🚨 JUST RELEASED: Follow the Money Behind the No Kings Rally 🚨
DataRepublican has launched an interactive, open-source map showing how your tax dollars flow to organizations involved in the No Kings rally.
🔍 I tracked funding from federal sources to final recipients,… pic.twitter.com/UWdYH3DVYO
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) June 12, 2025
I noticed a news story on GoErie announcing several “No Kings” rallies to be held in the area on March 28th, one of which is scheduled for North East. These rallies are supposedly a grass roots protest to show how people are upset with President Trump.
Are these left wing protests funded with your tax dollars? *
Some of you may be familiar with DataRepublican on X.com who has become an amazing source of information for those wondering where the money comes from for events like this. (If you are on X, be sure to follow her!) Her incredibly deep dives into NGOs, (Non Governmental Organizations) show how much taxpayer money through federal grants is directed and misdirected into organizations of all sorts, sometimes far-left radical organizations contributing to various protests and local demonstrations. When the previous No Kings rallies took place last year, she did some research.
If you have a lot of time, she has a link where you can download the database of NGOs and use her tool for sifting through it all, though it’s a time consuming process. The money flow is massive.
Note the interesting schedule for the local protests
There are three area rallies, held one after the other, so participants can attend one rally and then hurry up and go to the next one. Many who show up in North East, may not even be from North East. A small group of protesters who have nothing better to do can make it appear there is a lot of support everywhere.
Harborcreek: from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Hosted by the Benedictines for Peace.
Erie: from noon to 2 p.m. Hosted by 50501 Erie, PA.
North East: from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Hosted by Sue Murawski.
If there is a lot of support, why not hold them at the same time?
Don’t be misled
With the upcoming elections, you’ll be seeing more and more misleading political protests and ads. I just thought you should know a bit more about this one.
Lisa says
curious why you say the money is misdirected or the protests are misleading.
can you elaborate? would you say it was properly directed if it was an extreme right wing event?
Paul Crowe says
Federal grants and taxpayer money should not be used for political protests, whether on the left or the right. Unfortunately, as we have seen so many examples of in the news recently, grants often flow to NGOs who then pass the money on to individuals and organizations who then use the money for purposes other than for what the grant was intended.
You have got to be kidding me! says
This is why there is so much fraud! Any of these organizations that are receiving funds should be audited and investigated. If they are using the money for anything but the intended use, they should be prosecuted, fined and put in prison for embezzlement.
Joe says
“These are left wing protests – funded with your tax dollars” That is not what the DataRepublican article says. You have an obvious agenda which seems to go against your ethos.
1) Federal Funds are explicitly prohibited from funding political activity and the DataRepublican article does NOT make a claim that they are misusing funds.
2) These charities ARE all audited. However, I totally agree if fraud exists it should be investigated and prosecuted.
3) Having these protests in series does allow VOLUNTEER organizers to go from one event to another. Which is how anyone (left, right, center) would do it.
I am in no way affiliated with No Kings but I really dislike when someone says they want transparency and then intentionally misleads.
Paul Crowe says
If the organizations contributing money to No kings are 501(c)(3)charitable organizations, as the list by DataRepublican shows they are, then any one of them
Since the No Kings rallies are explicitly in opposition to President Trump, it would seem they are not abiding by those rules. If so, they should be paying federal taxes on their income, but are not. Taxes not paid are, in effect, taxpayer dollars contributed to them. Their payments to others are then taxpayer dollars. (My opinion, obviously. I’m not a tax attorney.)
As to audits, those daycare centers in Minnesota were audited, too. Hundreds of millions of dollars later, massive fraud is discovered by someone who just started knocking on doors.
Of course, the wide range of charitable organizations contributing to No Kings, collect money for a wide variety of purposes, and it would be surprising if all of the contributors to those organizations know their dollars are going to fund No Kings protests.
As to your third point, volunteers can indeed go from one event to another, but if the protesters are not paid, then they are volunteers, correct? So you’re saying they can go from one event to another event, as I suggested they might. Or if they are not volunteers, are those protesters paid?
Joe says
I agree that some 501(c)(3) organizations (across the political spectrum) can at times push up against the boundaries of what is permitted. That said, protesting a policy or a politician is not the same as endorsing or opposing a political campaign, which is the relevant legal standard.
On the funding point, tax-exempt status is not the same as government funding. If it were, then every church and charitable organization would effectively be considered government-funded, which isn’t how the system works.
If there is evidence of fraud or misuse of funds, I fully agree it should be investigated and prosecuted. However, citing unrelated fraud cases doesn’t establish that it is occurring here.
More broadly, most donors don’t track every dollar within a large nonprofit, which is why organizations above certain thresholds are required to disclose financials and undergo audits. Even the source you mentioned notes that many funds are donor-directed.
Finally, volunteers traveling between events is common across all types of civic and political activity. If there is credible evidence that protesters are being paid, that would certainly be significant: but I haven’t seen that evidence presented here.
Paul Crowe says
NGOs often receive money directly from the government in the form of grants, which is what DataRepublican points out. The political activities of those NGOs may disqualify them from their charitable status, that, if strictly enforced, would constitute fraud but if the NGO receives money from a government grant then taxpayer money is directly involved.
NGOs receive money from private donations as well, but money is fungible, so where the specific dollars going to various organizations came from cannot be determined. Was that dollar from the government (taxpayers) or did it come from private donations? In reality, there’s no way to separate them.
We agree on volunteers going from event to event, but my point is every protester is a volunteer unless paid, so every protester at one event can simply travel to the next.
