZUELAN DELIVERY DRIVER.”
For Wednesday, Evans and CodePink promise more protests against the U.S. military’s “role in climate issues.”
On Thursday, as Xi meets with Trump in the White House, the People’s Forum, CodePink, the Palestinian Youth Movement and other groups in the Singham network are hitting the streets to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In social media posts, the groups are advertising a Thursday march from Bryant Park to the United Nations, calling on New Yorkers to “reject war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and the genocidal Zionist project.”
That day, Evans and CodePink also plans to participate in a teach-in on “War & Climate: What U.S. Imperialism Demands of Our Climate Justice Movements” before joining the anti-Israel agitation. Organizers are lashing out against the “genocide” in Gaza and blasting “ecocide.”
By Friday, as Xi readies to leave town, the protests will go full circle back to Austin, with the Singham network’s Party for Socialism and Liberation planning a protest at 6 p.m. at City Hall with the simple message: “Now is the time for us all to be brave, to follow the example of Minneapolis earlier this year, and TAKE TO THE STREETS!”
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Asra Nomani is senior editor of investigations at Fox News Digital. She is a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, where she covered stories related to money, politics and society. She is the author of Woke Army: The Left-Green Alliance That Is Undermining America’s Freedom. She can be reached at asra.nomani@fox.com and on X at @asranomani.