On September 4–5, the American Communist Party will host its inaugural “Marxism Conference” in Chicago. The venue address will remain secret until one week before doors open. What organizers have disclosed is a speaker roster that includes party leaders who co-founded a Kremlin-backed international in Moscow this spring, attended the funerals of Ayatollah Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and promote support for China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The conference is co-organized by Midwestern Marx Institute and will feature keynote addresses, panel discussions, and what organizers describe as “education sessions” on Marxist theory. Ticket sales are hosted on Sellfy, an e-commerce platform typically used for merchandise, not professional conference registration. The event coincides with the one-year anniversary of the party’s founding in July 2024.

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The Speaker Roster

The conference’s keynote speakers share more than ideology. Jackson Hinkle was banned from Twitch in 2022 for spreading pro-Russia disinformation about Ukraine and from Instagram in 2024 for pro-Hamas content. In 2023, he used AI to generate images depicting “a satanic George Soros” and monetized a premium subscription promising to “defeat the Zionist lies.”

Christopher Helali was accused in 2016 of embezzling $4,510 from the Boston Industrial Workers of the World while serving as Secretary-Treasurer. He denied the charge, claiming the money was used “during a local IWW feud.” He told a reporter he has “been detained off and on since 2013” and said he was placed on a Department of Homeland Security watch list in 2020. Russia awarded him its “Medal Participant of the military operation in Syria” in December 2024.

Also speaking: Rathbone, a New Orleans musician banned from TikTok and Instagram for “anti-imperialist, anti-American” content; Slava Jalili, a Ukrainian-American who spoke against “Kiev’s Regime and NATO” on the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion; Grayson Walker, who published “The Marxist Position on Iran: Reactionary or Revolutionary?” in the party’s journal; Nick Cruse, co-founder of Revolutionary Blackout Network; and 2024 Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware. The conference includes Andrew Hartman, a Distinguished Professor at Illinois State University whose recent book Karl Marx in America was published by the University of Chicago Press. The roster includes no speakers critical of Russia, China, or Iran.

The Moscow Connection

Six of those speakers traveled to Moscow on April 27, 2026, for the inaugural forum of Sovintern—”for socialism in the twenty-first century.” The organization brought together representatives from more than seventy countries to establish what a Lansing Institute analysis describes as a modern Comintern designed to “undermine European unity, spread anti-Western narratives, and legitimize Russia’s war in Ukraine.” Vladimir Putin sent a greeting praising attendees for their commitment to “social justice, sovereign development, and traditional spiritual and moral values.”

American Communist Party chairman Haz Al-Din gave a keynote address. Co-founder Jackson Hinkle posted: “I spoke at the inaugural SOVINTERN International Socialist Forum in Moscow yesterday on behalf of the American Communist Party.” Party International Secretary Christopher Helali, who won election as a Vermont High Bailiff in November 2024, relocated to Moscow after the election and now works for DD Geopolitics, a pro-Russia media outlet. In July, Helali and Hinkle both traveled to Iran for Khamenei’s funeral. Hinkle was filmed chanting “down with the USA.” Conference speakers Carlos Garrido and Edward Liger Smith co-direct Midwestern Marx and serve as ACP Secretary of Education and co-founder, respectively. Both have written extensively supporting “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Who’s Behind the American Communist Party?

The American Communist Party split from the Communist Party USA in July 2024. The party’s Wikipedia page states it “voiced support for China, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, Nicolás Maduro, and the Russian ‘Special Military Operation.’” It claims three hundred members across thirty states and promotes what it calls “MAGA Communism”—a strategy to recruit Trump supporters by reframing populist grievances as achievable only through communism.

The party operates a “build and rebuild” program that uses community gardens, food drives, and disaster relief to gain local trust before introducing Marxist ideology. An academic analysis documented the party conducting nearly one hundred charity drives in six months since its founding. Christopher Helali won his Vermont election in November 2024, which the same academic analysis described as making the ACP the second communist party in U.S. history to hold public office. The party has no IRS nonprofit registration and files no public financial disclosures.

Next Month in Chicago

The conference overlaps with Socialism 2026, a separate event organized by Haymarket Books at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. That conference lists its venue publicly and is endorsed by established left-wing publishers. The Marxism Conference does not. Organizers state the address “will be released a week before the event.” No security concern is cited. No reason is provided. Neither the party nor Midwestern Marx responded to requests for comment. The FBI has not commented on whether it is monitoring the event.

The Democratic Socialists of America published an explicit recruitment manual in 2018 urging members to become teachers, not to improve education, but to exploit teaching jobs for their “political, economic, and social potential.” The 6,000-word pamphlet, Why Socialists Should Become Teachers, lays out a coordinated strategy modeled on 1920s Communist Party tactics to infiltrate schools, radicalize unions, and gain access to students. Seven years later, the strategy is working. DSA-backed candidates now hold at least 23 school board seats across 15 states, union officials who keynote DSA conventions lead the nation’s largest teachers unions, and DSA partners run workshops teaching educators about “heroic resistance to Zionism”, some with funding traced to a Shanghai-based billionaire with documented ties to Chinese Communist Party propaganda operations.

“Militant Minority” Strategy

The DSA pamphlet frames teaching through a Marxist lens: “It is teachers who train, both socially and technically, the workers of the future.” Rather than a calling to educate, DSA describes teaching as a multi-year infiltration project. “Unlike ‘salting,’ in which a worker goes into a non-union workplace for a short period of time,” the manual instructs, “committing to rank-and-file labor organizing should be seen as at least a multi-year project and ideally longer.”

The goal isn’t to convert every teacher. DSA explicitly states that “many of the people we organize with will hold a mix of conservative, racist, sexist, and other bigoted beliefs.” Instead, socialists must build a “militant minority of class-conscious teachers that can move our unions in a more militant and democratic direction.” The document cites the Communist Party’s Trade Union Education League from the 1920s as its organizing model.

Once embedded in schools, DSA teachers gain access to shape young minds. “Your exchanges with students can help shape a generation of critical thinkers and political actors,” the pamphlet promises. “You may even have the opportunity to teach about social justice and liberation history.”

Controlling Both Sides of the Table

DSA’s 2023 National Convention passed a resolution titled “Run DSA Candidates for School Boards,” formalizing the strategy nationwide. The resolution declares “the teacher movement is the tip of the spear of a revitalized labor movement” and commits DSA to running candidates “dedicated to building the working class movement.”

The strategy creates what Parents Defending Education described as control of “both sides of the table”. DSA members lead teachers unions while DSA-backed candidates sit on the school boards negotiating with those unions.

In Los Angeles, DSA members Jackie Goldberg (board president 2019-2023) and Rocio Rivas (current board vice president) sit on the LAUSD board. United Teachers Los Angeles president Cecily Myart-Cruz keynoted the 2019 DSA National Convention. DSA-LA members describe themselves as “dual members of DSA-LA and UTLA.”

Chicago’s story is even starker. The Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), founded by DSA members including current vice president Jackson Potter, took over the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010. DSA describes this as “a textbook case of the rank-and-file strategy in practice.” Former CTU president Jesse Sharkey is a longtime identified socialist.

Nationwide, at least 23 DSA-backed school board members now serve in California, Illinois, New York, Texas, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Tennessee.

Palestine Curriculum and China-Linked Partners

DSA’s education agenda extends beyond labor organizing. In 2022, DSA’s National BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group created an “Educators for Palestine Series” teaching about “heroic resistance to Zionism.” Black Lives Matter at School endorsed and promoted the program.

Oakland teachers led an unauthorized pro-Palestine teach-in during the school day in December 2023. The Oakland Education Association had endorsed DSA school board candidates in 2022, and DSA member Mike Hutchinson now serves as Oakland school board president.

The workshops were co-led by Code Pink and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC). Both organizations raise foreign influence concerns. Code Pink has received approximately $1.4 million, about 25% of its funding, from Neville Roy Singham, an American billionaire now based in Shanghai. Singham shares office space with a Chinese media firm dedicated to telling “China’s story well,” official CCP propaganda language. His office displays a banner reading “Always Follow the Party” and he attended a CCP workshop on promoting the party internationally.

Between 2017 and 2023, Singham-controlled entities funneled approximately $278 million into six U.S. nonprofits, including Code Pink and The People’s Forum, which hosts DSA events.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) urged the Justice Department in April 2025 to investigate whether Code Pink must register as a foreign agent due to “Chinese Communist Party ties.” A January 2026 Network Contagion Research Institute report accused DSA itself of potentially violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act due to trips to China, Cuba, and Venezuela involving “in-kind benefits from foreign government-linked entities.”

AROC, the other DSA education partner, is fiscally sponsored by Tides Center but does not publish financial information.

Union Money Floods the Ecosystem

While direct financial ties between DSA and teachers unions remain opaque, the two operate as ideological allies within a shared funding ecosystem. Since 2015, the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association have distributed $669 million in member dues and PAC funds to left-wing political entities, including $1.965 million to a single 2017 Los Angeles school board race.

The unions gave $1.755 million to Midwest Academy, which provides organizing training for radical activists, and $490,000 to the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center. California Teachers Association alone spent over $12 million on political activities from January to October 2024, with every endorsed candidate a Democrat.

DSA’s West Virginia teachers shifted the 2018 strike’s messaging from “teachers deserve a raise” to “tax the corporations.” The foreword to Why Socialists Should Become Teachers celebrates this: “With socialists active in our organizing, we’ll be in a strategic position to make bold, visionary demands to take on the capitalist class.”

Colorado teacher Bryan Lindstrom, a DSA member, posted on X: “Critical race theory is a component of everything I do.” Milwaukee school board member Missy Zombor wrote on October 22, 2023: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

The socialists published the playbook. They’re following it. And they’re already in America’s classrooms.

On August 11, the Revolutionary Communist International’s Irish section republished a post-event report on its 2026 World School of Communism. RCI reported 500 attendees in person, 7,900 online registrants from more than 130 countries, and a collection of more than €700,000. The organization also announced an immediate goal of 10,000 organized members internationally.

The World School was not just ideological broadcasting. RCI said 4,400 people who registered for the event asked to join, making it a major recruitment funnel for its national sections. In the United States, the Revolutionary Communists of America is building workplace, campus, and neighborhood cells in cities including Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Memphis, and Oklahoma City. The American branch held its Third National Congress in Philadelphia on May 30 and 31, 2026, with nearly 650 attendees, up about 41% from 460 the previous year. Delegates unanimously adopted the party’s 2026 U.S. Perspectives document and a separate organizational resolution; the published congress report was titled “Preparing for the Next American Revolution.”

But as RCI expands, former members in several countries have alleged financial pressure, the mishandling of sexual-abuse reports, and cult-like control over young recruits. RCI and its national sections have denied cover-ups and disputed several of those accounts. The organization’s program, its fundraising practices, and the testimony of people who left raise a serious question: is this legitimate political organizing, or something more predatory?

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From Theory to Action

RCI is a Trotskyist political international that says it is active in more than 70 countries. The present organization traces its roots to the Committee for a Marxist International, formed in 1992 by Ted Grant and his supporters after they were expelled from Militant. It became the International Marxist Tendency in 2004 and adopted the RCI name at a founding conference in June 2024.

Grant was a South African-born British organizer whose Daily Telegraph obituary called him “the founding father and undisputed eminence grise of Militant Tendency,” the Trotskyist group that nearly destroyed the Labour Party in the 1980s. Grant was expelled from the Labour Party in 1983, not 1993. He and Alan Woods were expelled from Militant in 1992, after which they established Socialist Appeal and the new international tendency. At its height, Militant had three Labour MPs and controlled Liverpool’s city council, but those developments preceded the 1992 split.

The American section’s manifesto is explicit: “We vow to carry out the American socialist revolution in our lifetime.” RCA’s program describes a party committed to overthrowing capitalism, nationalizing major banks and monopolies, and placing major companies under democratic workers’ control.

The same manifesto says members should engage in daily political activity through cells in workplaces, industries, trade unions, campuses, and neighborhoods. It rejects the Democratic Socialists of America for refusing to break with the Democratic Party and portrays the Communist Party USA as trapped in the same reformist politics.

A Novel Organizational Threat

Unlike fragmented campus groups or online theorists, RCA is building the infrastructure that failed movements often lack: disciplined cells, member funding, ideological training, and international coordination. The Third National Congress focused heavily on workplace activity, campus recruitment, union work, local leadership, and training new organizers. Its nearly $60,000 in literature sales produced revenue while reinforcing the party’s ideological program.

Congress attendance rose about 41% in one year. RCA attributes that expansion to organized recruitment, training, and face-to-face work in local branches. Its 2026 analysis presents declining trust in American institutions, economic instability, and political polarization as conditions that could produce a revolutionary opening. History shows that small, disciplined revolutionary organizations can seize power when institutions collapse and moderates hesitate. Weimar Germany had 4 million unemployed when the Nazis took power with a party that spent years building, not just philosophizing.

RCA’s reading of history is dark, but its diagnosis overlaps with anxieties visible far beyond its own ranks. That is what can make a vanguard dangerous: not simply that it is strong, but that it is organized when other institutions are weak

The Money Question

RCI’s fundraising operates at scale. Beyond the €700,000 reported after the 2026 World School, the organization said it had raised €2.5 million “over recent years” to purchase an international headquarters, according to a 2024 fundraising appeal. At its first World Congress in 2025, RCI reported a global collection of more than €500,000 from sections and watch parties, according to its congress report.

The organization says it has no billionaire patrons and depends on contributions from workers and young supporters. RCA’s public dues page says it is a political party, not a charity, and asks active members to make significant financial sacrifices. Its suggested contribution levels are tied to fractions of a day’s wages, with a custom amount also available. These published options establish that member funding is central to the model, but they do not by themselves establish coercion.

