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The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a $1.4 billion U.S.-based charity with funding from the Rockefeller family and other donors, has forged a “dangerous partnership with Communist China” and is pouring millions of dollars into China-based nonprofits that are advancing the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy goals.
That’s one of the findings in a new report, “The Rockefeller Network: How the Rockefeller Family Turned Their Oil Fortune into Extreme Climate Activism,” out today from Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative watchdog organization. The report, an advance copy of which was obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon, outlines how the billion-dollar fortune of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Sr., who died in 1937, is being used “to quietly bankroll numerous radical and leftist projects.”
While political spending by far-left billionaires and networks has attracted attention, the role of nonprofit organizations such as the Rockefeller network has been less extensively scrutinized, even though it is influential. If people think of Rockefeller charity at all, they might recall John  D. Rockefeller Sr.’s role in founding the University of Chicago, where the Rockefeller Chapel is a campus landmark, or Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s role in founding New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, where the central sculpture garden is named after her. Today’s Rockefeller charities have taken a dramatic turn in a different direction, the new report says.
“The Rockefeller name used to be a symbol of philanthropy, but they have transformed into a tool of the far left,” said the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, Caitlin Sutherland. “Between bankrolling China-based organizations connected to the Chinese Communist Party, including those driving the Belt and Road Initiative, and their climate activism and alarmism targeting the American energy sector, the Rockefeller Network is showing their true colors. It is long overdue for the Rockefeller Network to be exposed for the dangerous policies they are advocating for in America and around the world.”
The section of the report devoted to China notes that “according to its own tax filings,” the Rockefeller Brothers Fund “funneled nearly $32 million to China-based nonprofits.”
“An alarming amount—well into the millions—has found its way directly into the coffers of entities that are either official vestiges of the Chinese government, or directly and irrefutably administered by the CCP and its representatives,” the report says. “And many of these entities, while operating under the guise of ‘green’ and environmental research, are, instead, using these funds to help buttress China’s foreign influence programs around the globe, especially the CCP’s infamous ‘Belt and Road Initiative.'”
Among the grants singled out in the report as most problematic:
— $400,000 between 2020 and 2024 to the Foreign Environment Cooperation Center, “a division of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment.”
— Nearly $1.5 million to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, whose “direct ties to the Chinese government are undeniable.”
— Nearly $200,000 to Tsinghua University, which announced in 2024 that the school’s office of the president had merged with the Chinese Communist Party to “form a new Party Committee Office that would run the school.”
In a section titled “Why RBF’s Grants to China are so Alarming and Dangerous,” the report notes that even innocuous-seeming grants in China are troubling because the entire nonprofit sector is entangled with the Chinese Communist Party. “China completely controls its nonprofit ecosystem, and utilizes it to exert influence on, intimidate, and even attack its opponents, both foreign and domestic,” the report says. “As such, it is, in essence, currently impossible for nonprofit organizations—or ‘social organizations’ as they are generally known in China—to engage in any type of independent policy research, education, or advocacy without the purview and permission of the state.”
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment on its China activities.
The Rockefeller family and its charities have been somewhat open about communicating their shift in priorities. The charities are required to file annual tax returns that are open to the public. In 2014 two family members, Valerie Rockefeller Wayne and Steven Rockefeller, announced to the New York Times that they would divest the Rockefeller Brothers Fund from fossil fuels. Valerie joined two other fifth-generation Rockefellers, Daniel Growald and Peter Gill Case, in a 2020 publicity campaign to get banks to stop financing fossil fuel companies. The campaign targeted JPMorgan Chase; a predecessor, Chase Manhattan Bank, was led by David Rockefeller.
The report by Americans for Public Trust mines the tax returns, social media, and online records to unearth details about not only the Rockefeller Brothers Fund but about other branches of what the report describes as a “network.” The other entities—the Rockefeller Foundation, with an endowment of more than $5 billion; the Rockefeller Family Fund; and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors—are “distinct legal organizations,” but “have all ditched their philanthropic roots in pursuit of climate activism, lobbying, bankrolling left-wing agendas, and working with Communist China,” the report says.
Among other highlights of the report:
— Rockefeller Foundation CEO Rajiv Shah, whose 2024 compensation was more than $1.7 million, has “been criticized for being one of the highest paid CEOs among big foundations.” The foundation promised an investigation of its past history funding the pseudoscience of eugenics, but never publicly released any such study.
