BreakThrough News Faces Congressional Ultimatum Over Foreign Influence Concerns
Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith demands comprehensive documentation as investigation into pro-Palestine outlet reveals extensive ties to Shanghai-based donor and Chinese propaganda networks
On Monday, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith issued a formal demand for BreakThrough News to provide comprehensive documentation proving the organization deserves its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status, citing extensive evidence that the nonprofit media outlet may be functioning as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while receiving millions in funding from Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman based in Shanghai with documented ties to CCP officials. The letter represents the most detailed governmental examination yet of the organization’s alleged role in a coordinated Chinese influence operation.
Millions in Singham Funding Raise Foreign Agent Questions
The committee’s investigation reveals that BreakThrough News has received over $1,000,000 from the Justice and Education Fund, $60,600 from the Progress Unity Fund, and $540,000 anonymized through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, all channels linked to Neville Roy Singham, who chairs multiple networks promoting pro-CCP narratives globally.
Additionally, The People’s Forum and 1804 Books, two other Singham-funded organizations operating from the same Manhattan address as BreakThrough News, made grants totaling almost $400,000 to the media outlet in 2021 and 2022 alone. A previous investigation by Jewish Onliner documented that all three organizations operate from 320 West 37th Street in New York City, and share overlapping leadership and funding.
Smith expressed concern that Singham “lives in Shanghai, maintains business ties with companies and individuals linked to the CCP, works with and physically alongside a foreign propaganda company, and attends CCP forums on how to promote the party abroad.” The committee notes this pattern parallels a 2022 case where the U.S. Department of Justice indicted a Russian legislator for using a nonprofit “as a front for a global foreign influence campaign to advance Russia’s foreign policy objectives.”
Content Analysis Shows Systematic Pro-CCP Messaging
The House letter documents that since its 2020 inception, BreakThrough News has consistently created and shared messaging that reflects Chinese Communist Party talking points domestically and internationally. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) conducted a deep analysis of the outlet’s YouTube content and found a “consistent portrayal of China in an overwhelmingly positive light, especially highlighting its innovative initiatives and global influence.”
Smith’s letter specifically cites BreakThrough News’s production of content that regularly features defenses of China’s actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Notably, the organization’s coverage “dramatically shifted” following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, with the outlet “entirely repurposed its editorial stance to serve as a tool to vilify Israel in order to opportunistically amplify revolutionary and violent protest in the U.S.”
Moreover, NCRI’s analysis of BreakThrough News' TikTok account reveals the dramatic scope of this messaging pivot. In the six months preceding October 7, Palestine failed to rank among the platform's top 10 keywords used by the organization. Yet in the six months following the attack, Palestine exploded to become BreakThrough News' most-used term with 318 mentions, while related hashtags like "genocide," "Gaza," and "freepalestine" also emerged as dominant keywords.
Revolutionary Socialist Leadership Creates Radical Pipeline
The committee identified particularly concerning connections between BreakThrough News leadership and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist organization advocating for the overthrow of American capitalism and democracy. BreakThrough News Editor-in-Chief Ben Becker currently serves as a member of PSL’s “central committee” leadership, while Eugene Puryear is a founding PSL member and frequent BTN host.
Smith’s letter notes that Puryear publicly praised Hamas attackers after October 7, while Becker has justified the massacre as an act of “national liberation against colonialism.” The PSL has been “central figures in the swath of violent extremism that has gripped the United States in recent years,” according to the committee. Most recently, the PSL-affiliated Elias Rodriguez murdered Yaron Lischinksy and Sarah Milgrim, two Israeli Embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. in May 2025.
Singham’s Embedded CCP Network
The investigation reveals Singham’s influence apparatus extends far beyond simple philanthropic donations. The committee discovered that Singham not only shares office space in Shanghai with Maku Group, a Chinese media company whose stated mission is to "tell China's story well," but the two entities also maintain direct ties to multiple of his current China ventures.
The letter reveals that Singham maintains these ties through entities like Gondwana Foods (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., where he serves as sole shareholder, Executive Director, and General Manager. Xiong Jie — boardmember of Gondwana Foods — Zhou Yihua, and Zhu Weiyan serve as central figures in this apparatus, holding simultaneous positions across Singham's Shanghai companies and official CCP structures. “Together, Jie, Yihua, and Weiyan operate as a coordinated unit, executing a shared ideological and commercial mission,” Smith wrote.
Notably, their reach extends directly into Singham's American tax-exempt organizations. At Tricontinental, where Singham chairs the International Advisory Board, these operatives collaborate with researcher Zhai Tingjun on a project called Wenhua Zongheng, explicitly described as an effort to "spread China's voice to the world."
The team executes this mission by merging commercial ventures, media platforms, and ostensibly independent research institutions to internationalize Chinese Communist Party narratives. By operating simultaneously in business, media, and academic spheres, these operatives create the appearance of independent scholarship and commerce while advancing a unified ideological agenda directed at foreign audiences, particularly Americans.
China’s Escalating Media Spending in America
The committee cited alarming trends in Chinese foreign spending priorities. According to the Department of Justice’s database of registered foreign agents, China-based principals have spent over $519 million on lobbying in the United States from 2005 to 2021. More significantly, since 2019, China’s spending on media-related services has “skyrocketed,” with China-based principals spending over $100 million on media services, more than they spent on lobbying, legal expenses, public relations, economic promotion, and consulting combined.
“This is especially concerning given that several of the groups in Mr. Singham’s network, including BreakThrough News, are media companies,” Smith noted.
Formal Demand for Documents
Smith has demanded that BreakThrough News provide comprehensive documentation by February 23, 2026, including all communications with Singham since 2017, a list of all organizations it fiscally sponsors, all donor information for contributions exceeding $5,000, communications with foreign principals, and a list of all grant recipients outside the United States.
The investigation marks a long-awaited escalation in congressional scrutiny of nonprofit organizations serving as conduits for foreign influence. Smith previously sent similar letters to Tricontinental and The People’s Forum, as part of a broader House Ways and Means Committee effort to prevent foreign money from flowing through tax-exempt organizations to influence American politics and undermine U.S. interests.