Federal grants under the Biden-Harris administration helped sustain a nonprofit ecosystem that backed anti-Israel activism and groups with alleged ties to terrorist organizations, according to a House Judiciary Committee memo.
The report, titled “The Biden-Harris Administration’s Funding of Anti-Netanyahu Non-Governmental Organizations, Part II,” builds on a July 2025 investigation into whether U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to support nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform proposal.
Committee investigators said nine organizations have produced 1,256 documents as part of the inquiry. Those documents, the memo says, show that U.S. tax-exempt organizations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) and the Tides Network, provided more than $5 million to groups that funded anti-Israel protests in the United States and Israel. They also promoted the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and supported organizations with alleged links to terrorist groups.
The report does not claim every federal dollar was directly earmarked for anti-Israel activism. Instead, the committee’s case rests largely on the fungibility of money — the concept that government funding for one project can free up other money for political activity elsewhere in the same nonprofit network.
As the memo details, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), a New York-based nonprofit, received more than $50 million from USAID and the State Department from 2021 to 2024, according to the memo. During roughly the same period, RPA sent $557,000 to RBF.
RPA submitted documents to the committee stating that its federally funded projects and its transfers to RBF had “no direct relation to Israel.” But House investigators argue that this answer is intentionally misleading because of the fungibility issue. When federal grants cover one part of a nonprofit’s budget, that money can be redirected to other causes. In the nonprofit world, the final destination of money can be difficult to trace.
RBF, the memo says, has provided about $4 million since 2019 to groups involved in anti-Israel activism. That included $440,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace, which the memo describes as an anti-Zionist group active in pro-Palestinian campus protests after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
The memo also says that RBF provided $100,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice, a U.S.-based nonprofit that has supported the organization Samidoun. The Treasury Department has described that group as a sham charity serving as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a group which the State Department designates as a terrorist organization.
The Tides Network also figures prominently in the report. According to the memo, Tides received $30 million from USAID between 2016 and 2022 for a civil society program in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. On its USAID application, the Tides Center certified that it had not and would not provide material support or resources to individuals or entities associated with terrorism.
Yet documents show the Tides Network later provided significant funding to anti-Israel groups with alleged terrorist ties. From 2022 to 2023, the Tides Foundation gave $120,000 to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit, the memo says, that has multiple alleged connections to terrorist groups. The memo also says that Tides provided more than $1 million in RBF-funded grants to Palestine Legal and the Adalah Justice Project, both of which supported violent anti-Israel protest activity after October 7.
The committee’s earlier findings focused on groups involved in Israel’s 2023 judicial reform protests. Blue White Future, described in the memo as the “coalition headquarters” for the protests, received $4 million from the Middle East Peace Dialogue Network and $18 million from PEF Israel Endowment Funds between 2021 and 2024. PEF, in turn, received $41.2 million from the Jewish Communal Fund, another U.S.-based nonprofit.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel also received about $42,000 in State Department grant funds between 2020 and 2022 for a “Civic Activism Training Program,” according to the memo. The committee says the program encouraged students to engage in activism against the Israeli government.
Another group named in the report, Abraham Initiatives, received about $2 million from USAID and the State Department for programs related to shared learning and policing reform. But a 2023 USAID inspector general audit found two “material instances of noncompliance” with anti-terrorism reporting procedures in one USAID-funded program, according to the committee.
The report raises serious tax questions as well. Federal law bars 501(c)(3) tax-exempt groups from participating or intervening in political campaigns. The IRS has also warned that domestic charities can jeopardize their tax-exempt status by attempting to influence foreign elections or legal changes abroad. Based on the documents reviewed, the committee says the Jewish Communal Fund, RPA, and PEF may have violated federal tax law by fiscally sponsoring anti-Israel groups and protests against Netanyahu’s government.
The memo points to a larger problem with federal spending and foreign aid, specifically that conservatives have long warned about: taxpayer dollars can disappear into opaque nonprofit networks, where federal grants and activist campaigns become nearly impossible to separate.
The United States sends billions of dollars abroad each year in the name of diplomacy, civil society, and humanitarian work. If those funds, directly or indirectly, help undermine an elected government or subsidize violent groups, Congress has a duty to follow the money.
More importantly, taxpayers deserve to know how their hard-earned money is being used – and especially if it is being used to undermine America’s interests and values.
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.