— Despite announcing a divestment in 2014, “as of December 31, 2025—over 10 years after … RBF amazingly still remains extensively invested in fossil fuels.”
— “Despite their hefty endowment,” the Rockefeller Brothers Fund “still relies on private donations—both from liberal philanthropists and foreign sources.” Major domestic donors include the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations, as well as the Ford Foundation and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. Foreign donors include entities based in China, Egypt, Singapore, Canada, and Switzerland.
— Rockefeller Brothers Fund “has also been accused of funding anti-Israel causes” via grantees that back boycotts of Israel and organize anti-Israel protests on college campuses.
— The Rockefeller Family Fund’s largest grant in 2024 was nearly $10 million to “States Newsroom,” a “hub of left-leaning online ‘newspapers,’ which give the appearance of being local or regionally based news outlets” but whose articles “more closely resemble propaganda pushing one political ideology than a traditional, independent, and trusted news source.”
— Another big Rockefeller investment has been in litigation. “In 2024, Miranda Kaiser, a fifth-generation Rockefeller and the president of the Rockefeller Family Fund” said the fund was backing “more than 30 lawsuits around the U.S. against the fossil fuel industry.” The suits are brought by state and local governments and by nonprofits that are Rockefeller grantees, and feature research and documents generated by other Rockefeller grantees.
“While we can never truly know what John D. Rockefeller would think of his endowment being used to fund activism instead of charity—and to attack the very American enterprise, industry, and entrepreneurialism that allowed for its creation—this report is the first step to shining a light on these inner workings,” the study says.
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A charity controlled by Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon raised more than $270,000 in 2024, tax-exempt funds that Nixon said she would use to support Cafe Resistance, the black power-themed bookstore and coffee shop she was launching in Jacksonville. But when Nixon opened the shop that same year, she placed it under the control of her for-profit LLC, and whatever became of the charitable fortune she raised in 2024 is now a mystery.
The IRS deadline for Nixon to report what she did with the money she raised in 2024 expired nearly a year ago. A Florida state disclosure she did make said she spent the majority of her charity’s haul, $214,000, on “other.” And ever since Nixon opened Cafe Resistance—a squat, cinderblock building in a downtrodden part of town that appeared, to a Washington Free Beacon reporter on multiple visits, to operate on a shoestring—her personal income has skyrocketed. This has led legal and tax experts consulted by the Free Beacon to question whether the Florida Democratic Socialist could be exploiting her charity to funnel funds to her personal LLC in violation of nonprofit laws.
Unanswered questions include how much of the $270,000 raised in 2024 Nixon actually spent on charitable endeavors at her ramshackle bookstore, and how she is spending the charitable donations she continues to raise for race-related “programming” at her store, such as black history classes and the distribution of free contraceptives. Nixon should have answered these questions nearly a year ago on a Form 990 tax return with the IRS by November of 2025, which would have offered a full accounting of her charity’s activities in the 2024 calendar year, but she never did.
The Free Beacon contacted Nixon and her campaign on September 25 with a lengthy list of questions related to her charity and LLC, both of which she named the Moxie Group. Nixon did not respond to the inquiry; however, that same day, the Florida Department of State dissolved the Moxie charity as a business entity, and by the afternoon of Sept. 26, the charity—which allegedly “works to empower and uplift underserved and underrepresented communities,” according to Nixon’s charitable solicitations—had shut down its online fundraising portal, which had been active and soliciting tax-exempt funds the previous day. The Moxie charity’s solicitation license in Florida expired January 28, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture, which did not return requests for comment.
Nixon, a Florida state legislator, won a surprise victory in the August Democratic primary, and her personal finances and hodgepodge of black-themed businesses—as well as her charity—are now under scrutiny. She has authored a children’s book, The Adventures of Moxie McGriff, about black hair, cofounded a “Melanin Market,” and her Cafe Resistance bookstore contains a shrine-like wall devoted to violent black militants, including some who have murdered police officers (there is also a sign with a Black Panther clenched fist at the front door).
(Free Beacon)
Until recently, Nixon’s personal finances were a mess. In June 2024, she disclosed to the state of Florida that she had a net worth of $13,000. Three months later, in September 2024, Nixon signed a financial affidavit showing she had a negative net worth of more than $256,000 and that she was spending nearly $3,000 more than she earned every month (Nixon filed the financial affidavit when she filed for divorce in 2024. She withdrew the petition late last month).
In her 2025 financial disclosures, however, Nixon revealed she had clawed her way back to an almost break-even net worth of negative $940 after raking in at least $270,000 from her jobs and investments. But she has since distanced herself from her own financial disclosures, stating in a post last week on Threads: “Do you all think if I made $270K a year I would be riding around in a 2006 Honda Pilot I bought on Facebook marketplace? Please be for real!” She recently said she’s on a payment plan with the IRS.
Nixon announced in early 2024 that she would open Cafe Resistance in protest of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s (R.) actions to “ban” books containing sexually explicit content from public schools. At the time, Nixon told reporters her Moxie charity would operate the bookstore, according to news reports promoted by Cafe Resistance’s Instagram account. And in fundraising solicitations posted to her X account in 2024, Nixon said donations to her charity would support the operation of the Cafe Resistance bookstore and coffee shop.
Nixon’s solicitations made it appear that Cafe Resistance would be a charitable operation through and through. But when she opened the shop later in 2024, Nixon registered the business licenses under her personal for-profit company, the Moxie Group LLC. That was a dangerous move, according to Patrick Sternal, a former nonprofit tax law specialist in the IRS Office of Tax Exempt and Government Entities.
“There are several red flags here,” Sternal told the Free Beacon. “The intermingling of the bookstore/café with the charity is itself problematic. This looks like private inurement insofar as charitable funds seem to be flowing to the LLC and ultimately to Nixon, who is an officer and director of the charity. Private inurement is absolutely prohibited under 501(c)(3).” Inurement is a legal term for when an insider improperly benefits from a nonprofit organization’s assets. In addition to civil penalties, it can lead to criminal embezzlement charges.
“If the IRS were to determine she is benefiting personally from the charity, its exemption could be revoked and she may have personal tax liability,” Sternal added.
The questions about Nixon’s charitable income are just the start of a potential legal quagmire she could face just weeks before the midterm elections. Cafe Resistance has provided Nixon’s Senate campaign with unfettered access throughout 2026 to host free campaign rallies, phone banks, and fundraising events at the shop. With few exceptions that don’t appear to apply to Nixon’s business entities, federal laws prohibit corporations and charities from donating free services to political campaigns.
“She appears to be using tax-deductible dollars to subsidize her campaign,” said election law attorney Jason Torchinsky. “That’s a big problem for the IRS, and it sounds like that may be happening here. Frankly, it also may be a problem for the Florida Department of Agriculture.”
Though Nixon has yet to file a Form 990 with the IRS for her charity, the available evidence indicates it did well in 2024. In January 2025, Nixon filed a financial statement with the Florida Department of Agriculture reporting that her charity raised more than $271,000 in 2024, $144,000 of which it received in the form of grants from liberal grantmaking nonprofits including the Groundswell Fund, the Women Donors Network, and the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, none of which returned requests for comment.
From there, however, Nixon’s reporting gets muddy. In her 2024 financial report to Florida, which required few details, Nixon claimed her Moxie charity spent $14,000 on occupancy and $19,400 on contract workers, presumably related to rent and wages for Cafe Resistance. But most of the charity’s revenue—$214,000—was spent on unexplained “other” expenditures, according to the report.
The missing IRS Form 990 for Nixon’s charity, however, has far stricter reporting requirements than the state of Florida. The disclosure, which was due no later than November 2025, would have provided more detail on the $214,000 in “other” expenses the charity claimed in 2024 and offered clarification on the nature of the shared business relationship between it and her for-profit LLC, including whether any safeguards were put in place to prevent Nixon from unduly benefiting from her charity.
In more recent fundraising solicitations, Nixon has said her Moxie charity is “housed” within Cafe Resistance and uses its charitable donations to fund the bookstore’s “programming,” which includes free black history classes and the distribution of Plan B and other contraceptives. Nixon shut off those fundraising streams just hours after the Free Beacon contacted her for comment on this story on Sept. 25.
The separation between Nixon’s charity and LLC in the operation of her Cafe Resistance bookstore has often been nonexistent. The email address her charity uses in its disclosures to the Florida Department of Agriculture, for example, is the same email address the bookstore uses to solicit bookings for birthday parties and private events, the revenue from which Nixon’s for-profit LLC presumably collects.
