Morning Brief: ‘No Kings’ Protests Return, The Funding Behind Them, & Gaza Ceasefire Wavers

“No Kings” protests return as Trump continues his nationwide crime crackdown, a new investigation exposes dark money behind anti-Trump demonstrations, and Israel strikes Gaza after Hamas reportedly violates the ceasefire.

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The Return Of ‘No Kings’

Topline: As President Donald Trump continues his anti-immigration crackdown, deploying more National Guardsmen nationwide, hundreds of thousands gathered for protests against him and his policies.

On Saturday, potentially more than a million demonstrators took part in anti-Trump No Kings protests at more than 2000 locations around the country. While the demonstrations were largely peaceful, there were some pockets of violence.

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In Portland, three protesters were arrested following an alleged assault. In the Chicago area, 15 people were arrested after clashing with law enforcement outside of an ICE facility. In Los Angeles, police deployed tear gas after declaring an unlawful assembly.

Protesters expressed anger with nearly every action Trump has taken since taking office, but his illegal immigration crackdown and subsequent National Guard deployments were at the forefront. The protests were notable for another reason: the attendees appeared to be much older than a typical protest crowd.

The Billionaires Backing ‘No Kings’

Topline: All the focus on the No Kings protests over the last week has drawn attention to the organizations fueling them. Now, a new report from Peter Schweizer and his Government Accountability Institute (GAI) found nearly $300 million from billionaire-backed networks is being funneled to the protests’ organizers.

Morning Wire spoke with Seamus Bruner, director of research at GAI and author of the book “Contrologarchs,” about the dollar trail. (The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Morning Wire: With all the noise surrounding these No Kings protests, your team dug into the organizations conducting them. What did you find?

Bruner: What we found is that these are extremely well-funded, these organizations. We calculated over $200 million, really closer to $300 million in the last five years has gone into the partner organization. This is basically anything but grassroots.

Morning Wire: Right – and this is part of a larger pattern when it comes to left-wing protests. You guys have tracked that, what you’ve been calling Riot Inc., which includes events like the No Kings protest. Unpack that for us. Who is behind this exactly?

Bruner: Yeah, so the main person who keeps coming up is George Soros. And we thought, well, it’s not just George Soros and his Open Society institutes. He’s a main financier of all kinds of left-wing projects, including the protest industrial complex. But there’s also this Arabella network. … They are a major financier of these protest movements and groups. There’s also the Tides funding network, the Ford Foundation funding network – we’ve looked at probably a dozen or so funding networks with more than $10 billion flowing through these accounts. But the main ones we put into our report were the Soros, Arabella, Tides, and a few other funding networks.

Morning Wire: We’ve had lots of leftwing protests over the years get very, very violent. Is there a sense that there is going to be some accountability for these institutions funding these protests?

Bruner: That’s my sense. I was at the White House last week talking with President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. They all seem very locked in on this issue, wanting to get to the money, not just the boots on the ground and the people committing the violence, but who is financing this. I’ve spoken with some people at Homeland Security Investigations. They seem to be very interested in the follow-the-money aspect. I think that they are working their way up.

Morning Wire: Related to that – we’ve just seen the Trump administration label “Antifa” a terrorist organization. How does that impact the sense that, again, there’s going to be some movement in terms of tracking down and holding accountable some of these groups funding things that turn violent?

Bruner: At the end of the day, the people who they arrest, whether they’re domestic terrorists or not, are going to be charged with violent crimes. These are the people who are assaulting ICE officers, setting fire to cars and buildings. And so I don’t think that they’re going to be arresting anybody as a domestic terrorist who hasn’t actually committed some sort of crime.

Morning Wire: The Democrats counter this by claiming that “Antifa” is actually a myth. It’s not actually an organization and thus a false label. What’s your response to that?

Bruner: It’s preposterous to say that Antifa isn’t an organization just because it doesn’t have an LLC or EIN or some sort of corporate entity. There’s all kinds of groups that don’t have corporate entities that can be investigated as organizations. … But law enforcement has the tools to follow the money even in those ways that we don’t.

Ceasefire In Jeopardy After Hamas Violence

Topline: Vice President JD Vance is set to visit the Middle East this week as violent clashes in Gaza buffet President Trump’s historic Middle East peace deal.

The first violation: The State Department said in a statement on Saturday that: “The United States has informed the guarantor nations of the Gaza peace agreement of credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.”

The warning from the State Department comes after videos have surfaced on social media over the past week of Hamas militants conducting public executions or essentially torturing Gazans for alleged crimes.

President Donald Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that Hamas will be disarmed one way or another.

“They promised they would [disarm]. They said they would. It’s [written] down that they would,” said Trump. “If we have to, we’ll disarm them.”

He clarified that the United States would not send soldiers into Gaza and that a proxy could fight Hamas: “Could be Israel with our backing. We won’t have boots on the ground. There’s no reason to.”

The second violation: Israel has accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire for attacks against the IDF.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security cabinet on Sunday to discuss the future of the ceasefire. The IDF is still holding behind the so-called “yellow line” that was agreed upon as part of the first phase of the truce.

According to the IDF, Hamas militants came out of a tunnel in IDF territory and fired an anti-tank rocket at Israeli forces that killed two soldiers. Israel responded by launching around 20 airstrikes across Gaza.

Hamas didn’t deny the attack; the terrorist group said that because it happened in an area under Israeli control, “contact has been severed with our groups that remained there.”

Future of peace: Trump is still optimistic about his plan for peace in the Middle East. The U.S. military is in the region watching over the ceasefire. Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff will be in Israel this week to monitor the ceasefire closely.

Despite the chaos, Trump has said he expects an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon.