America’s enemies are exploiting tax-exempt nonprofit organizations to sow discord and division in the United States. A high-ranking member of Congress noted in recent hearings that this is “a fact.” It should be fought at every turn by politicians and citizens alike.
The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on Feb. 10 on foreign influence in nonprofit groups. What was exposed was shocking.
Panel chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) observed that foreigners are using tax-exempt nonprofit organizations and “sowing chaos, fueling antisemitism, and interfering in elections across America.”
For years, our nation’s classrooms and communities have been engulfed by unrest. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that not only has much of this been fomented by our enemies, but that American taxpayers are paying for it.
The congressman pointed out that adversaries from Beijing and elsewhere are “masking the flow of foreign money by allowing separate entities to utilize their tax-exempt status in order to hold riots across the United States featuring intimidation and violence.”
The work of Smith and many of his colleagues is commendable. Few subjects are more vital, as it strikes at the heart of American democracy. Foreign actors are interfering with our politics and public discourse in ways meant to cause deep and lasting harm. It is corrosive. It is intolerable. And it must not be allowed to continue.
In the best tradition of congressional hearings, the chairman and numerous witnesses who were called to testify named names. Many of the tax-exempt groups have “documented ties to hostile foreign governments like the Chinese Communist Party,” Smith noted.
Many are connected to Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy former tech executive who lives in Shanghai. Singham and his wife, a co-founder of the faux peace group Code Pink, are “extremely cozy” with the CCP, Smith and others said. Their organizations, the People’s Forum among them, have “hosted events and courses pushing communist party propaganda, encouraged riots on college campuses, and publicly supported” Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel in which it murdered more than 1,200 people.
The Oct. 7 massacre was the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Yet to the horror of many Americans, pro-Hamas protests erupted on college campuses and city streets almost immediately, before the blood had dried and before Israel even responded militarily. Now we know why. And we know for what purpose.
Those protesting in favor of Hamas and its barbarism helped fuel the largest increase in antisemitic attacks in the West in recent years. This was their goal. It was also a tax write-off for those who want to corrode the American way of life.
A tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right. Those who exploit it to destabilize the U.S. are wreaking havoc and sowing doubt in a general public increasingly skeptical of institutions and the existing order. This benefits our enemies greatly while harming the many nonprofit organizations doing excellent and important work.
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Not long ago, many on the Left touted the dangers of “foreign interference in elections.” Yet one of the few disappointing moments in the congressional hearing came when ranking minority member Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) made a series of partisan remarks dismissing the large body of evidence before the committee. Yet as Smith noted, the hearing “isn’t about politics; it’s about national security.” The matter is too grave for partisanship.
America’s adversaries are using shell companies to hide. Smith warned, “This committee is coming for you, and we will not hesitate to use every tool in our toolbox to root out the foreign influence in our tax-exempt sector.” Let’s hope so. Let’s hope the fight is a bipartisan one. Nothing less will suffice.