Nixon’s charity and LLC are both corporations, and corporations are generally prohibited from providing event space to political campaigns for free, unless they have a practice of regularly providing their spaces to outside groups for free, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Nixon’s campaign hosted an official event in January at Cafe Resistance, as well as volunteer phone banks to drive voter turnout and campaign fundraising events. She has filmed campaign ads at the shop urging viewers to “vote for me,” and the Free Beacon spotted Nixon’s Senate campaign paraphernalia on display throughout the store during several visits in September. Nixon’s campaign has reported no disbursements to her LLC or charity for its use of Cafe Resistance’s space.
Inside of Cafe Resistance during a Nixon campaign event (Free Beacon)
When a Free Beacon reporter called Cafe Resistance on Sept. 16 to ask how to donate to Nixon’s charity, the employee who answered directed the reporter to donate to Nixon’s Senate campaign at the address on file with the FEC. Moments later, the same employee claimed Nixon’s charity was “totally separate” from her campaign and that the reporter could donate books or cash to the Moxie Group in person at Cafe Resistance.
Five days later, on Sept. 21, an employee who identified herself as the manager of Cafe Resistance told a Free Beacon reporter who visited the bookstore in person that she had no knowledge of any charity operating within the shop. The manager claimed she was working for Cafe Resistance as a volunteer.
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An imam at a mosque attended by Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed described Zionists as the “cockroaches of history” and claimed the main religious duty of American Muslims is to fight them with “every single mode that is within your reach as a citizen of this country.”
Imran Salha, the imam at the Islamic Center of Detroit (ICD), said Muslims “have two roles here in America: To teach about Allah and frustrate the Zionists. Frustrate the Zionists with every single mode that is within your reach as a citizen of this country.”
“Every single time you go to a protest and you make the Zionists uncomfortable, you are rewarding Allah. They are the cockroaches of history, and we are the liberators,” Salha said in a 2024 sermon translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
He added that “Every single time you go on Fox News and you yell at that Zionist, Allah is rewarding you.”
News of Salha’s comments comes as El-Sayed has faced scrutiny for his attendance at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, where the imam gave a eulogy praising the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a “righteous man” and a “martyr,” the Washington Free Beacon first reported.
It also comes as Jewish Democratic voters have increasingly expressed concern about El-Sayed’s candidacy.
During a recent series of focus groups conducted by the Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative super PAC, several Michigan Jewish voters reportedly “expressed that this would be the first time they vote Republican,” referring to El-Sayed’s GOP opponent Mike Rogers.
“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I’d consider [voting Republican], but it’s leaning towards that because I really don’t like [Abdul El-Sayed] at all,” one Michigan Jewish voter told the focus group, according to a memo shared with the Free Beacon.
El-Sayed often attends services at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and, while traveling the state, at the ICD, a source familiar with the situation told the Free Beacon. El-Sayed has also spoken at multiple events at the ICD—including in 2017 and 2018—and attended a political meeting at the mosque in 2019, according to reports.
Salha has a history of extremist remarks, according to social media posts and speeches reviewed by the Free Beacon.
In December 2023, he stated that “Zionism is terrorism” in a post on X. In another post, Salha denounced Israel and the United States for the targeted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar, calling the strike “Dishonorable, cowardly, and yet another example of the moral bankruptcy of both America & Israel. And yet another example that America is indistinguishable from Israel.”
As the imam at ICD, Salha has also hosted radical speakers at the mosque. In June, he held a fundraiser for Gaza that featured Imam Tom Facchine. In 2024, Facchine came under fire after he urged anti-Israel activists to “take out” a pro-Israel professor at Columbia University and “create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy,” arguing that if they were “able to take out somebody like that and make an example, that might shut up a hundred more.” Salha also spoke at a 2016 event alongside Hatem Bazian, a professor who has called for an “intifada” and advocated for the release of terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
Some of Salha’s radical comments have previously been reported. Three days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Salha railed against Israel for lighting a “fire in our hearts” that will “burn that state until its demise.”
In a May 2023 sermon at ICD, he prayed to “eradicate” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime,” according to a translation from MEMRI.
He also defended Hezbollah’s terrorist attacks against Israel in a social media post. “We can condemn Hezb[ollah] atrocities in Syria while also recognizing that they *are* making sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and frustrating the illegal zionist regime in unprecedented ways esp with recent hits,” wrote Salha in September 2024.