A self-described former member of RCI’s Greek section made more serious claims in an anonymous 2025 Reddit post. The writer alleged pressure to contribute 10% of monthly income, pay for seminars and book clubs, buy merchandise, and perform unpaid full-time work. The writer also objected to the organization’s internal handling of sexual-abuse allegations.

Allegations Across Borders

In March 2018, members of CUPE 3903 voted to ban Fightback, then the Canadian section’s name, from York University strike picket lines and union spaces. Fightback’s own statement confirmed the organizational ban while arguing that it rested on unnamed allegations and misinformation. Individual Fightback members were still permitted on the picket lines.

Jamie Graham, a former Fightback member, later wrote that the dispute involved the treatment of an ex-member who raised sexual-assault allegations. In a detailed 2022 account, Graham alleged being sexually harassed by a recruiter at a 2019 event and later experiencing domestic and sexual violence in a relationship with another member in 2021.

Graham wrote that the latter member had already admitted wrongdoing to the executive committee, yet executive member Alex Grant required Graham to recount the abuse again. According to Graham, Grant responded to a concern about physical safety by asking, “So are you going to move?” and later characterized Graham as irrational and emotional. Graham also alleged that a wealthy cadre accused of assault was allowed to host branch meetings during an investigation, with women and transgender members sent to the home without being told about the allegation.

Fightback responded in July 2022, denying a cover-up and saying that it had investigated complaints, disciplined offenders, and removed abusers from the organization. It accused critics of weaponizing abuse allegations and disputed Graham’s characterization of its procedures.

A Growing Movement

The organization moved from the Committee for a Marxist International in 1992 to the International Marxist Tendency in 2004 and then to the Revolutionary Communist International in 2024, when a founding conference unanimously approved its new manifesto. It has also survived internal fractures, including a major split involving its former Spanish leadership and supporters in several countries in 2009 and 2010.

In February 2026, RCI leaders said global membership had risen from about 4,400 in 2023 to more than 8,000. That number is an organizational claim, reported in an internal meeting account, not an independently audited figure.

The American section’s Third National Congress included branch delegates from 42 cities, up from 33 the year before, while members from more than 70 cities attended. The party reported new cells in Western Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Ames and Iowa City, Columbia in South Carolina, California’s Inland Empire, and Portland, Oregon. The congress report also describes video greetings from RCI sections in Venezuela, Britain, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Denmark, Taiwan, and Pakistan.

RCA’s manifesto frames this growth in historical terms, arguing that capitalism’s crises will create a much larger communist constituency. Its final ambition is captured in one line: “Tomorrow’s party of millions will grow out of today’s party of thousands.”

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A SOAS University of London Research Associate and a Malaysian human rights lawyer recently banned from Singapore as an "undesirable visitor" appeared together on an American podcast on July 30 to argue that Islam is "incompatible with capitalism" and must merge with Marxism to "dismantle the material world as it exists." Dr. Farwa Sial and Fadiah Nadwa Fikri made their case on "Millennials Are Killing Capitalism," a US-based show whose founders openly describe “US-led imperialism” as "the greatest threat to all forms of life that the world has ever known."

The episode, promoted on Instagram as a discussion of "the way that Islam has historically connected with socialism and communism and anticolonial movements," lays out — in the speakers' own words — a program of pan-Islamic revolution, solidarity with Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and open rejection of Western political frameworks. One of the two women, Dr. Farwa Sial, currently holds a research post at SOAS University of London, a public British university funded in part by UK taxpayers.

The Podcast: Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

Founded in 2017 by Josh Briond, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and Jared Ware, a former producer of the prison-abolition podcast Beyond Prisons, Millennials Are Killing Capitalism is now in its eighth year and has published more than 330 audio episodes. Its stated mission, posted publicly on Patreon, is to provide a platform for “communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements” and figures its hosts believe are marginalized by mainstream media.

Recent guests include Torkil Lauesen — the Danish former member of the Blekingegade Group who was convicted in 1991 for a series of armed robberies committed between 1972 and 1989 to funnel money and weapons to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department since 1997. MAKC’s guest description of Lauesen calls him a “longtime revolutionary activist.”

Dr. Farwa Sial — SOAS University of London

Dr. Sial is a Research Associate at the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London, where her listed research interests include “imperialism.” She is also Head of Research and Policy for the Asia Region at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs).

On the MAKC episode, she offered the sharpest ideological statement in the conversation:

“If we understand the genocide as a product of capitalist imperialism, then religion can be an answer in understanding how to revert that, how to transform that... Islam is a religion which is incompatible with capitalism. It’s not about [hoarding]. It’s not about personal gains. It’s not about philanthropy. It’s about liberation. It’s about pan-Islamism across the world, and it’s about dismantling the material world as it exists.”

Elsewhere in the same episode she declared:

“In recent history we see a broad struggle of left politics and a revival of principles of Islam… they have taken a decisive role in merging Islam with the anti-imperialism. This is in solidarity with the internationalist turn against US-led imperialism, in solidarity with Iran, with Cuba, with Venezuela, and the emphasis is on class struggle.”

These are not off-hand remarks. In June 2025, IDEAs published her essay “Defending Iran is Asia’s Existential Imperative,” in which she called the Islamic Republic “the last functioning bulwark against full-spectrum US domination” and urged the Global South to defend it against Israeli and American military action.

Fadiah Nadwa Fikri — Deported by Singapore

Fadiah is a Malaysian human rights lawyer and member of Sekolah Merdeka (”Liberation School”), a Malaysian organization that describes itself as focused on “radical political education.” In March 2026, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs barred her from re-entering the country, calling her an “undesirable visitor” who had “encouraged some of the youth here to adopt her brand of radical advocacy” and “to undertake disruptive and violent actions to support specific causes.”

Her X profile uses the slogan “Patria o Muerte” — Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolutionary chant. In November 2025, she published a defense of Palestine Action — a group the UK government proscribed as a terrorist organization in July 2025 — in which she praised “Palestinian armed resistance groups... that aim to disrupt imperialist accumulation and expansion of capital through warfare.”

The Alliance

Sial and Fadiah are not merely co-guests. After Fadiah’s deportation, Sial publicly defended her on X, arguing Singapore was “threatened by a young academic... for speaking/organising against the #Palestiniangenocide.” In January 2026, the two co-authored an essay on the Marxist publication Monthly Review Online on imperialism and ASEAN.

The Network

Sial and Fadiah are not isolated voices, and the MAKC episode is not an outlier appearance. In May 2025, Fadiah spoke at the inaugural International Anti-Imperialist Conference in Lahore, Pakistan, hosted by the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party — the same Pakistani Marxist-Leninist party Sial praised by name on the podcast for “merging Islam with anti-imperialism” in solidarity with Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. One month later, Fadiah appeared on a Kuala Lumpur panel alongside “representatives of Palestine, Cuba, and Iran.” That same month, her organization Sekolah Merdeka posted photographs of a meeting with Cuban Ambassador Yadira Ledesma Hernández, describing their intent to “strengthen the joint liberation struggle against imperialism. Patria o Muerte!”

An ideology once confined to fringe pamphlets and closed reading circles now has a research post in London, a Patreon subscription base in the United States, a conference platform in Pakistan, and diplomatic touchpoints in Havana and Tehran. Its participants publish under their real names. Its funders accept credit cards. Its academic infrastructure is legally hosted by taxpayer-funded institutions in the West. Singapore looked at one figure in this network and drew the conclusion that a foreign government should draw: she is a security concern. The West’s answer, so far, is a salary.

At the Young Democratic Socialists of America convention in Chicago July 31 through August 2, delegates elected two Bread & Roses–backed organizers — Mae Bracelin and James Hernández — as YDSA co-chairs, seating them with full votes on DSA's 27-member National Political Committee, its governing board. The elections, and Bracelin's on-camera statements, were first surfaced by investigative journalist Stu Smith.

They ran on the Bread & Roses slate, whose platform commits to building the coordinated May Day 2028 general strike now backed by the UAW and to breaking the labor movement's dependence on — and eventually supplanting — the Democratic Party. Their caucus describes itself on its own website as "a national caucus of Marxist organizers" and calls in its platform for an electoral strategy "completely independent from the Democratic Party apparatus."

Earlier this year, DSA's National Political Committee voted to adopt a platform calling to abolish the U.S. Senate, replace the President and Supreme Court, and defund the police — the same governing body Bracelin and Hernández now sit on.

The May Day 2028 Plan Is Real

The coordinated general strike in May 2028 is not aspirational rhetoric, it already includes an auto union and teacher’s union, according to the DSA. The United Auto Workers(UAW) President Shawn Fain has confirmed the union “aligned our contracts to expire at midnight on April 30, 2028” and is “fully preparing to strike on May Day 2028.” The American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.8 million workers, voted at its 2024 convention to join the effort. The UAW has launched a dedicated campaign, may1.uaw.org, asking every union in the country to align contract expirations to the same date.

A strategy paper authored by a YDSA National Coordinating Committee member — the youth wing's elected leadership body — and published on the group’s website frames the goal explicitly: use the strike to build “an independent working-class party capable of supplanting the Democratic Party.”

The Salting Pipeline

YDSA has also passed R13-1, which directs the organization to “encourage students to get jobs in one of the RFS’s three strategic industries — teaching, nursing and logistics — to build lifelong organizers.” The resolution formally links YDSA to DSA’s Workers Organizing Workers committee, which the document notes “largely focuses on recruiting for salting at Amazon.” Salting, as described by DSA members themselves, means “getting jobs” at “targeted unorganized workplaces” specifically “with the intent of forming a union.”

At YDSA’s March 2026 organizing conference, Jacobin reported, more than 65 percent of the 400 attendees signed pledges to “industrialize” into strategic sectors after graduation. Bracelin herself was featured at the conference, describing the University of Oregon student worker strike as the prototype.

The Bracelin Playbook

Bracelin, the former president of University of Oregon Student Workers (UAW Local 8121), has said on camera that her union "did a lot of militancy, did a lot of direct action, broke a lot of rules and we won." The Nation documented how striking workers disrupted a summit with the dean of students, set up a campus lawn encampment, and staged a sit-in in which 54 workers remained in Johnson Hall after it closed. Bracelin personally interrupted the dean at the podium with a megaphone.

The same UO YDSA chapter that built Local 8121 also co-founded University of Oregon Students for Justice in Palestine after October 7, 2023. In a candid essay in The Call, a chapter organizer described “bloc recruiting” the campus Muslim Student Association into SJP and using the union apparatus to advance “BDS demands in bargaining.” Bracelin, then UO YDSA vice president, demanded “an immediate end to Israeli military aid” at a rally days after the Hamas attack.

She has since folded the two movements together explicitly. “As a strike leader, I was proud to have SJP picketing on our picket line,” she said in her co-chair campaign video, “and I got so much shit for that but it was the right thing to do.”

Where the Caucus Stands

The Bread & Roses platform, published on the caucus’s own website under Where We Stand, is unusually direct about its goals. The document self-identifies Bread & Roses as “a Marxist caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America” and calls DSA a “pre-party organization.” It commits the caucus to “an oppositional electoral strategy that remains completely independent from the Democratic Party apparatus,” rejecting “the idea that socialists can capture the Democratic Party” and pledging instead to “break unions and social movements from their current dependence” on it.

On the transition itself, it warns:

”A party can even help foment a crisis, through helping to build powerful movements from below — millions of people acting on their own behalf in strikes, workplace takeovers, student occupations, and mass demonstrations — and by electing a socialist government. Such mobilizations and such a government would together be able to create a rupture with the capitalist system. And since no ruling class has ever peacefully ceded power, in a transitional period a socialist government backed by popular mobilizations will have to do everything necessary to defend the mandate they have won to carry out a program of redistribution, expropriation, and democratic reform of state institutions.”

Bracelin and Hernández were elected on that platform.

A Caucus Consolidates

The Bread & Roses caucus now holds four seats on DSA’s 27-member National Political Committee, tied for the largest bloc, according to NPC records. Its self-description is a “national caucus of Marxist organizers” fighting for a “militant, left-wing” labor movement and “an independent class politics.” With Bracelin and Hernández added, the caucus now controls both YDSA co-chair seats and the pipeline that produces DSA’s next generation of organizers.

Hernández has spelled out the international dimension. “We need a long-term strategy,” he told Jacobin. “One horizon we discussed is May Day 2028, organizing youth internationally around coordinated anti-fascist action. That means building real rank-and-file relationships across borders.” He has also argued YDSA’s mission is to “dismantle U.S. imperialism and capitalism.”

What Comes Next

The infrastructure is now openly documented: aligned union contracts expiring at midnight on April 30, 2028; a rank-and-file pipeline funneling YDSA graduates into Amazon, K-12 schools, hospitals and logistics; a fused pro-Palestine and labor operation modeled at the University of Oregon; and a governing board on which the caucus building all of it now holds a plurality. The organizers themselves are not hiding it. They are publishing the resolutions, giving the interviews, and — as Bracelin put it in her own words — organizing to break rules and win.

Twenty-one months remain.

The Trump administration opened a federal investigation into Minnesota on July 29, 2026, over “MyGender Dolls”, a line of therapeutic paper dolls with removable, interchangeable genitalia designed for children as young as four years old. The dolls were developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, a state-funded program that receives millions in taxpayer dollars annually. The investigation threatens Minnesota’s federal education funding and marks the latest federal challenge to the state’s gender policies.

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The Program

MyGender Dolls are described on their commercial website as “a first-of-their-kind therapeutic play approach designed for gender diverse children ages 4–10.” According to the Department of Education’s investigation announcement, the dolls feature “removable, interchangeable internal and external genitalia, gender-neutral names, and clothing (including undergarments) for both sexes.”

The project was developed by Dr. Dianne Berg and Dr. G. Nic Rider, faculty members at the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Berg is an associate professor in the department. Rider is an associate professor and licensed psychologist at the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health and serves as director of the National Center for Gender Health.

The MyGender Dolls website lists intended users as “Mental Health Providers, School Counselors & Educators, Pediatricians and Allied Health Professionals.” The site shows the product as “Launching 2026“ with an active waitlist for sign-ups.

The Taxpayer Connection

The University of Minnesota is a public institution that receives approximately $686.6 million annually in state operations and maintenance appropriations—roughly 15% of its total operating budget."The Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, where the dolls were developed, states on its website that its research agenda “has been supported by millions of dollars in state and federal funding.”

The MyGender Dolls project won a Spring 2023 Early Innovation Fund grant from the University of Minnesota. According to university records, these grants provide up to $10,000 for “short-term projects that advance early-stage innovations.”

University officials have insisted the project received no direct state funding. A university spokesperson told the Star Tribune that “the team that developed MyGender Dolls participated in privately funded review competitions and received no state or federal dollars to support the development of the dolls or commercialization efforts.” The researchers have since formed MyGender Dolls LLC, a private company independent from the university.

The Federal Investigation

The Department of Education launched its investigation following a complaint filed by Defending Education, a conservative advocacy organization focused on parental rights. The complaint alleges Minnesota violated the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), a federal law requiring schools to notify parents and provide opt-out opportunities before students participate in activities addressing sensitive topics including sex, mental health, and behavioral attitudes.

According to Defending Education’s complaint, “Minnesota parents in Defending Education’s network have not been informed about MyGender Dolls’ forthcoming launch in their children’s schools, nor is DE aware of any such communications being sent to any Minnesota parents or school board members.”

“No four-year-old should be exposed to such material – especially without a parent’s knowledge or consent,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the Department’s press release. “ED will enforce the law to its fullest extent, putting parents and families firmly in the driver’s seat of their child’s education.”

McMahon added that “Governor Walz and the radical left continue to funnel taxpayer dollars to perverted ideologies that can harm children.”

PPRA violations can result in termination of federal education funding.

State Response

Minnesota education officials and the governor’s office have distanced themselves from the program. The Minnesota Department of Education told local media it “has no involvement” with MyGender Dolls and has no plans to mandate their use.

Governor Tim Walz’s office told Newsweek that “the governor has no connection to this program. It was not developed or funded by the Minnesota Department of Education and is not being implemented in Minnesota schools under the Walz administration.”

However, in 2023, the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health presented Walz with its “Distinguished Sexual and Gender Health Champion Award” for Executive Order 23-03, which protects access to gender-affirming health care in Minnesota. G. Nic Rider, co-creator of MyGender Dolls, was among the faculty members who presented the award.

Berg and Rider told KSTP that “the MyGender Dolls will not be in public schools this year” and are “a therapeutic tool for use by licensed professionals” who must undergo required training. The researchers said “there is no set launch date determined at this time.”

A KSTP investigation contacted 19 of the largest school districts in the Twin Cities metro area. Six responded, and none had heard of the MyGender Dolls project or planned to use it.

A three-day Christian nationalist conference scheduled for November 12-14, 2026, at the Irving Convention Center will feature speakers with documented histories of calling for violence against women, defending a neo-Nazi publisher, and advocating for the repeal of women’s voting rights. The “Christ Is King | America After Trump” conference, organized by NXR Studios is drawing scrutiny for its extremist speakers.

The conference will bring together pastors and political figures who have made statements including that “America needs more racism,” that women should be “publicly executed” for false accusations, and that African peoples were “assigned to servanthood.” One pair of speakers defended materials “glorifying Adolf Hitler” at their previous conference. The event is being held at a publicly owned venue in the Dallas metro area, raising questions about the use of city facilities for speakers promoting violence and racial supremacy.

Early bird tickets are priced at $250 for general admission, with the Irving Convention Center capable of accommodating between 800 and 4,000 attendees. Registrants who sign up before May 31 receive their choice of two signed books from NXR’s catalog, including titles such as “White Genocide” and “19 Reasons to Repeal the 19th Amendment.”

Who’s Funding and Organizing the Conference

The conference is organized by NXR Studios, a for-profit media company owned by Joel Webbon, senior pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas. Webbon also runs Right Response Ministries, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that reported $393,371 in revenue for 2024, according to IRS filings obtained by Cross Currents. The ministry compensated Webbon $42,000 in 2024 and treasurer Nathan Elam $84,000.

NXR Studios has not disclosed its investors or revenue, though social media posts indicate Webbon has “bragged openly about his investors.” The conference lists sponsorship opportunities for companies seeking “direct exposure, lead generation, brand awareness, and long-term audience alignment,” though no public sponsor list has been released.

Known sponsors of NXR’s broader operations include Genesis Gold Group, a faith-based gold IRA company, and Backwards Planning Financial. The conference will also feature a “Sponsor Hall” and book signings as part of its three-day programming.

The Speakers: Documented Extremism

Joel Webbon – Conference Organizer, NXR Studios CEO

Webbon, a 108,000-follower presence on X (formerly Twitter), has emerged as what Global Extremism describes as “one of the most openly extremist voices in the Christian nationalist movement.” In a September 2024 sermon titled “So The Rest May Stand In Fear,” Webbon stated: “You know how to end [false sexual assault accusations] real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.”

In an April 24, 2026 broadcast, Webbon said: “It’s so clear that America does not have a racist problem. White people in America are, if anything, I think, too trusting, too gullible, toxic empathy. So not only is racism non-existent, if anything, we could probably use a little bit more racism in America.”

On immigration, Webbon proposed armed guards on a border wall who “issue one warning and then open fire” on migrants who don’t turn back, calling it “the more merciful option.” He has also hosted a 10-part interview series with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and posted on X: “Gay Jews vs. War Jews. The current sum of American politics.”

Webbon has called for “virtuous, ambitious, masculine men” to “climb the ladder of power and forcefully take away from the people that which is their detriment,” describing voters who will not surrender democracy voluntarily. He projects a woke-right Christian, nationalist takeover of the Republican Party by 2032, stating: “It’s not if, it’s simply when.”

Dale Partridge – “American Grit” Host

Partridge, pastor of King’s Way Church in Prescott, Arizona, is promoting his forthcoming book “19 Reasons to Repeal the 19th Amendment,” which granted women the right to vote in 1920. In a March 2026 interview on Webbon’s program, Partridge said: “My hope is that we can get thousands of people to read this book and that we can—over maybe the next 10, 15 years—have a Supreme Court case repealing the 19th. If we can repeal Roe v. Wade, then I think we can overturn the 19th Amendment.”

When Partridge announced the book, fellow speaker Calvin Robinson responded approvingly: “Wow. Some good Christian sexism.” Partridge replied: “Yep.”

In social media posts, Partridge has stated women “lack the emotional capacity to vote” and called white liberal women “the epitome of stupid.” He has justified his position by claiming: “Women are twice as likely [as] men to be seduced into an affair. They are 26% more likely to be financially scammed online.”

Partridge has also preached a sermon on the “Curse of Ham,” claiming “the African peoples … and some of the people from India” are modern-day descendants of Ham who were “assigned to servanthood and subordination.” The sermon revives theology historically used to justify slavery in America. Partridge has also called for "European Christian colonization" in Africa, arguing it could "address" the continent's struggles.

Brian Sauvé and Eric Conn – New Christendom Press

Sauvé and Conn, pastors of Refuge Church in Ogden, Utah, hosted “The War for Normal” conference in 2026 where Antelope Hill Publishing—described by Heidelblog as “America’s best-known Neonazi publishing house”—operated a vendor booth selling materials “glorifying Adolf Hitler.”

After public outcry, the pastors issued an hour-long video response that “largely defended the books,” according to Heidelblog’s analysis. Christian Post reporter Eli McGowan wrote on X: “I listened to Eric Conn and Brian Sauve explaining how a Nazi publishing house ended up at their conference. Brian Sauve speaking of Antelope Hill, actually said, ‘I actually [defended them].’ They made it clear they don’t have any problem with selling actual Nazi propaganda.”

Their organization, New Christendom Press, operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that reported $362,935 in revenue for 2024, according to IRS records. Despite its tax-exempt status, the organization publishes books titled “White Genocide” and “The Hyphenated Heresy,” which are offered as conference registration bonuses. Eric Conn also said on X, No judge should EVER be a woman. Full Stop.”

Calvin Robinson – “The Next Crusade” Host

Robinson, a British broadcaster, had his priestly license revoked by the Anglican Catholic Church on January 30, 2025, following what the church described as repeated antisemitic statements.

The official church statement noted: “Prior to the incident at the pro-life rally, Robinson was alleged to have made statements that were anti-semitic, or in sympathy with anti-semitic groups.” The church added that Robinson was “warned repeatedly to desist from his overtly provocative behavior” and “deliberately acted as a provocateur.”

Additional Speakers

The conference also features Alex Stein, a comedian who sparked outrage in February 2026 when he mocked Hindu beliefs at a Plano, Texas, City Council meeting with “cow urine slurs,” causing Indian Americans to walk out. Harrison Smith, formerly of InfoWars, hosts “Off Limits News” on NXR and has appeared in episodes titled “A Generational Coalition Squandered For Israel.” James Fishback, a 31-year-old investment firm CEO running for Florida governor who has faced residency issues during the race, proposed a 50% tax on OnlyFans creators during an interview with Webbon on NXR Studios.

Questions About Public Venue

The Irving Convention Center is managed by the City of Irving and is part of a $173 million entertainment complex. The facility’s use for a conference featuring speakers who have called for violence and defended Nazi materials raises questions about city policies for event approvals. Cross Currents reached out to Irving Convention Center management for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The conference’s tagline, “America After Trump,” and its November timing—just days after the 2026 midterm elections—suggest organizers view the gathering as a strategic planning session for Christian nationalist goals extending beyond the current administration.

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—whose co-founder is now allegedly under State Department review over decades of Iran-related advocacy—has become one of Washington's most influential foreign policy voices since its December 2019 launch, pushing appeasement toward Iran and other U.S. adversaries, opposing American arms sales, and shaping congressional action on war powers.

Scrutiny of Quincy has intensified since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, renewing attention to the think tank’s rapid rise and the network that helped establish it.

Public records show the think tank was built with sustained support from George Soros’s lobbying operation. Soros's Open Society Foundations helped finance Quincy's launch, and its lobbying arm — the Open Society Policy Center — supplied the think tank's first CEO from its own registered lobbyists and later awarded Quincy a $500,000 grant for policy advocacy, according to IRS filings.

The pipeline runs through Lora Lumpe. In late 2019, Lumpe was lobbying Congress on behalf of OSPC on military spending, arms exports, and presidential war powers. Four months later, she became Quincy’s first CEO — leading a Washington institution working many of the same issues.

From Lobbyist to CEO

That field was where Quincy positioned itself. The think tank launched in December 2019 with approximately half a million dollars each from Open Society and the Charles Koch Foundation — a transpartisan pairing meant to promote “military restraint” and diplomacy over “endless war.”

Three months after launch, Quincy named Lumpe its first chief executive officer. “Lora has a decades’ long track record of effectively moving the conversation on U.S. militarism and war toward diplomacy and peaceful solutions,” Suzanne DiMaggio, chairman of Quincy’s board, said in the announcement. Lumpe left OSPC in April 2020 to take the position.

The transition placed an Open Society lobbyist with direct experience on war powers, arms sales, and defense appropriations at the head of a new institution built to reshape debate on those same subjects. That leadership continues to inform Quincy’s public output—including the recent “$7,000 claim for pro-Israel content” and “IDF-U.S. military merger” claims about American aid to Israel that circulated widely on social media and were traced back to Quincy analysis.

The Advocacy Grant

Open Society’s role did not end with Lumpe’s departure. In 2021, OSPC’s Form 990 filing documented a $500,000 grant to the Quincy Institute for “support policy advocacy.”

The grant appeared in a year when OSPC reported $206.7 million in total expenses and made grants totaling $200.7 million. Its program description listed “military assistance & export control” among its domestic policy priorities — the same subject area Lumpe had lobbied on in 2019.

The Open Society Foundations online grant portal shows that it has funded Quincy to the tune of $1,525,000 between 2019 and 2023.

The Parsi Paper Trail

The Iran connection runs through Trita Parsi—Quincy’s co-founder and executive vice president—who is reportedly under State Department review, which is weighing whether to revoke his green card and deport him over his decades of Iran-related advocacy and potential coordination with the regime.

Before helping launch Quincy, Parsi founded and led the National Iranian American Council. When NIAC sued a blogger for defamation in 2008 over articles calling it an Iran lobby, the case collapsed—and Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, wrote that Parsi’s occasional balanced statements were “not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime.”

The discovery process pried thousands of internal records into the public docket. They tell their own story. A 2003 memo first reported by Foreign Policy shows Parsi pitching “the creation of an Iranian-American lobby“ modeled on AIPAC—and naming himself as its executive director. A 1999 paper Parsi co-authored with a Tehran-based consultant argued for the same project, footnoted with interviews of officials from Iran’s Foreign Ministry. And a December 2002 email shows Parsi handing a Washington lobbyist the contact details for Mohammad Javad Zarif, then Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and later the regime’s foreign minister.

