Glenn Beck did what conservative journalists ought to do: he followed the money. On his program this week Beck walked viewers through the uncomfortable truth that many of the rowdy “No Kings” events praised by the media as spontaneous uprisings were organized by national networks tied to big money and professional activist shops, not by everyday Americans taking to the streets on their own.
The scale of the No Kings demonstrations was staggering — hundreds of thousands to millions across thousands of sites — and the spectacle was treated by much of the press as pure grassroots populism. But massive turnout alone does not make an organic movement; sheer numbers can be manufactured when national groups coordinate messaging, logistics, and lists for turnout across every major city.
Here’s the part the left won’t like: the supposedly anti-oligarch protests were funded and farmed out by oligarchs and their foundations. Public reporting shows that Indivisible, one of the principal organizers, received a multi-million dollar grant from the Open Society Action Fund in 2023 — money that built the digital infrastructure and mobilization network used to run weekend actions. Conservatives shouldn’t be surprised when the left’s megadonors bankroll the rebellion they pretend to despise.
Those grants aren’t isolated incidents; investigators and watchdogs have documented a steady funnel of cash from billionaire-backed networks into the protest-industrial complex over many years. The pattern is clear: wealthy left-wing donors underwrite activist groups, those groups build turnout machines, and then the events are portrayed as spontaneous moral outrage. This is less a protest than a political product engineered in nonprofit boardrooms.
Republicans aren’t sitting quietly. Senator Ted Cruz and other conservatives have demanded answers and promised oversight, arguing Congress should investigate whether foreign-influenced or dark-money channels are being used to manipulate domestic politics and whether existing laws are being skirted to hide the true funders. If our political system is to survive, Americans deserve transparency about who paid for the buses, the ad buys, and the organizer stipends that made these spectacles possible.
The left will cheer and call this “conspiracy talk,” but it’s basic civic hygiene to insist on transparency when civic actions are clearly being monetized. We love the right to peaceful protest — that is American — but we do not have to worship the packaging when the product is a cynical, well-funded attempt to rearrange power in favor of a donor class that already calls the shots. Patriots should demand investigations, expose the networks, and stop allowing billionaires to rent our streets and claim the moral high ground.