Trump’s War On Dissent: House Committee Subpoenas BreakThrough News

The Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News in an effort to force the outlet to turn over financial records and records of internal communications.

BreakThrough News, a nonprofit media and educational organization aligned with grassroots social movements throughout the world, said, “For years, Republican lawmakers have painted a target on our backs, falsely claiming that our political views and reporting are part of some foreign plot.”

“Make no mistake, this is a flagrant abuse of power, and a direct attack on our work as journalists and on the First Amendment generally,” the outlet added.

Subpoenas were also issued against the People’s Forum and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

During the media organization’s weekly live show, chief correspondent Rania Khalek emphasized that BreakThrough News is a “nonprofit newsroom” that complies with “every tax rule, with every audit, [and] every public reporting requirement.” The organization has not “taken a dime from any foreign government.”

“From my vantage point, what we did wrong in the eyes of these people who have subpoenaed us—we’ve covered the Palestine solidarity movement with staunch opposition to the genocide in Gaza,” Khalek declared. “We have [shown] people what ICE is actually doing in the streets of America, which is something that these people are very upset about. We’ve reported on Washington’s crimes around the world, from Cuba to the Congo to Iran to here in Lebanon, where I’m speaking to you from.”   

Khalek continued, “That’s the kind of journalism that these people would like to shut down, and that’s the strategy here. I mean, they know that our budget at BreakThrough News is literally microscopic compared to the billionaire-funded networks that literally run the airwaves. They don’t even need to win here or prove we did anything wrong. I think this is really just about trying to bury us in legal proceedings until we’ve basically run out of money or stop reporting out of intimidation.”

Zoe Alexandra, news director for BreakThrough News, promised that the outlet would not stop “doing the journalism that we’ve been doing that has defined us, that has grown us this audience that we have today. Because we know that’s the journalism that is needed.”

Both Alexandra and Khalek urged viewers to sign the petition "calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to stop muzzling the press and drop its disgraceful investigation into BreakThrough News."

The subpoenas are part of an ever-expanding crackdown on dissent under President Donald Trump. Stephen Miller, a top political adviser in the White House, recently maintained that the left appeals to “civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence” and protect itself from “criminal punishment.” 

"When the leftist, who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordered notion of justice, protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has been perpetrated against him,” Miller proclaimed. 

The above was stated to justify turning the machinery of government that was built to fight terrorism against a constellation of supposed left-wing groups in the United States, including “Antifa,” which is not an actual organization. 

Since early 2025, Trump and Republicans have backed legislation that would make it easy to “revoke tax-exempt status” for groups or organization that do not “abide” by Trump’s “directives or agree with his views.” 

More specifically, a federal grand jury investigation was launched into Neville Singham, a U.S. citizen who the Trump Justice Department is targeting because he resides in China and has made significant donations to CODEPINK, the People’s Forum, Tricontinental, and other activist groups. (Singham is married to CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans.) 

A letter signed by House Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith claims "from 2022 to 2023, $1,098,000 flowed from Mr. Singham’s donor-advised fund to BreakThrough News.” But according to a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, “all distributions from Mr. Singham’s donor-advised fund were made to legal nonprofits, as determined by the IRS. There have been no distributions from the account since August 2023, and it was closed in early 2024.”

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, represents BreakThrough News and initially challenged the House committee’s request for records. She recently spoke out against the Trump administration’s use of McCarthyism as a “political weapon to crush political opposition.” 

“It is a direct frontal assault on free speech and democracy. It is an effort to justify repression at home and usher in a greater crackdown against our constitutionally protected First Amendment rights to speak out and protest,” stated Verheyden-Hilliard. “This is an attempt to frighten people into silence. It is an attack on democratic rights by an administration afraid of democracy because it knows the people of the U.S. are growing in opposition to its repressive programs. And it won’t work. Standing together, we can ensure this tired playbook fails.”

Verheyden-Hilliard likened the subpoenas to actions by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1940s and 1950s. Smith rejected the comparison, saying it was “historically inapt and legally irrelevant. HUAC’s investigations were directed at rooting out political beliefs and compelling witnesses to expose their associations.”

Yet the investigation seems purely political, given that there are no specific allegations of criminal wrongdoing by Singham or the organizations that reportedly received donations from him. 

The House committee initially sought records from BreakThrough News back in February. Its characterization of the media outlet makes it clear that the committee is engaged in a partisan witch-hunt.

Since its inception in 2020, BreakThrough News has produced and distributed content that aligns with pro-CCP rhetoric across both the United States and the globe. Following the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, BreakThrough News dramatically shifted their coverage in a way that suggests its intent on sowing division within the United States. Your organization also has deep ties to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (“PSL”) which orchestrated the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots in Los Angeles resulting in violence and dozens of arrests last June.

The House committee also maintained by scrutinizing political associations that BreakThrough News has played a role in political violence, which is incredibly alarming given Miller's pledge to "disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute" anyone that the administration perceives as "terrorists."

“Congress shouldn’t be using a tax investigation as a pretext to dig through a newsroom’s internal communications or financial records,” stated Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Freedom of the press applies to all journalists, regardless of whether politicians like their editorial slant or their politics.”

Stern further contended, “Allowing a congressional committee to harass an independent newsroom with a broad subpoena sets an awful precedent. If lawmakers can abuse tax oversight to single out outlets whose reporting offends them today, no newsroom in America is safe from government intimidation tomorrow.”