Parsi has consistently denied that NIAC worked on behalf of the Iranian government. He remains executive vice president of the Quincy Institute.

A Continuing Portfolio

The subjects Lumpe lobbied on at OSPC in 2019 remained central to Quincy’s work after she took over. The think tank advocated for congressional action on Yemen war powers and criticized executive war-making. It has produced research on Pentagon spending, arms sales oversight, and military assistance policy in the Middle East.

Quincy registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and has reported federal lobbying activity, though at a fraction of OSPC’s scale.

Separate, But Connected

OSPC did not fold when Quincy launched. The organization—now operating publicly under the Open Society Action Fund branding — reported $257 million in revenue and $246 million in expenses for fiscal year 2023, its most recent Form 990 filing. It remains a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization permitted to engage in unlimited lobbying. Quincy is a separate 501(c)(3).

The two organizations operate in parallel. Quincy’s transparency page states it “does not accept funding from foreign governments” and discloses all donors of $5,000 and above.

What the Filings Show

Public records do not reveal how deliberately the pipeline was built. Grant agreements, internal approval memoranda, and communications surrounding Lumpe’s recruitment remain unavailable.

What the tax returns and lobbying disclosures do show, however, is that Soros’s lobbying arm helped finance Quincy’s launch, supplied its first chief executive from its own registered lobbyists, and continued funding its advocacy work in the years that followed — a documented pipeline of personnel and money from a major lobbying operation to one of Washington’s most influential foreign policy institutions.

Federal agents extradited a top Feeding Our Future defendant from Somalia, a Minnesota man became the 70th convicted, and a fraudster received 10 additional years for bribing a juror with $120,000 cash—three developments in the past week that advance the largest pandemic fraud case in U.S. history to date. The scheme stole at least $250 million from federal child nutrition programs through fake meal counts and shell companies.

Fraudsters claimed to feed millions of children during COVID-19 but spent the money on luxury cars, real estate in three countries, and, according to federal counterterrorism sources, potentially funneled millions to the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab. Building off our previous investigation into Minnesota’s fraud pipeline and al-Shabaab connections, these recent developments underscore the ongoing scale of the operation.

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The Somalia Extradition

On July 16, Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, was transferred from Somalia to Minnesota to face 31 federal charges, including wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and federal programs bribery. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen described Eidleh as “second only to Aimee Bock in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.”

Eidleh had fled to Somalia after his initial September 2022 indictment. FBI agents, working with Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency and Somali Police Force, located him in Mogadishu in June 2026. His capture marked what FBI Director Kash Patel called the “25th such transfer executed by this FBI in the last month alone.”

According to court documents reviewed by Cross Currents, Eidleh controlled shell companies central to the fraud operation and deposited more than $5 million in kickbacks and bribes into accounts associated with those entities.

The 70th Defendant Convicted

On July 13, Abdirashid Bixi Dool, 36, of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, became the 70th defendant convicted in the sprawling case. Dool pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for his role in stealing more than $330,000 through two nonprofit organizations— Bilaal Mosque, Inc. and Multicultural Resource Center, Inc. In late 2025, Dool was the 78th person charged in connection with the case.

Court documents show that between March 2021 and December 2021, Dool submitted fraudulent reimbursement claims on behalf of the two entities. The organizations claimed to operate meal sites in Pelican Rapids and Moorhead, Minnesota, serving tens of thousands of meals to children. In reality, prosecutors say, the actual number of meals served was only a fraction of what was reported.

On some occasions, Dool knowingly claimed the sites served over 40,000 meals per week. In total, the two nonprofits claimed to have served over 505,000 meals to children. The fraudulent submissions led the Minnesota Department of Education to pay nearly $1.1 million in federal child nutrition funds to the entities.

The Juror Bribery Scheme

Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 37, of Savage, Minnesota, received an additional 10-year prison sentence on July 23 for his role in attempting to bribe a juror during his 2024 trial. U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud ordered the sentence to run consecutively with Farah’s existing 28-year sentence for defrauding the Federal Child Nutrition Program of $47 million.

According to prosecutors, Farah worked with his brothers and co-conspirators to deliver $120,000 in cash to a juror in exchange for a not-guilty verdict. Farah identified Juror 52 as the best candidate to bribe—believing her to be the youngest and only person of color on the jury.

Farah’s brother, Abdulkarim Farah, conducted surveillance of the juror’s home in Spring Lake Park. On the night of June 2, 2024, as closing arguments were set to wrap up, Abdulkarim drove co-conspirator Ladan Mohamed Ali to the juror’s house. Before the drive, he used a screwdriver to remove the license plate from Ali’s rental car.

Ali delivered a Hallmark gift bag containing the cash bribe to a relative of Juror 52, telling the relative there would be more money if the juror voted for acquittal. Abdulkarim recorded video of the delivery. After the bribe was disclosed in court, he deleted the Signal encrypted messaging app from his phone to destroy evidence.

Judge Tostrud praised the juror for rejecting the bribe, calling her actions “heroic.” Despite the bribery attempt, jurors convicted Farah and four others. Farah had personally pocketed more than $8 million from the fraud scheme, using it to purchase a Porsche, several other luxury vehicles, domestic and foreign real estate, and luxury travel.

The Scheme’s Structure

Feeding Our Future, founded in 2016 by Aimee Bock, served as a sponsor for organizations enrolling in the Federal Child Nutrition Program. In 2019, the nonprofit received $3.4 million in federal funding. By 2021, that figure had skyrocketed to nearly $200 million.

The FBI’s September 2022 charges alleged that Feeding Our Future and its network of more than 250 sites throughout Minnesota fraudulently claimed to serve 125 million meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In reality, few meals were ever provided.

Bock and her co-conspirators created shell companies to enroll in the program as food sites. They submitted false documentation, including fraudulent meal counts and fake attendance rosters. In one case, prosecutors found a roster created using names from listofrandomnames.com, with an Excel formula inserting random ages between 7 and 17 into age columns.

Bock was sentenced to 500 months in prison, 41.6 years, on May 21, 2026. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel described Bock as the “epicenter” of a “fraud vortex.” The fraud ring fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.

The Somalia Connection and Terror Financing Allegations

The case has raised persistent questions about where stolen funds ultimately flowed—questions Cross Currents previously explored. Multiple defendants fled to Somalia after being charged, including Eidleh. According to a November 2025 report in City Journal, federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that “millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab.”

The report cited multiple law enforcement sources describing a network of “hawalas”—informal clan-based money-traders—routing funds from Minnesota to Somalia. One source told the publication:

“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, told City Journal he investigated money networks spanning Seattle to Minneapolis, with significant cash flowing on commercial flights to hawala networks in Somalia. One network, Kerns discovered, sent $20 million abroad in a single year.

“I pulled all of their records and, well shit, all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits,” Kerns stated. “We had good sources tell us: this is welfare fraud.”

In December 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the Trump administration was investigating whether Minnesota tax money reached al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al-Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia.

In January 2026, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith and every Republican committee member wrote to the IRS calling for an overhaul of nonprofit oversight. The letter cited the Feeding Our Future case and stated: “Reports also suggest that some of this money may have ended up in the hands of the notorious Al-Shabaab terrorist group.”

The Ongoing Investigation

Nearly 80 people have been charged in the Feeding Our Future case. So far, 70 have been convicted — some at trial, most through guilty pleas. Nineteen have been sentenced, with prison terms ranging from 16 months to Bock’s 41.6 years.

Federal prosecutors have recovered more than $60 million from 60 bank accounts, 45 pieces of property, and numerous vehicles and additional items. The investigation has involved more than 100 search warrants, 100 seizure warrants, and the review of more than 1,000 bank accounts.

Eidleh made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Docherty on July 17, 2026. Dool faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled at a later date.

The FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rebecca E. Kline, Matthew C. Murphy, Austin L. Bowyer, and Matthew D. Evans are prosecuting the cases.

Khalid Ahmed Satary spent more than three years on the run, most of it believed to be in Dubai, after skipping a federal court date in Louisiana. On July 20, regional partners in the Middle East finally caught up with him. The FBI says he was carrying a passport under a fake Mexican identity that wasn’t his own.

It’s the third capture in five weeks from the FBI’s new “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list, which added Satary on June 23. FBI Director Kash Patel credited the pace to “great work and coordination from the interagency and our overseas partners.” Satary, 54, was flown to Washington Dulles International Airport and made his first court appearance in the Eastern District of Virginia on July 21, facing charges that carry a maximum of 20 years in prison.

A $547 Million Scheme

The case against him is substantial. Federal prosecutors say that between 2016 and 2019, Satary ran a network of diagnostic labs — Performance Laboratories in Oklahoma, Lazarus Services in Louisiana, and Clio Labs in Georgia — that fraudulently billed Medicare more than $547 million for cancer genetic tests elderly and disabled patients didn’t need. Telemarketers and “health fairs” fed patients into the pipeline; doctors who’d never examined them signed off on the orders in exchange for kickbacks, according to the 2019 indictment. It was one piece of a much larger sweep that year, in which the Justice Department charged 35 people across five federal districts with more than $2.1 billion in fraudulent genetic-testing billing — among the largest health care fraud actions the department has ever brought.

Two Decades Ahead of the System

What stands out about Satary’s case isn’t only the dollar figure. It’s how long the government’s own machinery failed to catch up with him.

He was already a convicted felon by the time the genetic-testing scheme began. In 2003, federal prosecutors identified him as the ringleader of a CD and cassette piracy operation run out of the Atlanta area and Macon, Georgia, and he served roughly three years in prison. That conviction triggered a deportation order the government never enforced. Satary spent the years that followed building a chain of Georgia lab companies out of an office park in Lawrenceville — most prominently Confirmatrix Laboratory, which a 2013 federal billing study found was charging Medicare more than three times the national average per patient before FBI agents raided it and the company collapsed into bankruptcy in late 2016.

By the time he was indicted in 2019, Satary was released on bond with one condition attached: stay out of health care. Prosecutors say he didn’t. While on bond, he allegedly conspired with Houston-area labs to keep the fraudulent billing running. In December 2022, he skipped a scheduled court date in New Orleans. A federal judge issued a warrant. Satary was already gone.

Outside the Lab Business

Along the way, he’d built a public profile well outside the lab business. In 2014, then-Rep. Jack Kingston returned roughly $80,000 in Senate campaign contributions tied to Satary and his companies after Atlanta reporters surfaced his 2003 conviction; Kingston said he hadn’t known who Satary was. Tax filings show Satary also gave $312,870 in 2013 to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund — and, per a photo he later posted to Facebook, was given an award on stage for it the following year.

The gift is worth a mention mainly for what it says about the charity’s own history: PCRF’s founding-era backers included the Holy Land Foundation, designated a Hamas financier by the U.S. Treasury in 2001, and the group has faced recurring questions about similar associations since. Whether Satary kept giving once the Medicare scheme allegedly began in 2016 isn’t something the public record can answer — PCRF, like most nonprofits, doesn’t disclose current donor names.

Part of a Bigger Sweep

Satary’s capture caps a fast start for the FBI’s new fugitive list. Herb Kimble, wanted in a $1.2 billion telemedicine fraud scheme, was caught in the Philippines in June, just four days after the list launched. Officials say Satary’s return marks the 27th high-value fugitive brought back to the U.S. from overseas since June, part of a broader push under the Justice Department’s new fraud task force. He has not yet entered a plea.

Democratic Socialists of America member Linda Sarsour has called for replacing the Declaration of Independence with a new document reflecting “our values.” The statement, captured on video and circulating on social media this week, marks the latest incendiary remark from the Palestinian-American activist whose career has been defined by a pattern of extremist associations and inflammatory statements.

Sarsour, who co-chaired the 2017 Women’s March before stepping down amid antisemitism controversies in 2019, has previously praised sharia law, refused to condemn Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, shared a stage with a convicted terrorist bomber, and attacked critics of Islamist ideology. The call to replace America’s founding document now raises questions about how activists with such backgrounds gain and maintain legitimacy within progressive institutions.

A Track Record of Extremist Associations

Sarsour’s most troubling association involves Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian terrorist convicted by Israeli courts for her role in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Leon Kanner, 21, and Edward Joffe, 22. Odeh was sentenced to life in prison and served ten years before being released in a 1980 prisoner exchange.

In April 2017, at a conference organized by the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace, Sarsour shared the stage with Odeh. According to the Jewish Standard, Sarsour told the audience she was “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”

Odeh was later convicted in U.S. federal court for immigration fraud after concealing her terrorism conviction to obtain American citizenship, and was deported to Jordan in 2017.

The Farrakhan Connection and Women’s March Collapse

Sarsour’s tenure as co-chair of the Women’s March unraveled over her refusal to clearly condemn Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader whose decades of rhetoric attacking white Americans and the United States itself have been extensively documented.

Farrakhan has repeatedly dehumanized white people, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer in March 2000 that “white people are potential humans—they haven’t evolved yet.” In an October 2018 speech marking the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March, he told followers that Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad “came to save us from the sins of white people that have been imposed on us since we have been under their rule.”

His hostility toward the United States itself has been equally explicit. In an August 1997 statement published in the New York Amsterdam News, Farrakhan declared: “A decree of death has been passed on America. The judgment of God has been rendered and she must be destroyed.” In a 1996 Saviours’ Day speech in Chicago, he warned that unnamed enemies had “wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”

Despite Farrakhan’s long record of such statements, Sarsour and fellow co-chair Tamika Mallory initially declined to distance themselves from him. In November 2018, Women’s March founder Teresa Shook called for Sarsour and her co-chairs to step down, accusing them of allowing “anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform.”

