Dark Money and the “No Kings” Protests

This weekend’s “No Kings” protest in Washington, D.C.—a chaotic scene of shouting, vandalism, and open calls for political violence—didn’t materialize out of thin air. Behind the handmade signs and social-media slogans lies a web of money and coordination linking some of the nation’s wealthiest left-wing foundations to the same network of activist groups that organized the demonstrations.

According to financial disclosures compiled from major grant-making foundations, more than $294 million has flowed in recent years from six progressive funding networks—Arabella Advisors, the Buffett Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society (Soros) network, and the Tides Foundation—to organizations identified as “No Kings” partners. Arabella’s sprawling web of pass-through nonprofits alone accounts for nearly $80 million of that total, followed by Open Society’s $72 million and the Ford Foundation’s $51 million.

The money goes to an overlapping constellation of activist entities: Common Cause, Indivisible Civics, Demand Progress, Color of Change, MoveOn, and dozens of others that routinely stage demonstrations, social-media campaigns, and “direct-action” trainings targeting conservatives. These same groups have appeared in the organizing materials, livestreams, and promotional graphics for the No Kings events—an effort cast as a spontaneous outpouring of frustration but in reality powered by professional infrastructure and deep pockets.

At Saturday’s rally, Daily Signal reporters described a scene far removed from peaceful protest. Demonstrators carried signs comparing President Trump to Hitler and shouted approval for political assassinations—a jarring contrast to Vice President Harris’s own post-Charlottesville reminder that “political violence has no place in America.” Yet few of the megadonors funding these movements have condemned the rhetoric.

The pattern fits a familiar model: large-scale philanthropy disguised as “grassroots activism.” Foundations route money through nonprofit intermediaries such as the Tides Foundation or Arabella’s New Venture Fund, which in turn bankroll pop-up coalitions with neutral-sounding names like “Protect Democracy” or “Freedom Together.” Those coalitions then sponsor rallies, influencer campaigns, and legal challenges—all aligned with a single ideological goal: undermining the current administration and the populist movement that put it in power.

The American public deserves to know that what looks like a weekend protest is, in many cases, a multimillion-dollar operation run out of K Street conference rooms and university seminar halls. Transparency, not theatrics, is what strengthens democracy. Until these funding pipelines are openly acknowledged and regulated, the same groups denouncing “big money in politics” will continue to use it—loudly—to divide the country they claim to defend.