FOLLOW THE MONEY

March 29, 2026•7 min read

THE PROTEST MACHINE

Follow the Money: The Hidden Network Behind America’s Unrest

They look spontaneous. They feel organic. But beneath the crowds and chants, a system is at work, funded, structured, and built to mobilize on demand.

By Staff Writer | March 28, 2026
Core reporting and investigative framework attributed to Asra Q. Nomani (Fox News Digital), supported by public records and official government documents.

Editor’s Note: Why We Followed the Money

Across the United States, a pattern has taken hold, one that is becoming harder to dismiss as coincidence.

A flashpoint erupts.
A message spreads.
And almost instantly, protests appear, sometimes in multiple cities, sometimes nationwide, often within hours.

To many Americans, these moments look like organic expressions of public concern. In part, they are. People show up because they care. They believe in something. They want their voices heard.

But increasingly, those same protests carry signs of something more. The speed feels preloaded. The coordination spans cities. The messaging arrives fully formed.

At times, escalation follows, where demonstrations shift quickly from expression to disruption, and in some cases, violence.

This weekend’s “No Kings” demonstrations are the latest example. Promoted as a nationwide day of action, they rapidly translated from online messaging into synchronized protests across the country.

That level of mobilization raises a question that lawmakers, federal investigators, and journalists have increasingly asked both privately and publicly.

Is this all happening organically, or is something building it?

For years, officials have returned to a single directive.

“Follow the money.”

Because while individuals may participate voluntarily, the infrastructure surrounding them requires resources. Organizing, messaging, and rapid mobilization do not happen without support.

And resources leave a trail.

This is where journalist Asra Q. Nomani began her investigation.

A senior editor of investigations at Fox News Digital, former Wall Street Journal reporter, and veteran investigative journalist, Nomani approached the issue by tracing financial networks.

What she and her team uncovered, according to their reporting, was not a series of isolated events. It was a structured system.

A network of funding, organizations, and influence that, in her analysis, helps drive the speed, scale, and consistency of protests across the United States.

“The crowd is visible. The system is not.”

This five-part series follows that system.

PART 1

By mid-morning, the crowd had already formed.

Signs were printed. Routes were mapped. Messages were circulating long before anyone stepped into the street.

By afternoon, it was everywhere.

New York. Chicago. Los Angeles.

Different cities carried the same message. Different people moved at the same time.

This weekend’s “No Kings” demonstrations unfolded with a speed that has become increasingly familiar in America. A call to action spreads, and almost immediately, it becomes a movement.

To many, this is democracy in action. To others, it raises a more difficult question.

How does something like this happen so fast?

For those in the crowd, the experience is real. The energy is real. The urgency is real.

But when you step back far enough to see the pattern, something else begins to take shape.

The same demonstrations appear across cities.
The same messaging spreads across platforms.
The same rapid timeline repeats itself.

Outrage. Organization. Mobilization.

All happening faster than seems possible.

That kind of consistency does not happen by accident.

When investigators began asking why, they did not remain focused on what could be seen. They turned to what could be traced.

Because crowds do not fund themselves.

And that is where the story shifts.

What begins as a question about protests becomes a question about money.

Where is it coming from? How is it moving? Who is behind it?

Working through nonprofit filings, financial records, and transaction data, Asra Q. Nomani’s investigation maps what she describes as a structured financial network that operates through layers.

According to Fox News Digital, her team analyzed 223 transactions totaling $591 million, spanning five continents between 2017 and 2025.

The pattern that emerges is organized. Nomani describes it as five concentric rings, moving money through multiple entities before it reaches organizations involved in activism, messaging, and mobilization.

“This is not spontaneous. This is infrastructure.”

Within that system, 67 organizations form a documented core, with connections that may extend to approximately 2,000 groups worldwide. At the same time, about $147 million flows into destinations where the final recipients are not publicly identified.

That is where the trail begins to fade.

Money leaves one place, but it cannot always be followed to its final destination.

It is in that space, between what is known and what is hidden, that the investigation deepens.

At the center of this network, according to the reporting, is Neville Roy Singham, a U.S.-born tech entrepreneur now living in Shanghai. His name appears across investigative reporting, nonprofit funding pathways, and congressional inquiries.

A New York Times investigation described a web of financial activity stretching across continents, moving through nonprofits and entities that obscure the origin and destination of funds.

For investigators, this was no longer simply a financial question. It became a question of influence.

And that question has drawn the attention of lawmakers.

In June 2025, the House Oversight Committee stated it was investigating Singham’s reported funding and raised concerns about activity potentially conducted:

“on behalf of” the Chinese Communist Party

By early 2026, the House Ways and Means Committee warned that foreign actors could use nonprofit systems to:

“sow division” within the United States

At the same time, Senator Chuck Grassley emphasized that the Foreign Agents Registration Act is:

“a content-neutral law” designed to ensure transparency

What began as an investigation into protest movements has now entered the realm of national concern.

To understand how this system operates, the story must slow down.

The structure becomes visible only when it is followed step by step.

Start in 2017.

A transfer of $3.5 million moves from Shanghai into a Chicago-based entity, Likewise Conceptions LLC.

Then a much larger transfer follows. Between 2017 and 2018, more than $164 million flows into another Chicago entity, Mutod LLC.

Then additional funds move. More than $110 million is routed into a donor-advised philanthropy fund in New York, a structure that allows funds to be distributed while making their origin harder to trace.

From there, the system expands outward.

Money moves into nonprofit organizations and activist-aligned groups.

In 2017, Likewise Conceptions directs $3.5 million into People’s Support Foundation Ltd. Mutod follows with more than $160 million into that same foundation. These figures appear in public filings.

From the donor-advised fund, funds move further outward.

$350,000 goes to CodePink Women for Peace.
$2.5 million goes to People’s Forum Inc.
$40,000 goes to Tricontinental Ltd.

In 2018, the pattern continues.

Another $150,000 flows to CodePink.
More than $5.5 million goes to the Justice and Education Fund Inc.

Individually, each transaction may appear routine.

Taken together, they form a system.

Money moves layer by layer until it reaches the public space.

And this represents only part of the broader network. According to the investigation, these transactions are part of 223 total transactions amounting to $591 million, with additional funds flowing into destinations that cannot be fully identified.

At this point, the conversation often turns to the idea of paid protesters.

It is a compelling phrase, but it does not fully capture the reality.

Independent fact-checking has found that claims of widespread, directly paid protesters are often overstated.

But focusing on that question misses the larger structure.

Funding does not need to pay every individual.

It builds the system around them.

The organizing. The messaging. The training. The ability to mobilize quickly and repeatedly.

Not a paycheck, but a system.

This is why the story matters.

It is not just about protests. It is about how movements are built.

If financial systems that are difficult to trace are shaping how and when protests occur, then transparency becomes essential.

Because the question is no longer whether people care.

They do.

The question is:

Who is turning that concern into coordinated action?

What has been uncovered so far is only the surface. The names, the filings, the first visible layer of a much larger system.

The deeper question remains.

How does money move through a structure designed not to be seen?

That is where this investigation goes next.

Coming Next

Part II: Red Wealth, Dark Money
How financial layers, donor-advised funds, and nonprofit structures obscure the path from wealth to influence, and why following the money is so difficult.