In late September, Minneapolis was thrust into the national spotlight following a controversial incident involving federal agents and a local resident. The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by agents collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sparked widespread outrage and protests. Among the demonstrators was a protester identified only as “Andrew,” who traveled from Colorado to join the efforts to expel federal presence from the city.
Shortly after the incident, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) took a strong stance, labeling Pretti’s death as “murder.” They highlighted Andrew’s involvement, noting his position as a member of the DSA National Political Committee. In a public statement, Andrew expressed determination, stating, “We are going to beat the Trump administration,” as he stood with Minneapolis residents protesting the tragic event.
The local DSA chapter soon organized a training session focusing on personal protective equipment, preparing activists to defend against what they termed “the pigs are using.” This was a clear swipe at law enforcement’s tactics and an indication of the escalating tension in the city.
Within a week, protests had spread, with demonstrators targeting a Target store in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown neighborhood. Their demand was explicit: they wanted the retail giant to cease its support of ICE’s alleged “campaign of terror” against the local community and workforce.
The activism gained further momentum on January 20, 2025, during the inauguration of President Trump. DSA members marched through Washington, D.C., brandishing banners that read, “SOCIALISM BEATS FASCISM,” drawing parallels between the new administration and fascist ideologies. This rhetoric, according to a recent report, mirrors the discourse used by foreign adversaries.
The following day, the local DSA chapter took to Instagram to celebrate their impact, claiming credit for an “ICE Out of MN” action that temporarily closed the Dinkytown Target. Minneapolis City Council member Robin Wonsley, proudly identifying herself as a “minority leader of the Democratic Socialists caucus,” openly supported the movement, uniting with numerous socialists in their criticism of both Target and ICE.
In Boston, as agitators compared ICE to Hitler’s Gestapo, a demonstrator wearing a Democratic Socialists of America hat carried a sign depicting an eagle similar to the logo of the Nazis, only with “ICE” written on it.
Then, this weekend, as students skipped school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Los Angeles DSA chapter lauded how its adult members “stood in solidarity with” the students to “demand an end to ICE raids.”
The messaging campaign against U.S. federal authorities isn’t coincidental, according to a scathing new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a research nonprofit based in Princeton, N.J. The report found the DSA’s rhetoric matches the anti-U.S. propaganda of foreign adversaries. The finding is important as the organization amasses more political power in the U.S., with wins like longtime member Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City.
“The same rhetoric used to attack America abroad gets recycled at home to attack American law enforcement. Different stage, same script,” said Adam Sohn, co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which has a staff of neuroscientists, computer engineers, data analysts, psychologists and open-source analysts doing deep analysis on “malicious narratives,” threats and malign foreign influence.
“The language doesn’t stop overseas,” Sohn said.
Sohn is scheduled to testify Tuesday at a 10 a.m. hearing before the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, titled, “Foreign Influence in American Non-profits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond.” The hearing will be broadcast online at the committee’s website. Democratic Socialists of America didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America gather outside of a Trump owned building during a May Day rally in New York City in 2019. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The hearing is expected to examine a network of nonprofits, including organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon and self-styled Marxist-Leninist, living in Shanghai. Singham has funded nonprofit groups, including the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough BT Media, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which have worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America in dispatching socialist, Marxist-Leninist and communist foot soldiers into the streets to disrupt federal immigration law enforcement agents and stoke chaos.
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute’s new report, “Democratic Socialists of America: Policy, Advocacy and Narrative Convergence with Hostile Foreign States,” the organization has been engaging in a dynamic called “narrative convergence,” advancing narratives that stoke domestic unrest and delegitimize state institutions while advancing talking points aligned with “hostile foreign governments.”
One of the messages it regularly puts on posters equates the Trump administration to “fascism,” declaring, “Socialism Beats Fascism.”
Democratic Socialists of America protest in solidarity with the Palestinians in New York City October 8, 2023. Per NYPD some 1000 protesters attended rally. (Peter Gerber for Fox News Digital)
For example, this network coordinated last month to demand a “National Shutdown,” with a “General Strike,” a typical communist tactic to force a state into economic failure. DSA is also actively engaged in the network that is training “rapid responders” and “observers” to trail, monitor and document law enforcement movements in at least 13 databases that military and intelligence experts call a serious national security threat.