A Pattern of Inflammatory Statements

Beyond organizational ties, Sarsour has a documented history of inflammatory statements on social media and in public appearances.

In 2011, she tweeted that “shariah law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics.” The statement drew criticism from those who noted that sharia law in practice often involves severe restrictions on women’s rights, religious freedom, and free expression.

Most controversially, in a 2011 tweet directed at activists Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, both outspoken critics of Islamist ideology, Sarsour wrote: “She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away - they don’t deserve to be women.” The statement was particularly offensive given that Ali is a survivor of female genital mutilation.

When confronted about the tweet during a 2017 appearance at Dartmouth College, Sarsour dismissed the question by citing the race and gender of her questioner, a white male student, suggesting he lacked standing to challenge her. She later told The Washington Post the tweet was “stupid” but did not fully apologize for the sentiment.

From Women’s March to Democratic Socialists

Following her departure from the Women’s March, Sarsour joined the Democratic Socialists of America and has remained active in progressive politics. She spoke at the DSA’s 2019 national convention and has been a vocal supporter of far-left political candidates.

Her recent call to replace the Declaration of Independence represents a natural extension of this trajectory. In the video, Sarsour asks: “Do we have the audacity to…build a document that is our values?”

The statement raises obvious questions: Whose values? What would such a document contain? And why would someone who has praised sharia law, honored a convicted terrorist, and refused to condemn antisemitic figures be trusted to articulate the foundational principles of American democracy?

The Institutional Enablement Problem

What makes Sarsour’s continued prominence remarkable is not simply her individual statements, but the institutional support she has received despite them.

She was recognized by the Obama White House as a “Champion of Change” in 2012. She served as a surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Time magazine named her one of the “100 Most Influential People” in 2017.

When she was selected to deliver the commencement address at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health in 2017, even some progressive Jewish groups defended her right to speak, despite protests from Holocaust survivors and conservative Jewish organizations.

This pattern reveals how activists with extremist associations can gain legitimacy through progressive institutional networks — and how criticism of such associations is often deflected as racism, Islamophobia, or right-wing smear campaigns.

Big Picture

Linda Sarsour’s call to replace the Declaration of Independence is not an isolated statement. It is the latest expression of a worldview that has been evident throughout her career—one that rejects core Western values, associates with extremist figures, and views American founding principles as obstacles to be overcome rather than foundations to be defended.

The question is not whether one activist holds these views. The question is why progressive institutions continue to provide platforms, legitimacy, and protection to individuals whose associations and statements would disqualify them from public life in any movement genuinely committed to democratic values, human rights, and the rejection of extremism.

Earlier this month, the DSA’s National Political Committee—its governing board—adopted a platform called “Workers Deserve More!” According to investigative reporting by Stu Smith at City Journal, the document commits the organization to abolishing the U.S. Senate, “replacing the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” eliminating “the carceral forces of the capitalist state,” ending all economic sanctions (including those on Iran, Cuba, and Russia), and granting universal amnesty to all immigrants. The document calls for public ownership of major corporations, defunding the Pentagon, closing overseas military bases, and removing unspecified “restrictions on marriage.”

This isn’t campus Marxism or activist performance art. This is the formal governing document of an organization with over 90,000 members that has successfully placed adherents in state legislatures, city councils, and mayoral offices across the country—including Zohran Mamdani, who became New York City’s mayor in January 2026.

The platform creates an unusual test case: What happens when an organization dedicated to revolutionary transformation suddenly has members responsible for maintaining the institutions it wants to destroy?

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The Structure of Radicalization

The DSA operates as a “big tent“—Bernie Sanders social democrats sharing organizational space with self-described Maoists and prison abolitionists. This structure has strategic utility: it provides mainstream credibility through its moderate wing while the militant factions set the ideological trajectory.

But the tent has a ratchet. According to Smith’s reporting, the platform committee that drafted “Workers Deserve More!” spent two months deliberating and delivered it to leadership with a unanimous recommendation to adopt it unchanged. The National Political Committee instead added four amendments—each pushing further left. Two passed unanimously. The others, calling for police abolition and constitutional demolition, barely passed but still made it through.

NPC member Cliff Connolly, from the Marxist Unity Group, acknowledged in the meeting that “this committee was not multi-tendency. There were several tendencies in DSA that were not represented there.” The big tent, in practice, appears to have a missing moderate pole.

The Civilizational Diagnosis

The platform’s coherence depends on a particular reading of American institutions: that they are fundamentally illegitimate structures designed to prevent popular will from challenging entrenched power.

Connolly articulated this clearly in the NPC meeting: “We’re never going to have democracy or socialism in the United States as long as the president and the Supreme Court exist in their current form. The whole point of having the Senate, the president, and the Supreme Court is so that, if popular legislation passes through the House of Representatives, the ruling class has these other levels they can pull to stop it from happening.”

This framework treats constitutional structure not as a system of checks and balances preventing tyranny, but as an obstacle to be eliminated. The separation of powers becomes evidence of anti-democratic design rather than protection against concentrated authority. The Senate’s equal representation of states—a compromise essential to creating a federal union from sovereign entities—becomes proof of systemic illegitimacy because Wyoming has the same senatorial weight as California.

The foreign policy sections follow similar logic. The platform demands an end to all economic sanctions, describing them as “economic warfare” that punishes civilian populations. This framing carefully avoids examining why sanctions exist on regimes like Iran (nuclear weapons development, terrorism sponsorship), Cuba (authoritarian single-party state), or Russia (territorial conquest of neighbors). The entire apparatus of deterrence, alliance maintenance, and pressure on hostile actors gets collapsed into “imperialism.”

The immigration position takes this further: “freedom of movement” translated as universal amnesty treats national borders as inherently oppressive constructs rather than definitional attributes of sovereign states. The DSA platform never addresses whether a nation-state can exist without the ability to determine who enters it, or what happens to the welfare systems they want to expand when eligibility becomes universal.

The Implementation Problem

The analytical framework is revolutionary. The practical reality is that DSA members now run governments.

Sidney Carlson White, a member of the Marxist Unity Group, noted the tension directly during the debate over the police abolition amendment: “We need to articulate our position, especially as we have taken executive power in New York and are in places where we are now responsible for the actions of the police.”

This creates a fascinating institutional dynamic. If the platform represents the DSA’s genuine vision, then every compromise its elected officials make — every day they don’t start dismantling police forces, every month they work within constitutional structures — becomes a betrayal of stated principles. The organization has created conditions where governing competently means ideological failure.

Katie Sims of the Socialist Majority Caucus argued during deliberations that adopting the police abolition language would create contradictions for endorsed candidates “at a moment when the organization was pushing for greater alignment with its elected representatives.” The amendment passed anyway, 16-8.

What Gets Normalized

The most consequential aspect of “Workers Deserve More!” isn’t what it demands—most of the platform has no chance of implementation. It’s what positions the document places within the bounds of serious organizational discourse.

Abolishing the Senate is now an official position of a political organization that holds significant urban power and influences Democratic Party primaries. Eliminating all police forces is formal policy for a group whose members govern major cities. Ending sanctions on authoritarian regimes is a commitment from an organization that shapes foreign policy debates through its congressional allies.

The document also reveals something about how institutional capture proceeds. The DSA didn’t moderate as it gained power—the trajectory went the opposite direction. Success in winning positions didn’t temper the platform; it emboldened the factions pushing for more explicit radicalism. One NPC member described the platform as “what a horizon of power looks like,” suggesting the organization views its current electoral success as the beginning of more fundamental transformation rather than an endpoint.

The Legitimacy Cascade

There’s a pattern visible here that extends beyond one organization. When activist movements transition into governing coalitions, they face a choice: moderate positions to reflect the responsibilities of power, or maintain ideological purity and treat governance as a vehicle for transformation rather than administration.

The DSA is seemingly choosing the latter. The question is whether that choice is sustainable.

According to Smith’s reporting, the DSA’s leadership has scheduled the platform’s full rollout at their Socialists Summit in Chicago this July, where alignment between platform and practice will presumably be addressed. The organization is openly discussing the need for elected officials to bring their positions in line with the national platform..

Whether that’s sustainable remains an open question. But the platform is now public, the commitments are documented, and the organization just eliminated the ambiguity that made its electoral success possible. They’ve written it down, and they’re asking their elected officials to align.

That decision might be the most revealing thing in the entire document.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota indicted fifteen members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN), a Minneapolis-based organization with ties to Antifa groups, on June 16, 2026, marking one of the most comprehensive federal crackdowns on anti-ICE resistance networks to date. The charges, which include conspiracy to impede federal officers, interstate stalking, assault on federal agents, and destruction of government property, stem from an eight-month campaign in which defendants allegedly followed immigration agents to their homes across state lines, rammed government vehicles on highways, maintained searchable databases of federal license plates, and conducted a nationwide “Anarchist Speaking Tour” teaching tactics to forcibly obstruct immigration enforcement.

What sets this case apart: defendants weren’t just protesting—according to a 94-page indictment, they built a sophisticated intelligence apparatus using encrypted Signal chats, vehicle tracking databases, and rapid-response networks that prosecutors say crossed the line from First Amendment activity into organized criminal conspiracy. The arrests come as part of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, a White House initiative targeting what it describes as “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence” under the banner of anti-fascism.

The Intelligence Operation: Databases, License Plates, and “Whipple Watch”

At the heart of DAMN’s operations was a surveillance infrastructure that prosecutors describe as far more sophisticated than typical protest activity. Members maintained databases of federal immigration and law enforcement vehicles, including license plate numbers, vehicle descriptions, and identifying information about when and where vehicles were spotted. The indictment details a Signal group chat called “Whipple Watch”—named after the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where ICE is headquartered—that facilitated real-time identification and tracking of federal vehicles.

According to court documents, the database included detailed intelligence: whether a vehicle had been identified as belonging to federal law enforcement, when it was last seen, how many times it appeared, what activities it was engaged in, whether it was part of a caravan, and if federal agents with tactical gear were observed inside. This information, prosecutors allege, helped DAMN members “determine how aggressive the response to that particular vehicle should be.”

The database operation extended beyond Minneapolis. A similar effort in the Pacific Northwest, documented by The Intercept in January 2026, catalogued more than 600 license plates of vehicles used by immigration authorities. That database was hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized platform activists chose specifically to avoid centralized websites vulnerable to subpoenas and takedown orders. The Minnesota indictment references collaboration with a data collection group called “Defrost,” which maintained a publicly searchable website of ICE vehicle plates.

Isaac Sant, one of the fifteen defendants, explained the operation during the April 2026 Anarchist Speaking Tour: “What we do is... we go down to Whipple building and hang out there all day and photograph every ICE vehicle that’s coming in and out... We maintain a searchable database in conjunction with data collection group called Defrost that’s publicly searchable on a website.”

From Surveillance to Confrontation: “Commuting” and Interstate Stalking

The indictment describes a tactic called “commuting”—identifying, following, surveilling, harassing, and confronting federal immigration enforcement to prevent them from performing their duties. DAMN members, the indictment alleges, would follow federal officers from the Whipple Building to their homes and other locations, often working with “co-pilots” who communicated with dispatchers in real-time.

On May 4, defendant Isaac Sant allegedly followed a federal immigration officer from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis to Hudson, Wisconsin—a journey of approximately 30 miles across state lines. St. Croix County deputies stopped Sant’s Hyundai Sonata in Wisconsin and identified him.

More aggressively, on May 18, defendant Natasha Rakotz allegedly followed a federal immigration officer from the Whipple Building in her Honda Civic. According to prosecutors, Rakotz “brake checked” the officer and “side swiped” the officer’s vehicle at the intersection of Minnesota State Highway 55 and Highway 5, causing a collision. The indictment includes photographic evidence of Rakotz’s vehicle ramming the government-issued vehicle.

On May 15, defendant William Morgan allegedly showed up at a scene where Homeland Security Investigations agents were conducting interviews at 28th and Bloomington. Morgan, according to prosecutors, approached one of the agents and knocked the agent’s notes out of his hand, then kicked the government-issued vehicle, causing dents.

Hard and Soft Blockades: Shutting Down Federal Operations

DAMN members organized and participated in direct actions at the Whipple Building on January 23 and March 1, 2026, deploying what prosecutors describe as “hard” and “soft” blockades. Hard blockades used vehicles, trailers, Czech hedgehogs (metal obstacles designed to stop vehicles), and debris to obstruct roads. Soft blockades involved protesters wielding homemade shields constructed from plastic, wood, and metal to physically resist law enforcement.

During the January 23 action, DAMN members deployed a trailer that was flipped to successfully block access to the building. On March 1, the operation expanded with four components: an above-ground march led by Indigenous sundancers at one gate, and three deployment teams designed to shut down other points of egress using shields and “tank busters”—Czech hedgehogs similar to D-Day beach obstacles.

Cameron Kennedy described the March 1 operation during the Anarchist Speaking Tour: “I was on deploy 2 or deploy 3 and I had a 10-foot U-Haul box truck and a 30-foot trailer that I was going to use to block one of the entrances.”

The Anarchist Speaking Tour: Exporting Minnesota’s Model

In April 2026, DAMN members took their tactics on the road, conducting what they called the “Anarchist Speaking Tour” with events in Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Seattle. The tour, promoted by the anarchist publication CrimethInc as “Breaking the ICE: Lessons from the Resistance in Minnesota,” featured three concurrent groups covering the Midwest, East Coast, and West Coast for a total of two dozen events.

On April 8 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, defendants Callum Robinet and William Morgan participated in the tour. Robinet told participants: “So this is an anarchist speaking tour. We’re all anarchists.”

