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Its the same dark money, with new signs.
Anti-ICE protests in Minnesota may appear to be “grassroots” campaigns organized by concerned citizens, but they’re really funded with megadonor money — some coming from China.
A so-called “ICE Out” march attracted an estimated 15,000 leftwing political activists to a frozen, snow-covered Minneapolis Friday, with attendees chanting “ICE out now” and demanding an end to federal immigration enforcement in the city.
Although framed as a spontaneous uprising of concerned, everyday people, the demonstration — like countless that have regularly metastasized during Trump’s presidencies — featured a familiar cast of politically-obsessed activists and terminally online characters.
They organize on radical message boards and encrypted texting apps, but are backed by funds created by radical leftist billionaires.
“My team’s best judgement is that it’s the Neville Singham network that is most active [in Minnesota], partly because that’s the most crazy network. But they aren’t alone,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research and an expert on dark money outfits, told The Post.
Walter was referring to The People’s Forum and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, both funded by China-based former software exec Singham.
Both groups promoted the “ICE Out” protests — which were organized by another group, called 50501 — through social media and Walter said their members were in attendance, but he noted they have recently getting their members to blend in more with the crowds.
“What’s new is, we are seeing truly extreme communist splinter groups showing up alongside an American Federation for Teachers union or the Ford Foundation.
“That’s a disturbing trend for us who follow these things. Normally, they wouldn’t have been cheek by jowl publicly with those people,” Walter said.
“That kind of self-policing on the left seems to be disappearing.”
Singham, who did not respond to a request for comment, has become a major funder of left-wing activist networks, including protests in Minnesota and other cities, all coordinated from his base in Shanghai.
“They work together through Byzantine networks of understanding. An average protestor might have a dim understanding of the Neville Singham network, but [will be] friends with people in several other groups. He, himself probably belongs to half a dozen groups, because their groups are constantly metastasizing new names,” Walter said.
Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee and other GOP members are investigating whether his financial support constitutes foreign influence or violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), exploring possible ties between his network and Chinese Communist Party propaganda efforts.
“Have you noticed there’s no pro-Palestinian and anti-ICE protests going on at the same time? If it was organic, you would see multiple protests going on simultaneously, but you don’t see that,” Ian Oxnevad, a senior foreign affairs fellow at the National Association of Scholars, told The Post.
“There’s no mass protests like this against what is going on in Iran, for example, or any of number of genocides that have happened. It’s always very specific causes that are anti-Western, essentially,” he added referring to anti-regime unrest in Iran that has allegedly seen 36,000 protestors killed in recent weeks.
Friday’s Minneapolis protest occurred under the umbrella of the 50501 network, which operates largely in the shadows.
50501 lists its nonprofit “partners” on its website, including the Ford Foundation-funded Voices of Florida, a “black and queer-led” pro-abortion nonprofit, and former Bernie Sanders PAC Political Revolution.
The New York-based Ford Foundation philanthropic endowment, which gave Voices of Florida $100,000, is the 90-year-old philanthropic network founded by the carmaker Henry Ford which now states its mission to be reducing inequality and promoting social justice.
Other prominent left-wing activist groups present across Minnesota since mass civil disruptions began late last year included Indivisible — funded by Hungarian billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation — the Sunrise Movement, and Unidos Minnesota.
Tax filings and other records reviewed by The Post show since 2016 the Sunrise Movement took in at least $2 million from funders in the so-called Arabella network, a DC-based progressive network.
Indivisible got $107,000 from the Arabella network, $6.5 million from 90-year-old Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, and $7.6 million from Open Society Foundation.
Local group Unidos Minnesota and it’s anti-ICE arm Monarca have become mainstays at demonstrations and unrest in the Twin Cities.
A January investigation by The Post revealed the group is funded by a non-governmental organization called Tending the Soil Minnesota, which had about $1 million in assets in 2023, comprised of grants from the Arabella network, the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation and the Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation, according to tax filings.
Walter says there are multiple groups with different names and different strands of funding to make things deliberately obscure and hard to track.
“The mainstream media is very happy to always pretend it’s just poor ordinary Americans outraged by this horrible injustice. But, no, the guy who organized it is a leader in five or 10 different entities.
Shorthand for “fifty states, fifty protests, one day,” 50501 was founded immediately following Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. Little is known about it, apart from it is said to be organized by one mysterious, anonymous, Reddit user who goes by the handle u/Evolved_Fungi.
It is billed as a decentralized, rapid response online group responding to “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration and its plutocratic allies.”
The group has taken credit for 11 mass demonstrations in the last year, the first occurring less than two weeks after Trump’s second inauguration.
Along with Indivisible, the group participated in anti-Elon Musk demonstrations at car dealerships last spring and so-called “No Kings” rallies which attempt to brand Trump as an “authoritarian monarch.”
“I don’t think it’s just anti-Trump. Trump threatens what the left has seen as a lot of progress that they’ve made towards their agenda over the past several decades,” Oxnevad said.
“Typically you have Republicans that don’t really roll back any left-wing initiatives, they just slow them down. Trump’s actually rolling a lot of them back. That threatens the left’s agenda overall. And that’s something they haven’t really seen before.”
Arabella, Ford Foundation, and Open Society did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Little is known about the u/Evolved_Fungi account behind 50501, including the owner’s identity and nation of origin. The person gave a rare interview to Newsweek in February 2025 after 50501’s inaugural demonstration against Trump.
The alleged protest kingpin boasted of marketing and engineering degrees and an affinity for reading psychology books. A review of his online activity also revealed he’s active in the men’s anti-circumcision movement.
The user told the outlet: “I really felt like people needed something to connect to, and just seeing everybody struggle with what to do it was like ‘here. Here’s a date. Here’s a time. Here’s a place. Go.’ […] It was amazing. I was absolutely thrilled with the response.”
The user u\Evolved_Fungi did not respond to a request for interview from The Post.
“I’m just like everybody else,” the person who is allegedly u/Evolved_Fungi told the outlet. However, without any further evidence, we will have to take their word for it.
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