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Scranton, Pa., mayor Paige Cognetti, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s Eighth Congressional District, released a campaign ad on Tuesday accusing corporations of exploiting the “little guys” by price gouging groceries. Yet her husband’s gourmet food store, which reviewers have described as “expensive” and “upscale,” doesn’t accept food stamps, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
“We’re proud of this store and the life we built. But every day, we see the big corporations take advantage of the little guys,” Cognetti says in the ad, before tossing a package of chicken. She then promises to “crack down on price gouging.”
But her concerns about the “little guys” apparently don’t extend to needy Americans. Caravia Fresh Foods, her husband’s gourmet shop, doesn’t accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, an employee told the Free Beacon. Cognetti, meanwhile, has warned that “[c]utting nutrition programs would harm our most vulnerable residents.”

Caravia’s shelves are lined with ritzy items, including farm-fresh and organic foods, at price points that are impractical for the working class. Even its frozen pizzas are top-notch, featuring “organic spinach and tomatoes.” The store is also valued at more than $1 million and brings in between $100,000 and $1 million in annual revenue, according to Cognetti’s financial disclosures.

While reviews on Google are largely positive, commenters note that Caravia carries “upscale grocery items.”
“It’s definitely on the upscale side, but it feels justified once you taste the food,” one reviewer wrote in April. “It’s not somewhere I could go every day, but honestly, if cost didn’t matter, I probably would.”
Another reviewer said the “only turn off is the political signs out front.”
“I almost didn’t stop there but I really needed pasatta [sic],” he wrote earlier this month. “Probably won’t go back knowing their politics.”
In her ad, Cognetti, who did not return a request for comment, also promised to “make the big guys pay their fair share.” Yet her financial disclosures show Caravia is registered as an S corporation, a type of tax structure commonly used to reduce payroll tax burdens. Under that arrangement, the owner collects a portion of his income as a salary, which is subject to payroll taxes, and the rest as profit distributions, which are not.
Caravia’s refusal to take food stamps is just the latest incident to raise questions about Cognetti’s efforts to portray herself as a champion of blue-collar voters. Running to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Pa.) in a swing district, Cognetti is also worth between $533,000 and $2.3 million, not counting real estate assets, according to her financial disclosures.
“Our folk heroes are the workers,” Cognetti, who worked in the Goldman Sachs investment management division from 2014 to 2016, said in her campaign launch video. “People here work hard, and we stand tall.”
She also owns a second home at the base of Elk Mountain Ski Resort, an asset she has not publicly disclosed, the Free Beacon reported. It sits inside the Village of Four Seasons, a gated community 30 minutes north of Scranton that calls itself “a Page From a Fairy Tale”—thanks to its three swimming pools, 12-acre lake, and proximity to the Endless Mountains. Although Cognetti is only required to disclose the property if she uses it as an investment property, her failure to proactively report it undercuts her claims that she’s running to “bring reform, transparency, and government accountability” to Northeastern Pennsylvania, “a place sadly known for public corruption.”
Further undercutting those claims is the heat she’s taken for her moves as Scranton mayor. She turned a stretch of the street she lives on into a one-way street without properly notifying the city council of the change, the Free Beacon reported. Residents said the new traffic pattern caused dangerous near-accidents, with one citing a neighbor whose “daughter was almost hit head on.” A local trucking company said the change is costing it money since its vehicles can no longer use that street, and the road the company is now supposed to take is not big enough to accommodate the trucks.
“This is a residential neighborhood, but we’ve been grandfathered in since 1936,” Emiliani Trucking co-owner Jack Emiliani told WBRE Wilkes-Barre. “And basically, now, we can’t even pick our trailers up. We have to leave them up in Archbald, Pennsylvania. We can’t bring them to our yard, I can’t even bring them to my yard to work on them. … It comes right off of our profit for our trip.”
Cognetti also faced criticism from residents and city council members over a $1.9 million deal she brokered to purchase the old Scranton headquarters of Fidelity Bank. All nine members of the bank’s board, which includes Cognetti’s uncle-in-law, have contributed to her campaign.
“We got a mayor who’s not here,” Scranton resident Rik Little said during a July 16 council meeting that included debate of the deal. “The mayor should be here every week.”
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