Early Tuesday evening, as National Guard troops faced off against protesters and rioters on the streets of Los Angeles, powerful teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten hosted a virtual town hall with Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and two leading political operatives in Democratic Party politics, Leah Greenberg, founder of a political nonprofit, Indivisible, and Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of another political nonprofit, National Action Network. Greenberg hailed an upcoming wave of protests this Saturday — set to sweep through even “really red areas of the country,” marked with mostly Republican voters — as a stand against President Donald Trump. Throughout the call, Weingarten beamed, excited. Sharpton phoned in his enthusiasm about people with “different political beliefs” uniting. They touted Saturday’s campaign as the “#NoKings” protest.
But what they didn’t detail was the massive network of Democratic organizations funding and orchestrating this supposedly spontaneous uprising. As editor-in-chief of the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative I founded in honor of my friend and colleague, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, I’ve spent the past two decades investigating how ideology, identity politics, and sectarian hatred can turn violent. Radicalized Pakistani militants brutally murdered Danny after kidnapping him in 2002 on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan, and demonizing him as an American, a Jew and a grandson of Israel. I have warned about an unholy alliance between far-left radicalism and Islamist extremism, and it has now come home to the streets of the United States.
In my 2023 book, “Woke Army,” I documented how this alliance has morphed into a new threat inside our institutions, from higher education to politics — weaponizing identity and cause-based activism, like immigration, to undermine civil society. The #NoKings protest is the latest front in this propaganda war. According to new research by the Pearl Project, the #NoKings protest is being organized by an estimated 198 groups, all of which are aligned with the Democratic Party and many of which are described as part of a coordinated political operation to oppose Trump, with well-funded branding and digital tools for organizing.
The piece highlights concerns about the influence of ideological movements and potential connections to global radical alliances. The #NoKings protest is likely to be the next playing field for the anti-ICE, anti-Trump agitators. Indeed, #ResistTrump, one of the “partners” for Saturday’s protests, promotes an “orientation” slide deck that itemizes the elements of “expressing political dissent” from “voting to violence.” While the group claims to promote “non-violence,” it includes — without comment — “political violence” as a part of the continuum of protest, including “armed revolts,” “riots,” “terrorism” and “insurrections.” #ResistTrump outlines a “theory of change” to “remove or replace Trump” and realize a “future without Trump.” As an investigative journalist, I am reporting on the protest industry and its propaganda, because these protests are not just political statements. They are well-financed, orchestrated performances — designed to generate viral imagery, manipulate public perception and blur the line between civic engagement and ideological agitation.
Fairfax County resident Lissa Kenkel, a researcher who helped me cull data for the #NoKings protest, has been studying protests since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in Israel, and she said: “The irony is staggering about the groups driving the NoKings uprisings.” “The very people bankrolling and leading these so-called grassroots movements are the crowned royalty of the non-profit world, sitting in their air-conditioned offices, collecting six-figure salaries, while encouraging the common folk to torch their own cities in the name of ‘saving democracy,’” she said. “It’s manufactured chaos, sold as revolution, by people who wouldn’t last five minutes in the rubble they’re creating.” Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, based in New York, earned $648,786 in annual income from the group, according to his group’s latest tax filing. At the American Federation of Teachers, Weingarten raked in $474,951, according to its last IRS filing. At the ACLU, its executive director, Anthony Romero, collected $1.3 million, according to the group’s latest tax filing. We must not be fooled. True protest rises from the people. This? These are the kings and queens of the Democratic political machine summoning their minions to take to the streets to feign a fake people’s revolution.