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Ways and Means Subpoenas CCP-Linked Nonprofits Over Data Center Campaign

House Republicans say a nonprofit network bankrolled by Shanghai-based businessman Neville Roy Singham has quietly fueled dozens of local campaigns against U.S. data centers — and that Beijing may be behind the push. Three subpoenaed groups call it a McCarthy-era witch hunt. Here’s what’s verified, what’s alleged, and what’s still unproven.

The Internal Revenue Service Building in the Federal Triangle complex, Washington, D.C.
The Internal Revenue Service Building, Federal Triangle, Washington, D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Three left-wing nonprofits are defying congressional subpoenas in a dispute that has become a test case for how Washington polices foreign influence in the age of artificial intelligence — and how far lawmakers can go in demanding answers from U.S. media and advocacy organizations.

The verified facts

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) has spent more than a year building a paper trail against three tax-exempt organizations: The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, and Tricontinental. According to the Committee’s own public record, the inquiry began with a document demand to The People’s Forum on September 4, 2025, expanded to the other two groups in February 2026, and escalated to formal subpoenas on July 24, 2026, after the organizations declined to turn over records.

The Committee says The People’s Forum alone has received more than $20 million from a funding network tied to Neville Roy Singham, an American-born former tech entrepreneur who now lives in Shanghai. Smith’s office puts total funding from Singham’s network to left-wing advocacy groups at $278 million. On October 13, Smith sent renewed letters to legal counsel for all three organizations, setting an October 20 deadline for compliance. As of that deadline, both The People’s Forum and BreakThrough News had formally rejected the Committee’s demands, and Tricontinental had not issued a public response, according to reporting confirmed through the organizations’ own statements.

The Committee’s requests, narrowed in May 2026, focus on three categories: fiscal sponsorship arrangements involving foreign nationals, communications with Singham or other foreign principals about financing and governance, and donor records tied to foreign contributions. Deposition subpoenas now cover 21 officials and staff across the three organizations, including Singham himself.

Separately, House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Smith sent a joint letter on September 22 to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Frank Bisignano, asking the agencies to examine whether the three groups’ activity violates the terms of their tax-exempt status. Moolenaar has called for revoking that status and referring the matter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) if violations are confirmed.

This is not the first time opaque nonprofit financing has drawn federal scrutiny this year. RSN reported in April on the federal grand jury indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center for wire fraud, money laundering, and secretly funding extremist informants — a reminder that questions about where nonprofit money actually goes are not unique to one side of the aisle, even as the Singham-network probe raises the added question of foreign state influence.

The IRS has been down this road before and come up short. Back in 2014, RSN reported that the agency had promised a Soros-funded group it would tighten nonprofit disclosure rules — a promise that, more than a decade later, still hasn’t produced the transparency lawmakers now say they need. The broader pattern of well-funded, ideologically driven donor networks squaring off against each other through the nonprofit sector isn’t new either; RSN examined an earlier round of it in 2010 in Capital Rivals: Koch Brothers vs. George Soros.

The AI infrastructure angle — and where it gets murkier

The lawmakers’ letter ties the Singham-funded groups to a broader pattern: local opposition campaigns against data center construction across the country. Citing a report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the lawmakers say the Party for Socialism and Liberation — whose leadership they describe as part of the Singham network — has been involved in 21 anti-data-center campaigns across 14 states, producing 10 moratoria, one permanent ban, and four canceled or abandoned projects. They put the value of affected artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment at nearly $24 billion.

This is the point where readers should slow down. The lawmakers’ letter also cites reports that OpenAI and X detected and banned “China-linked” botfarms amplifying anti-data-center messaging. That attribution — that Beijing is directly orchestrating American grassroots opposition to data centers — is an inference built on a chain of funding links and bot-detection reports, not a proven intelligence finding. The committee’s own public materials acknowledge they have not independently verified the underlying figures; they are relaying claims from the cited reports and from the lawmakers’ own characterizations. Whether Singham himself has, in Smith’s words, “strong connections” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) beyond living in Shanghai and funding these groups is asserted, not documented with specific evidence, in the public record reviewed for this story.

The other side

The three organizations are not staying quiet. The People’s Forum has accused the Committee of retaliating against protected speech and, in an October 21 statement, called the probe a “MAGA-led witch-hunt.” BreakThrough News’s attorneys argue the Committee is effectively “holding the staff of BreakThrough News hostage” through deposition threats, and they note — accurately — that Singham is a U.S. citizen, which complicates the “foreign influence” framing even as the funding sits offshore. Both groups say they remain open to narrower document requests and have begun soliciting donations for legal defense.

Ten press freedom and civil liberties organizations, including PEN America and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, have urged the Committee to drop the probe, warning that subpoenaing journalists over the viewpoint of their coverage sets a dangerous precedent regardless of who is in power.

Bottom line

What’s established: a real, well-funded network tied to a single wealthy expatriate has bankrolled anti-data-center organizing at meaningful scale, and the recipient organizations are now stonewalling a congressional subpoena. What’s alleged but not yet proven in the public record: that this amounts to a coordinated Chinese state influence operation rather than a wealthy ideological donor funding domestic activism that happens to align with Beijing’s interests. Both things can matter. Readers should watch whether the Committee follows through on deposing Singham and the 20 other named witnesses — that testimony, under oath, is likely the next real test of these claims.

Sources

Featured image: The Internal Revenue Service Building, Federal Triangle, Washington, D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.