Joe says
Please stop presenting your opinion and supposition off as fact. The topic was originally only marginally related to the core tenets of the site and this is now just voicing your agenda.
The core features of most protests and marches, across the board left or right, organizations fund the infrastructure, not the people.
No Kings follow many features of grassroots efforts before them, Tea Party, Women’s March, ACA marches (pro/against), March for Life, etc.
– No central funding, NGO’s and organizations help out when they get momentum, driven by volunteer turnout, no evidence of paid protesters, organized travel is common.
My original posts was your headline “These are left wing protests – funded with your tax dollars” is inaccurate. It is still inaccurate.
I look forward to this site returning to local politics and helpful information for residences. If it does not, I will not be returning.
Paul Crowe says
DataRepublican states: “This page lists every nonprofit for which we currently have a reconstructed flow of federal grant money to entities involved in the NoKings demonstration”
In the embedded X post at the beginning of my article here it says: “DataRepublican has launched an interactive, open-source map showing how your tax dollars flow to organizations involved in the No Kings rally.”
She did the research to show how tax dollars are going to the No Kings rallies. Contained in her work there is sufficient proof to back up the claim in that statement. If you take the time to follow some of her links you will quickly see there is far more than could possibly be shown here, which due to space considerations I did not do, so my statement then appears unsubstantiated.
On that basis, I can appreciate your resistance to my assertion and I have taken that into account and changed the original statement into a question, which the reader can answer to their own satisfaction, if inclined to investigate further on DataRepublican’s site. I also made note of the change in the post above. No stealth edits.
Yes, I will be returning to more local material, but since this protest will be here in North East, it is of local interest.
Joe says
First, I appreciate the inclusion of the question mark. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s important, and I’m grateful for that level of nuance.
I did “take the time” to analyze the original post which prompted my initial comment. I also reviewed several charity financial statements and even replicated the methodology using the same data. Interestingly, using that approach, I could “show” that Elon Musk is a major contributor to No Kings. Do I actually believe that? No. But it highlights the difference between what the data might suggest and what can actually be supported as fact.
In any case, I appreciate your site overall and the opportunity to engage in a civil discussion.
Mark A. Steg says
This reminds me of an event that occurred at Gibson Park, maybe around the 2020 election. A number of women were dressed as characters from eh Left’s favorite book, The Handmaidens Tales. Does anyone else remember that ? I doubt that they sewed these costumes themselves.
Joe says
If only there was a way to get a Handmaid’s Tale costume other than sewing it yourself. Oh yeah, $45 new from Amazon, less used. I guess that mystery is solved.
Ron Sivillo says
You’re treating protests against a president as if they automatically qualify as prohibited political campaign activity. They don’t. The restriction on 501(c)(3)s is about supporting or opposing candidates in an election, not taking positions on public issues or criticizing elected officials. That distinction matters, and your argument kind of depends on ignoring it.
You also lean pretty heavily on phrases like “it would seem” and “may disqualify them,” but that’s just speculation. You’re asserting wrongdoing without actually showing that any specific organization violated the rules.
The Minnesota example doesn’t help your case either. Fraud in a completely different situation doesn’t demonstrate fraud here—it just suggests that fraud is possible anywhere, which no one is disputing.
And the “taxpayer dollars” point is doing a lot of rhetorical work without much substance. Saying money is fungible doesn’t prove misuse—it just avoids having to show where the money actually went. By that logic, you could label almost any nonprofit activity as taxpayer-funded, which isn’t a meaningful standard.
If there’s real evidence that funds were misused, then absolutely it should be investigated. But right now this reads more like a chain of assumptions than an actual case.
Honestly, this forum provides a good voice for an outlet for transparency, but you start to lose credibility when your political biases start to just seep out. Kudos though, you do a much better job than others.
Paul Crowe says
When NGOs and non-profits of all sorts take extreme political positions, they invite scrutiny. If the protests we’re speaking of here were funded privately or by a political party, there would be no issue. Protests from both sides are part of the process. It’s when the funding comes through the huge network of NGOs, often filtered through multiple layers from one NGO to another, making the source and distribution of funds almost impossible to trace, that we as taxpayers need to question and carefully examine who is driving it and where those dollars come from.
The No Kings protests are nationwide and very visible. They want people to see them, so they have to expect a lot of closer looks to determine who they are and how they are funded. They present themselves as though they are a grass roots, from the bottom up organization while their extensive NGO funding says something quite different. My reason for writing is to point that out.
Unfortunately these comments have wandered down the road of whether the specific 501(c)(3) requirements have been strictly followed which was not my intention. On the other hand, there are millions of NGOs and to think they are all carefully audited is wishful thinking. Since NGOs exist on a mixture of private and public funds and the dollar figures are enormous, those rules are not something we should treat lightly.
LaVern Skarzenski says
You act like you are upset that some of our tax dollars are being used in small part for No KINGS. I can’t imagine how you are sleeping ,worrying about the billions and billions of our tax dollars that are going to fund this illegal, unplanned, disaster of a war against Iran, that our soldiers are getting injured, and maimed for life and killed in. NO KINGS, THE LEFT IS RIGHT. THE RIGHT IS WRONG.!!!
Paul Crowe says
LaVern, if the No Kings organizers had not decided to schedule this protest in downtown North East, this article would not have been written. These sorts of demonstrations frequently occur in Erie and no one is surprised to see them there, but most of us in North East would rather not encounter them in our town, whether they are on the political left or right. We are more interested in what can be done to build up our town, not create division within it.