On April 18 in Seattle, Washington, defendants Isaac Sant, Cameron Kennedy, and William Morgan presented together. Kennedy described the history of violent resistance in Minneapolis, telling the audience that the looting and burning of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct during the George Floyd uprising was “the happiest moment of my life.”

Kennedy explained DAMN’s January 23 blockade operation: “There were two other deployment teams—those deployment teams had trailers that they had bought off of Facebook Marketplace for really cheap and they essentially tried to blockade the other entrances simultaneously... One of those trailers was deployed and flipped and successfully shut access.”

Sant described himself as part of “an anarchist, revolutionary organization... called Blackcat,” referring to the Black Cat Workers Collective, identified in the indictment as an Antifa affinity group. The collective’s Facebook page describes it as “a class struggle anarchist organization committed to workplace struggle, housing justice, community self defense, internationalism, and revolution.”

“You Will Never Win with Non-Violence Alone”

The indictment highlights defendants’ explicit rejection of peaceful protest tactics. On February 5, 2026, defendant Cameron Kennedy posted on Facebook: “I swear I’m going to lose my f*ing mind if I see that ‘if 3.5% of the population is committed to peaceful revolution, they win’ bullst... I want to make this as clear as I can: YOU WILL NEVER WIN WITH NON-VIOLENCE ALONE. Ever. No one has. No one will. You absolutely need militants to win.”

Defendant Kyle Wagner, who was arrested on February 5 wearing a sweatshirt that read “I’m Antifa!” on the front, posted a video on January 24 while wearing a bulletproof vest. In the video, Wagner stated:

“We’re not talking about peaceful protests anymore. We’re not talking about having polite conversations anymore... This is exactly what I said was going to fing come when we didn’t fing go march on fing Whipple with guns... Get your fing guns and stop these f***ing people.”

Wagner faces separate charges of cyberstalking and interstate communications after he allegedly doxxed a Michigan resident who had pro-ICE views, posting the individual’s personal information along with threatening messages.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7: The Broader Context

The DAMN indictment is part of a broader federal initiative under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), issued in September 2025. The memorandum directs the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate, prosecute, and dismantle networks engaged in political violence.

NSPM-7 specifically identifies “anti-fascist” movements as coordinating “sophisticated, organized campaigns” that begin by “isolating and dehumanizing specific targets,” then escalate to “organized doxing” and violent assault. The memorandum states: “This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated after the DAMN indictment: “These defendants, which included members of Antifa groups, engaged in an unrelenting campaign of harassment and violence targeting federal and local law enforcement... These arrests demonstrate the Department’s commitment to law and order and stopping organized political violence in Minneapolis and beyond.”

The Defendants and Their Aliases

The fifteen defendants named in the indictment are charged with various combinations of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer (maximum six years), interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, and destruction of government property. Many used aliases in their organizing work:

• Isaac Auman Sant (aliases: Isaac Dalto, Ike)

• Cameron Kennedy (aliases: Cam, Olive Knite, Knite)

• Kyle Wagner (alias: Kaos)

• Callum Robinet (aliases: Juliet K, Juliet, Cal)

• William Morgan (aliases: Willow, Willow Tree)

• Natasha Rakotz (alias: Anuran)

• Hannah Margaret Van De Water Davis (aliases: Gabriel Van De Water, Nube)

• Treasure Cay Thoreson (alias: Schatzi)

• Nathan Junho Kim (alias: Moon Bear)

• Douglas Misterek (aliases: Doug, D Munny Big Dog Orf Orf)

• Dustin Scott Beisell (alias: Sparky)

• Brian Stillwell Apland (alias: Tiny)

• Erik Davis (alias: Errico)

• Emmett James Doyle (alias: Plotnikov)

• Alec Stewart (alias: Mac)

Twelve defendants were arrested in a coordinated operation by Homeland Security Investigations on June 16. Wagner was already in federal custody on separate charges, and two defendants remained at large as of the announcement.

Bottom Line

The DAMN indictment represents one of the most detailed federal efforts to dismantle what prosecutors characterize as organized resistance infrastructure targeting immigration enforcement. By documenting encrypted communications, database operations, cross-state surveillance, and a nationwide training tour, the indictment portrays not spontaneous protest but a coordinated network with operational security protocols, specialized roles, and strategic planning.

The case signals a new phase in federal law enforcement’s approach to anti-ICE activism: treating organized resistance networks not as protesters exercising First Amendment rights, but as criminal conspiracies engaged in domestic terrorism.

Federal prosecutors charged 15 defendants on May 21 in alleged Medicaid fraud schemes totaling more than $90 million in intended losses, marking Minnesota’s two largest Medicaid fraud cases ever. The indictments targeted alleged fraud in autism services, housing support, and child-care programs — the latest wave in a state already designated a federal fraud “ground zero” by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who announced in January that his department is investigating whether Minnesota welfare money was diverted to al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization operating in Somalia.

The May 21 indictments came hours before a federal judge sentenced Aimee Bock to nearly 42 years in prison for leading the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme — the nation’s largest pandemic fraud case — in which stolen child-nutrition funds flowed overseas to Kenya and other countries.

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Why Treasury Is Investigating Al-Shabaab Links

The terror-financing question looms over Minnesota’s fraud crisis because documented money trails from earlier prosecutions show millions in stolen public funds flowing to East Africa, and because Minnesota has a proven track record of al-Shabaab material support: federal prosecutors previously convicted two Minnesota women for raising money in Somali communities under false charitable pretenses and sending funds through remittance companies to al-Shabaab members in Somalia from 2008 to 2009.

Law enforcement sources have told investigators that welfare fraud proceeds are flowing through informal money-transfer networks called hawalas — clan-based systems that move money without banks or documentation — and reaching regions in Somalia where al-Shabaab operates. According to City Journal, which conducted an investigation into the Minnesota-Somalia money corridor, a retired Seattle Police detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked a hawala network that sent $20 million abroad in a single year, with records showing that “all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits.”

A former Minneapolis JTTF official told City Journal that “every scrap of economic activity” sent from Minnesota back to Somalia “benefits Al-Shabaab in some way” because the group taxes or controls commerce in regions where it operates. “For every dollar that is transferred from the Twin Cities back to Somalia, Al-Shabaab is taking a cut of it,” the former official said.

The public record does not yet show criminal charges proving that fraud defendants intended to fund al-Shabaab — a key legal distinction, since terror-financing prosecutions require evidence of intent, not just money flowing into regions where terror groups operate.

The $90 Million Takedown

The May 21 charges include two cases the Justice Department described as the largest Medicaid fraud prosecutions ever brought in Minnesota. The biggest single case alleges that Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf defrauded Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program — which pays for autism services — of $46.6 million by paying parents to enroll children regardless of need and billing for services never provided.

Eight defendants were charged with defrauding Housing Stabilization Services, a program meant to help homeless individuals, of approximately $15.7 million. That program grew from $3.3 million in 2020 to $108.8 million by 2024 before Governor Tim Walz shut it down last fall because of rampant fraud.

One defendant, Ahmed Othman Kadar, was charged with defrauding Integrated Community Supports, a disability-services program, after a man who was supposed to be receiving around-the-clock care died unattended in the care of Kadar’s company, Ultimate Home Health.

The Overseas Money Trail From Earlier Cases

The strongest documented link between Minnesota fraud and East Africa comes from the Feeding Our Future prosecution — the same case that culminated in Aimee Bock's 42-year sentence on May 21. In that scheme, convicted defendant Abdiaziz Farah sent millions in stolen child-nutrition funds overseas and bought Kenyan real estate through sham entities, according to federal prosecutors. Farah also purchased land in Mandera, a Kenyan town near the Somalia border, and federal prosecutors charged his brother, Kenyan national Ahmednaji Sheikh, with helping him launder and hide the fraud proceeds abroad.

Money sent to regions where al-Shabaab operates can be taxed, extorted, or controlled by the group even if the sender claims a lawful purpose — but proving a criminal link requires transaction-level evidence connecting fraud proceeds to the terror network.

Bessent’s Investigation and FinCEN Enforcement

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced in January that FinCEN — Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — issued four notices of investigation to money-services businesses in Minnesota and imposed a Geographic Targeting Order requiring banks and money transmitters in Hennepin and Ramsey counties to report outbound foreign transfers of $3,000 or more.

Bessent told reporters that Treasury is “thoroughly investigating the fraud, including funds sent to Somalia through money service businesses” and that “these funds could have potentially been diverted to the terrorist organization al-Shabaab.”

Minnesota’s Proven Al-Shabaab Material-Support History

The al-Shabaab risk is not theoretical. Federal prosecutors secured convictions in 2011 against Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, two Rochester, Minnesota women who raised money in Somali neighborhoods by soliciting funds door-to-door under false pretenses — claiming it was to help the poor — and then transferred funds to al-Shabaab through remittance companies using false recipient names.

Ali hosted a 2008 fundraising teleconference during which a speaker told listeners to support “the mujahidin” rather than help the poor, and in 2009 she told participants to “forget about the other charities” and focus on “the jihad.” Ali directed at least 12 money transfers to al-Shabaab and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

That case proved Minnesota’s role as a fundraising corridor for al-Shabaab more than a decade ago. The investigative question today is whether the state’s current fraud schemes — which dwarf the earlier material-support cases in scale — are feeding into the same remittance corridors.

On May 19, 2026—Malcolm X's birthday—an Iran-based organization calling itself the "Malcolm X Foundation" or "Path of Malcolm" is organizing events across four U.S. cities and Tehran, in coordination with American activist organizations, media companies, and Iranian cultural producers. All of the May 19 events are being promoted with the tagline "From Iran to the stolen lands of America," positioning American territory through a delegitimization framework aligned with Iranian regime rhetoric.

The coordinated messaging frames the Islamic Republic of Iran as a natural ally of American Black communities in opposition to U.S. interests, establishing false kinship between the Iranian regime and marginalized American populations.

The organization explicitly identifies itself as "The Path Of Malcolm Foundation Based in Iran" on its Instagram profile. The naming convention—"Path of Malcolm" (Rah-e Malcolm)—appears to mirror the linguistic template Iran uses for official entities named after former Supreme Leaders and IRGC generals, such as "Path of Khomeini" and "Path of Soleimani."

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U.S. Activist Groups Co-Hosting Iran-Linked Events Across Major Cities

The events are being co-hosted by three primary American activist organizations, each embedded in activist communities and positioned to access specific demographic and geographic audiences.

In Los Angeles, the event is being co-hosted by All Power Books, promoted on social media as "a collaborative event co-hosted with organizers on the ground in Tehran, Iran." Atlanta's event is being co-hosted by Win the Revolution, while the New York gathering is taking place in Harlem under the banner of NYC Anti-Repression Group (NYCARG).

The Los Angeles event features additional participating organizations, including Black Men Build LA and Tehrangeles Antiwar. One Army Media is serving as a promotion partner, providing outreach and event support across multiple cities.

Weaponizing Malcolm X for Regime Propaganda

During Operation Epic Fury—the U.S. military campaign to dismantle Iran's military threat—the Malcolm X Foundation promoted social media content depicting Iranian drones and missiles with images of Malcolm X and hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur superimposed on them.

The posts framed Iranian military strikes as "Iran Avenges Malcolm X" and "2Pac's Revenge Taken by Iran." The imagery explicitly connected Iranian weapons systems to American civil rights and cultural icons through social media posts that deployed regime rhetoric positioning Iranian military strikes as so-called acts of resistance: "From Palestine to the Bronx, from Lebanon to Atlanta—one struggle, one front" and "Now that the world has seen the true face of US imperialism.”

By positioning Iran as defender of Black Americans against U.S. imperialism, the foundation attempts to create a false solidarity that serves Iranian regime interests rather than Black American liberation. The deliberate use of deceased Black activists and cultural figures instrumentalizes their legacies to manufacture consent for Iranian military operations.

The technical questions surrounding these propaganda materials warrant scrutiny. The placement of Malcolm X and Tupac imagery on Iranian military hardware during active combat operations, paired with the Malcolm X Foundation's simultaneous promotion of these images, raises questions about potential coordination between the group and Iranian military-media operations, or the extent to which the group operates in alignment with regime propaganda objectives.

On April 5, 2026, Erfan Nikookalam, a figure affiliated with the Malcolm X Foundation, posted a video on social media standing next to a child wearing military fatigues in front of a banner of deceased African-American activists and hip-hop artists. In the video, Nikookalam stated that Iranians are honoring Black martyrs during the war, while the caption read: "Iran is bringing an end to American hegemony."

Social media footage posted by the Malcolm X Foundation from a pro-regime event in Tehran captured an activist stating: "Now the Iranians are saying it's time to rise up against this one enemy and unite under one god whether you are Christian or Muslim” in reference to the U.S.

The rhetoric demonstrates the foundation's attempt to extend its anti-American messaging beyond Black American communities, positioning the Iranian regime as a unifying force across religious lines and framing opposition to the U.S. as a religious and moral imperative. By invoking Christian symbolism alongside Islamic theology, the foundation seeks to weaponize religious identity as a vehicle for anti-American sentiment across diverse American communities.

Event With Regime Official Who Issued Fatwa on Trump

In May 2025, the Malcolm X Foundation organized a Malcolm X commemoration event in Tehran that featured prominent participation from Iran’s political establishment. The event’s attendance included Manouchehr Mottaki, a member of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly and the country’s former Foreign Minister. Mottaki holds a documented record of making explicit calls for violence, including a previous fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The event’s speakers included Mani Armaghan who served as secretary of the event, and Divanchi, the foundation’s “Head of International Affairs.”

Armaghan stated at the event that "Malcolm X is a noble figure who did not remain silent in the face of oppression, discrimination, and domination and was martyred," framing Malcolm X's legacy within Iranian regime martyr culture. Divanchi addressed attendees with messaging explicitly designed to target Black Americans: “To our black family in America, your struggle is our struggle.”

Co-Opting Malcolm X's Legacy

The Malcolm X Foundation's May 2026 coordinated events appear designed to instrumentalize American civil rights history for Iranian state propaganda purposes. By co-opting Malcolm X's controversial legacy—a figure of genuine historical significance to Black American political thought—and by establishing apparent ties with American activist organizations, the group appears to work toward creating rhetorical and institutional bridges between Iranian regime interests and American activist communities, particularly those focused on anti-imperialism, Palestinian solidarity, and anti-American rhetoric.

The operation systematically exploits genuine grievances within Black American communities regarding systemic racism and U.S. foreign policy to advance Iranian regime propaganda objectives. By establishing apparent grassroots networks and co-opting civil rights symbolism, Iran seeks to weaponize Black American activism as a force multiplier for regime interests, creating artificial kinship claims that obscure Iran's use of these communities for geopolitical advantage

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton. One ricocheted off the limousine and lodged an inch from Reagan’s heart. Press Secretary James Brady took a round to the head. Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy spread his body to intercept bullets. When Reagan began coughing up blood, Agent Jerry Parr made a split-second decision that overrode protocol: he redirected to George Washington University Hospital instead of the White House. That choice saved Reagan’s life.

But here’s what makes that day echo strangely across four decades—Hinckley wasn’t trying to make a political statement. He was trying to impress Jodie Foster.

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The Assassin Who Had Nothing to Say

Read through American political violence and you’ll find manifestos, grievances, ideological commitments. John Wilkes Booth shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!” Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union. Even the incoherent gesture toward causes.

Hinckley had seen Taxi Driver and fixated on the teenage actress. He tracked her to Yale, called her dorm repeatedly until she stopped answering, then planned something to capture her attention. Hours before the shooting, he wrote: “Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart.” He called it “the greatest love offering in the history of the world.”

This wasn’t politics failing. It was reality failing for one person, catastrophically, in a way that nearly killed a president.

The Conspiracy Assembly Line

In 1981, Hinckley’s delusion required effort to sustain. He had to track magazine articles, travel to New Haven, maintain his fantasy through rejection. The friction of the physical world created breaking points where reality might intrude. His delusion was private, isolated, unsupported by any community.

Now imagine Hinckley with an algorithm and a conspiracy theory.

The contemporary version doesn’t leave his bedroom. He starts with a genuine grievance or confusion, then finds YouTube videos explaining the “real” story behind it. The algorithm recommends progressively more elaborate conspiracy content—each video connecting more dots, revealing deeper layers of hidden truth. Reddit threads provide “evidence” that mainstream sources suppress. Discord servers offer real-time validation from others who “see what’s really happening.”

Research on “third-generation online radicalization” suggests we’ve moved past propaganda distribution into something more efficient: automated systems identifying psychological vulnerabilities and systematically exploiting them. The key mechanism isn’t traditional ideology—it’s conspiracism itself, the intoxicating belief that you’ve discovered hidden patterns everyone else is too blind or corrupt to see.

Here’s what makes the current landscape genuinely novel: attackers emerge from conspiracy subcultures that resist simple categorization. Incel grievance threads through both far-right accelerationism and far-left revolutionary rhetoric. QAnon believers adopt tactics from anarchist movements. You see protesters enjoying every freedom the United States provides while shouting "Death to America” and calling for its collapse—some because they believe the country is irredeemably racist, others because they think it’s controlled by globalist elites.

The conspiracy framework allows these incompatible elements to coexist—because once you believe in vast hidden cabals, any ideology can be folded into the grand revelation.

They’ve been radicalized—but into what? Increasingly, into conspiracy-fueled violence itself, where the specific political content matters less than the structure: a hidden truth, a threatened awakening, a justified extreme response. Hinckley had one movie, one actress, one isolated plan. The modern version has an ecosystem of conspiracism designed to prevent him from ever coming back to shared reality.

What We’re Living With Now

In 1981, the response was clinical. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to psychiatric care. The system treated it as one person’s catastrophic breakdown, not evidence of broader crisis. The country moved forward without paranoia or paralysis.

Forty-five years later, that's nearly impossible to imagine. The Charlie Kirk assassination shows what a radicalized person will do and the wild conspiracy theories that come after. Everything feeds conspiracy thinking immediately. Every institutional failure becomes proof of deeper rot. Every attack gets reverse-engineered into grand narratives. And the actual infrastructure producing conspiracy-fed extremists—the recommendation algorithms, the borderline content that platforms won't remove, the communities offering alternate realities—operates while we argue about which side poses the greater threat.

We’ve lost two things that mattered in 1981: the capacity for calm in acknowledging danger, and the institutional competence that lets trained professionals make decisions that work. The first makes us perpetually frantic, prime targets for conspiracism. The second makes us genuinely vulnerable. And in that space, algorithms are assembling the next generation of attackers—not through coherent ideology, but through conspiracy frameworks that turn confusion into certainty and isolation into action.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a video on March 18 warning Catholics against antisemitic conspiracies and falsehoods. Archbishop Alexander Sample, chairman of the USCCB’s religious liberty commission, did not name any organization directly. He did not need to.

Less than 24 hours later, Catholics for Catholics, a Phoenix-based 501(c)(4) advocacy group, held its third annual “Catholic Prayer for America Gala” in Washington. The event featured a lineup including Candace Owens, Michael Flynn, Carrie Prejean Boller, and Joe Kent, a combination that brought renewed scrutiny to the group’s role in elevating figures accused of trafficking in antisemitic rhetoric or adjacent conspiracy politics under explicitly Catholic branding.

That sequence matters far more than the usual culture-war controversy. It illustrates a deeper institutional problem for the Catholic Church: organizations that present themselves as Catholic can operate outside formal ecclesiastical control, use opaque political funding structures, and platform speakers the bishops would never endorse, while still borrowing the authority and symbolism of the faith for their own purposes.

The Structural Problem

Catholics for Catholics operates as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, a designation that allows unlimited political activity and keeps donor identities private. Founded in 2022 and based in Phoenix, the group describes itself as “supporting frontline culture warriors who love God and the USA.” Their website features testimonials from President Trump (”your love of God and Country is evident in everything you do”) and Bishop Joseph Strickland, the Tyler, Texas bishop removed by Pope Francis in 2023.

The 501(c)(4) structure matters because it exists in regulatory space the Catholic hierarchy cannot directly control. Unlike a parish or diocesan organization that operates under clear ecclesiastical authority, Catholics for Catholics can claim Catholic identity while remaining financially opaque and institutionally untethered. The organization doesn’t need diocesan approval for its activities, doesn’t submit to USCCB oversight, and can platform speakers the institutional Church would never endorse—all while wrapping itself in explicitly Catholic branding.

This creates what one longtime observer of Catholic institutional politics called “scandal without remedy”: the Church’s canonical definition of scandal (leading the faithful into sin through public example) applies, but its traditional mechanisms for addressing scandal (episcopal authority, ecclesiastical censure) do not.

The Speaker List as Provocation

The March 20 gala featured Candace Owens, who nine months after converting to Catholicism told interviewer Tristan Tate that Judaism is a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons.” Also speaking: former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, former beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean Boller (removed from the White House Religious Liberty Commission in February after an anti-Zionist tirade at an antisemitism hearing), and Joe Kent, who resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center days earlier claiming the U.S. was driven to war by “Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU and Owens’ former employer, wrote her a 15-page letter in September 2024: “Whatever your motives, I cannot think of anyone in public life engendering as much suspicion of Jews, Zionism, and Israel as are you.” Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire parted ways with Owens in March 2024 after she queried on air whether “a very small ring of specific people” in Hollywood were “using the fact they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism.”

The Catholic Speakers Organization—which also represents Bishop Robert Barron and theologian Scott Hahn—added Owens to its roster after her conversion. When Canadian pro-life activist Amanda Achtman, herself Jewish-Catholic, expressed concern about sharing even a virtual platform with Owens, CSO founder Joe Condit declined Achtman’s application. The organization claims all speakers are “rigorously screened and vetted” and “diocesan approved.” The Diocese of Nashville, where Owens resides, confirmed to Catholic World Report it has no record of being contacted by CSO and has issued no letter of recommendation.

The Institutional Response

Archbishop Sample’s video was surgical in its implications without naming targets. “The Jewish community is attacked at a far higher rate than any other religious group in the United States,” he noted. “As Catholics, we are called to walk in the truth and so to reject the conspiracies and lies that lead to harassment and even violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

The next morning, at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast (a different event), White House Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley—a Catholic—closed his remarks with similar language: “Hatred toward Jewish people is ugly, despicable, an affront to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and surely an occasion of terrible grief for our Jewish mother, Mary.”

Neither man mentioned Catholics for Catholics. But Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, made the connection explicit to EWTN News: “The statement by Archbishop Sample on behalf of the USCCB could not come at a more important time with bad actors weaponizing Catholicism to spread antisemitic views.”

Here’s what makes this fascinating: the institutional Church is now reduced to issuing timed theological reminders because it cannot directly discipline lay organizations operating under 501(c)(4) structures. Sample cited the Council of Trent catechism (1566), which states that Christians bear greater guilt for Christ’s death than first-century Jews, and Nostra Aetate (1965), Vatican II’s declaration that “the Church... decries hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

This is defensive catechesis—teaching doctrine not to form the faithful but to create distance from those claiming to speak for them.

The Historical Precedent Catholics Aren’t Mentioning

The closest parallel is 1930s Catholic social movements in Europe that merged nationalist politics with selective Catholic identity, operating just outside formal Church structures while claiming to represent authentic Catholicism. Pope Pius XI addressed this in his 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which was smuggled into Germany and read from pulpits: “Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State... and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.”

The difference is that Pius XI could command every German Catholic pulpit simultaneously. The USCCB cannot command a 501(c)(4)’s donor disclosure, event cancellation, or speaker replacement. It can only clarify doctrine and hope the distinction registers.

What the Church Can’t Say Directly

The institutional Catholic response has been notably careful about how it condemns antisemitism—citing antisemitism’s threat to religious freedom generally rather than naming Catholics for Catholics as a scandal specifically. This is strategic ambiguity born of structural constraint: the USCCB cannot formally discipline a 501(c)(4), but it also cannot afford to be seen as impotent when organizations traffic in what Sample called “conspiracies and lies.”

What Sample and Haley achieved was creating a paper trail. When Catholics for Catholics hosts future events or when Owens speaks at Catholic venues, bishops can now point to explicit, timestamped statements of Church teaching issued the day before a controversial gala. It’s ecclesiastical documentation for future use—not immediate remedy, but evidence for the record.

The question is whether that’s sufficient when the scandal is ongoing, well-funded, and structurally immune to the usual mechanisms of Church discipline. Catholics for Catholics isn’t going anywhere. Neither is its 501(c)(4) status, which guarantees the USCCB will keep issuing carefully worded videos while the organization keeps hosting galas.

The ancient problem of scandal has met the modern problem of tax-exempt political advocacy. The Church has doctrine. It does not, apparently, have jurisdiction.

In 1938, congressional investigators discovered something alarming: a well-connected American publicist named George Sylvester Viereck had been ghostwriting speeches for U.S. senators. The speeches praised Nazi Germany’s policies, downplayed its aggression, and urged American neutrality. Then Viereck would have those same senators insert the speeches into the Congressional Record—making them official government documents that could be mailed across the country under congressional franking privileges, free of charge.

The Nazi government was paying for it all.

Senator Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota was among Viereck’s most cooperative partners, delivering Viereck-penned speeches on the Senate floor and distributing Nazi propaganda materials to constituents. By the time investigators exposed the scheme, German agents had turned American democratic infrastructure into a distribution network for foreign influence operations. The propaganda looked homegrown, carried senatorial letterhead, and cost the Reich nothing to mail.

Congress responded with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 8, 1938. The law didn’t ban Nazi propagandists or criminalize their speech. Instead, it required one thing: disclosure. Anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government to influence American policy or opinion had to register with the State Department and make their relationships public. The theory was elegant—transparency as antidote. When foreign influence becomes visible, democratic immune systems can respond.

Eighty-six years later, FARA remains the primary legal framework governing foreign influence in American politics, though the threats it addresses have evolved beyond recognition. What began as an anti-Nazi propaganda statute became an anti-Communist subversion law, then a foreign lobbying disclosure regime, and now a tool for managing influence operations from China, Russia, and Iran in the age of social media and computational propaganda. The law’s longevity reveals something important about how democracies develop antibodies to foreign interference: they build institutional memory through legal frameworks that adapt without abandoning core principles.

The Exposure Campaign

The story actually begins in 1934, when Representative Samuel Dickstein convinced Congress to create a special committee investigating Nazi propaganda activities in the United States. What the McCormack-Dickstein Committee uncovered was more sophisticated than crude pamphlets. The Nazis had hired Ivy Lee and Carl Byoir- two of America’s most prominent public relations pioneers—to shape American perceptions of the Third Reich. Lee, who had built his reputation managing image problems for robber barons and unpopular industries, took payments funneled through a Swiss-based German dye cartel to advise Nazi officials on what to say for American consumption.

The committee documented extensive networks: German-American Bund camps where children learned Nazi ideology, German diplomats distributing propaganda through seamen on merchant vessels, American isolationist groups receiving funding and talking points from Berlin. By 1938, investigators had established that foreign governments were systematically manipulating American political discourse through paid agents who presented themselves as independent American voices.

The original FARA reflected this discovery. It required agents of foreign principals to register within 30 days, disclose their compensation and contracts, submit propaganda materials to the government, and label all distributed materials with clear disclaimers identifying the foreign source. The law explicitly avoided censorship- propaganda could still be disseminated, but Americans would know where it came from. As one congressional report explained, the goal was “the spotlight of pitiless publicity” rather than prohibition.

This choice mattered constitutionally and strategically. Censorship would have violated First Amendment protections and conjured memories of World War I civil liberties abuses that still haunted the public. But transparency could work with democratic culture rather than against it. Knowing that a particular isolationist pamphlet came from Berlin, or that a particular speaker was being paid by Tokyo, allowed Americans to weigh information accordingly. The law trusted citizens to make informed judgments once they had the relevant facts.

Evolution Through Threat Perception

FARA’s subsequent amendments track how each generation reinterpreted foreign influence threats. The 1942 amendments, passed after Pearl Harbor, expanded enforcement dramatically. Administration shifted from the State Department to the Justice Department, definitions broadened to capture more types of agents, and requirements for propaganda labeling became more stringent. By war’s end, federal prosecutors had charged dozens of individuals with FARA violations and secured 23 convictions- including Viereck himself, who served prison time for failing to register as a Nazi agent.

Then the threat changed. After World War II, Nazi propaganda ceased to be the concern. For two decades, FARA went largely dormant—the Justice Department prosecuted roughly nine cases through the early 1960s. The law remained on the books, but enforcement dwindled.

The 1966 amendments represented the most significant conceptual shift. During debates over the Sugar Act, foreign governments had mounted aggressive lobbying campaigns around sugar import quotas. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated what it called “an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels.” The resulting legislation refocused FARA from propaganda and subversion toward advocacy and lobbying. As Senator Fulbright explained during floor debate, “the trench coat has been replaced by the gray flannel suit.”

This reorientation proved prescient. Modern foreign influence operations rarely involve crude propaganda or ideological subversion. Instead, they work through professional lobbyists, public relations firms, think tank funding, and sophisticated information campaigns designed to look like organic American political activity. The 1966 amendments acknowledged this evolution and adapted accordingly.

The Dormant Deterrent

Here’s what makes FARA’s enforcement history genuinely interesting: the law is almost never prosecuted, yet thousands of people register voluntarily every year. Between 1966 and 2016, only seven FARA cases were brought criminally. The law functions primarily through its existence rather than through prosecution. This represents sophisticated institutional design- establishing clear boundaries and ensuring visibility without requiring constant criminal enforcement.

The deterrent works because FARA violations carry serious penalties (up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines for willful violations) and because registration failure creates legal liability that compounds over time. A continuing offense that began months or years ago becomes difficult to quietly fix once discovered. More importantly, registration itself isn’t particularly burdensome for legitimate advocacy: it requires disclosing relationships, compensation, and activities every six months. The friction falls heaviest on those trying to hide foreign connections.

Recent years have seen enforcement revival. The Paul Manafort prosecutions in 2017-2018 signaled renewed Justice Department interest, with cases involving Chinese influence operations, Russian propaganda networks, and other foreign lobbying schemes following. This uptick doesn’t represent a legal change—it reflects shifting threat perceptions. When democracies begin recognizing new patterns of foreign interference, dormant laws reactivate.

Why Transparency Persists

The through-line across 86 years is consistent: democratic societies handle foreign influence through disclosure rather than prohibition. This isn’t weakness or naivety- it’s recognition that prohibition creates constitutional conflicts, drives influence operations underground, and often backfires by making forbidden ideas more attractive. Transparency allows democratic systems to function as designed, with citizens equipped to evaluate information sources.

The law’s original architects understood something that remains true: foreign influence operations become dangerous when they’re invisible. Once exposed, they lose much of their power. A think tank study carries different weight when readers know it’s funded by a foreign government. A senator’s speech reads differently when constituents learn it was ghostwritten by a foreign agent. An isolationist movement appears less organic when German payments to its organizers become public.

Democratic immune systems, it turns out, work remarkably well when they have accurate information about pathogens in the environment. That’s what FARA provides—not prohibition, not censorship, but the transparency required for informed democratic judgment. The framework has proven adaptable precisely because it doesn’t try to ban foreign influence, only to make it visible. Each generation can apply that principle to its own threats: Nazi propagandists in 1938, Soviet subversion in 1942, foreign lobbyists in 1966, computational propaganda campaigns today.

The recent enforcement uptick suggests we’re in another moment of reinterpretation, recognizing new patterns of foreign interference that require renewed attention to old principles. The institutional antibody remains the same. Only the pathogens have evolved.

In 1573, a man named Gilles Garnier was arrested near the French town of Dole and accused of killing four children. Under torture, he confessed to spreading an ointment on his skin that transformed him into a wolf, then hunting and eating the children. He was burned at the stake.

The charges sound absurd now, but authorities at the time took werewolfery seriously enough to execute hundreds of people across Europe between 1520 and 1630. Courts called physicians to testify about whether Satan could alter bodily humors to cause transformation. Grand judges wrote treatises on demonic possession. In 1598 alone, one zealous prosecutor in eastern France handed down 17 death sentences for werewolf-related charges.

The last gasps of this panic came in 1692, when an 80-year-old man in Livonia named Thiess told a court he was a werewolf who entered Hell three times yearly to battle witches and ensure good harvests. He wasn’t executed. He was laughed at, convicted of practicing folk magic, and banished. By then, educated Europeans had stopped believing humans could transform into animals.

Fast forward to 2026. Teenagers in Buenos Aires gather in public parks wearing animal masks, running on all fours, and claiming to identify as dogs and foxes. The response isn’t (thankfully) execution or even psychiatric intervention. It’s bemused news coverage and some confused parents asking psychologists whether they should worry.

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When Animal Identity Was Military Technology

The medieval panic over lycanthropy obscures a longer history of cultures treating animal transformation not as delusion but as valuable capability.

Norse berserkers were elite warriors who wore bear skins and reportedly fought in trance states. The Old Norse term “berserkr” translates roughly to “bear shirt.” Historical accounts describe them entering battle frenzies where they howled, bit their shields, and seemed impervious to pain. Whether they literally believed they became bears or understood it as psychological preparation for combat remains debated, but the practice was institutionalized enough that berserkers served as royal bodyguards and shock troops.

Shamanic traditions across Siberia, the Americas, and Africa treated animal transformation as spiritual technology. Practitioners wore animal skins, adopted animal movements, and claimed to channel animal spirits for healing, prophecy, or communication with the dead. These weren’t fringe practices. They were central religious technologies in functioning societies.

The difference between a medieval werewolf burned at the stake and a respected shaman wearing a wolf skin wasn’t the behavior. It was whether the surrounding culture had a script that made the behavior legible and useful.

The Psychiatric View

Modern medicine has a term for people who believe they’re transforming into animals. Clinical lycanthropy, documented in psychiatric literature since the 1850s, describes patients who experience delusional beliefs about animal transformation. It’s rare enough that fewer than 50 cases were reported between 1852 and 2020.

The condition typically appears alongside schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychotic depression. Patients report seeing their teeth lengthen in mirrors, feeling their bodies reshape, or experiencing overwhelming urges to walk on all fours and eat raw meat. Treatment usually involves antipsychotics, and symptoms often resolve.

But here’s what’s interesting. Researchers studying clinical lycanthropy note that cultural context matters enormously. The disorder appears in regions where wolves carry symbolic weight, either as representations of evil or as noble predators. How you perceive wolves affects whether you might develop the delusion. And in the handful of documented cases, many patients retained some awareness that they were human even while experiencing the transformation belief.

This suggests something more complicated than simple pathology. The brain’s sense of bodily self is surprisingly flexible. Under the right neurological conditions or with the right cultural scaffolding, the line between human and animal identity becomes negotiable.

The Accountability Gap

So why did 16th-century France execute Gilles Garnier while 21st-century Argentina shrugs at teenagers in dog masks?

We like to think it’s because we’ve become more enlightened. The better explanation might be that we’ve lost the ability to take claims about the self seriously at all.

Medieval Europeans believed human nature was real and fixed, which made claims of transformation either miraculous or demonic. Either way, they mattered. Modern therapeutic culture treats identity as essentially liquid and self-determined. If identity is whatever you say it is, then no identity claim can be alarming. A teenager who says she’s a dog is doing exactly what we’ve taught her to do: exploring, expressing, finding herself.

The problem is that this framework makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between healthy experimentation and something going wrong. The psychologist quoted in the original article said it only becomes concerning “when it turns into a deeply rooted belief.” But we’ve spent two decades telling young people that deeply held beliefs about identity are sacred and unchallengeable. At what point does “I identify as a dog” cross from exploration to fixation? And who’s authorized to make that call without being accused of invalidating someone’s lived experience?

Medieval Europeans probably burned too many people. But at least they had a framework for saying “this has gone too far.” We’ve dismantled that framework without building a replacement. So we get teenagers in dog masks gathering in public parks, and the most sophisticated thing we can say is that it’s probably fine unless it becomes not fine, and we’ll know it when we see it, maybe.

A recently obtained Al Jazeera style guide offers a clean look at something most readers sense but rarely see documented. Modern newsrooms can function like quasi-sovereign entities that adjudicate contested reality through internal rules. When a reporter wants to call ISIS a terrorist organization, they are not arguing with an editor’s judgment. They are arguing with a PDF that has already decided what counts as acceptable truth.

The guide is labeled the “2023-2024 Edition” and was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine, who published what he describes as exact excerpts alongside examples of how the rules appear in Al Jazeera coverage. The document reads less like a set of writing tips and more like a treaty. It lays out a parallel reality where terminology becomes territory, and consistency becomes governance. It is what happens when a newsroom stops asking “what happened?” and starts legislating “what may be said to have happened.”

The Sovereignty of Terminology

Start with the most basic act in political journalism, naming the thing you are describing.

According to the excerpts published by the Free Beacon, the guide bans “Islamist” and instructs reporters to “continue to describe groups and individuals, by talking about their previous actions and current aims” rather than using what it calls a simplistic label. Boko Haram becomes “an armed group fighting against western influence in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria.” ISIS becomes an “armed group operating in parts of Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.” And the guide’s line on “terrorism” is blunt. It says Al Jazeera does not use “terrorism” or “terrorists” unless attributed.

It is easy to read this as euphemism, a preference for softer language. That is not quite it. This is jurisprudence. Each term is a micro-ruling about what kind of moral and political claim the newsroom is willing to assert in its own voice. The guide does not argue these choices in public-facing terms. It declares them. That is what internal law looks like. It does not persuade you. It binds you.

The result is a subtle but real shift in the reporter’s role. They are less an investigator determining facts and more an implementer of pre-negotiated diplomatic language. The style guide becomes a treaty they must uphold.

Selective Precision in Atrocity

The most revealing sections are about mass violence, because they show how the guide handles words that carry legal and moral force.

In the excerpts, Srebrenica qualifies as genocide, and the guide cites “the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim boys and men” and references international tribunal rulings. But Armenia receives different treatment. The guide instructs staff not to say “genocide” to describe the “mass killings” at the end of World War I, while noting that “Modern day Turkiye vehemently disputes” the designation, and that “genocide” is acceptable when quoting someone. It also references the widely cited figure of 1.5 million Armenians.

This is a revealing asymmetry. In one case, tribunal-backed classification is treated as a newsroom green light. In another, state dispute becomes a newsroom brake. The underlying message is not simply “be careful.” It is “our certainty has a gatekeeping process.” And that process is not only evidence-based. It is also diplomatically conditioned.

Grammar as a Sovereignty Tool

Then there is Taiwan.

The Free Beacon reports that the guide stipulates Taiwan “is not a country.” It also includes a rule that Taiwan should be referred to by name initially and as an “Island” thereafter, as the piece summarizes in its subhead and related excerpts. This is not added context or neutral framing. It is a ruling on a live sovereignty dispute delivered through grammar.

Beijing’s territorial claim is not argued. It is encoded into syntax. It then reproduces itself through newsroom discipline and editorial enforcement, not through military power. This is how influence works when it is upstream of debate. It shapes what is sayable before anyone starts “analyzing.”

The Hidden Operating System

What makes this significant is not that Al Jazeera has a political orientation. Every outlet does. What matters is the mechanism. Contested geopolitical claims get settled internally through bureaucratic documentation, and then they reach audiences as if they were neutral factual framing.

Readers never see the style guide. Over time, they can mistake a consistent editorial pattern for objectivity. The guide’s influence comes from being unseen. It shapes what feels like plain fact without announcing that a choice was made.

This is part of a broader shift. Large media institutions increasingly behave like quasi-diplomatic actors. They negotiate disputed reality claims, decide which formulations are acceptable, and then encode those decisions into internal rules that govern everything downstream. In that world, style guides are no longer mainly about consistency or clarity. They become miniature constitutions that define what can be recognized as real.

Al Jazeera’s guide is unusually explicit, but the underlying phenomenon is widespread. Every major newsroom makes comparable adjudications. Many simply do it with less visible paperwork.

The real question is whether these systems remain responsive to evidence and revision, or whether they harden into ideology. Because when a reporter cannot describe ISIS as a “terrorist” organization without violating the internal rulebook, the newsroom is no longer just pursuing truth as best it can. It is enforcing a governed version of reality. That distinction matters, especially now, when audiences increasingly suspect that what is presented as “just factual” is often the product of invisible institutional rules that they never consented to and rarely get to examine.