In the report, the institute concludes that DSA “exhibits multiple indicators” that warrant registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It currently receives benefits registered as a nonprofit under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.
The report cites “repeated foreign-facilitated engagements, receipt of apparent in-kind benefits, and subsequent U.S. political advocacy aligned with the interests of the Venezuelan, Cuban and Chinese governments.”
The researchers say DSA applies “the same anti-legitimacy frame to domestic enforcement and to U.S. foreign-policy posture.”
The demonstrations, the report finds, “explicitly link domestic immigration enforcement to broader U.S. foreign policy actions.”
Democratic Socialists of American joined protesters from the Party for Socialism and Liberation as they rallied together outside the White House, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a military operation. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
The institute documents that chapters organized rallies using slogans such as “No ICE, No War,” “ICE Out for Good” and “Hands Off Venezuela,” framing ICE as “an instrument of domestic state terror that mirrors U.S. imperialism abroad.”
It’s also trained its members to also blow whistles as “rapid responders,” tracking law enforcement officers.
Over the past year, activists affiliated with DSA and groups including the Singham network portrayed ICE raids as “extensions of the same hegemonic project that bombs foreign nations for resource control, while domestic enforcement terrorizes vulnerable communities.”
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, this rhetoric reflects a consistent ideological structure.
Its analysis found that DSA “employs a consistent anti-legitimacy and moralized resistance framing toward state enforcement across both foreign and domestic contexts,” using “the same narrative structures to defend sanctioned foreign regimes abroad and to delegitimize U.S. enforcement institutions at home.”
The report connects the domestic messaging to the organization’s extensive foreign engagement. It documents six delegations sent by DSA to Venezuela, Cuba and China since 2021, involving official invitations, government-linked hosts, luxury accommodations, transportation and meetings with senior regime officials, including Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The report said that after the trips, the DSA engaged in “coordinated, time-locked advocacy and messaging that directly advanced foreign regime priorities, including anti-sanctions campaigns and electoral defenses.”
After a trip to China, the report documented, the Democratic Socialists of America’s “International Committee” hosted an event in late 2021, headlined, “NO COLD WAR: OPPOSING…US ESCALATION ON CHINA.” After a trip to Cuba, the report noted, the organization hosted an event to stop the U.S. economic blockade on Cuba, titled, “How to break the Blockade.”
After the U.S. extradited Maduro to the U.S. in early June, DSA joined other groups in the socialist network with protests against the “kidnapping.”
Pro-Israeli and Pro Palestinian protesters close to the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, NY at the Democratic Socialists of America protest in solidarity with the Palestinians. (Peter Gerber for Fox News Digital)
Over months of reporting, Fox News Digital has documented how far-left socialist, Marxist and communist networks, aligned with foreign interests, have funded, organized and stage-managed street protests, using carefully coordinated messaging, social media amplification and nonprofit funding streams to allegedly launder ideological narratives into mainstream media coverage as if they are “grassroots” and “organic.”
The DSA and allied groups, including the People’s Forum and other groups in the Singham network, have acted as logistical chiefs, field marshals, amplifiers and message disciplinarians, busing members to protests, creating digital tool kits and mass-producing pre-printed signs they hand out to demonstrators, shaping protest narratives for the cause célèbre of the day, according to reporting.
From Israel to Tesla, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), ICE, police, Venezuela or other headlines, researchers say these street protests and propaganda cast the U.S. as “terrorists,” “genocide” enablers, the “Gestapo,” “Nazi” and other smears that echo language used by anti-U.S. authoritarian regimes abroad to delegitimize the U.S. as “imperialist” “colonizers” that must be dismantled through a “resistance.”
To assess whether this overlap was incidental, analysts at the Network Contagion Research Institute conducted a large-scale analysis of DSA communications using classifications based on “large language model.”
The institute coded domestic anti-ICE activism and foreign-policy advocacy to assess “blame attribution,” “legitimacy framing” and policy prescriptions, finding a “consistent pattern of blame convergence on U.S. institutions across all contexts.”
It described it as evidence of a “shared narrative structure rather than issue-specific framing.”
In its assessment, that convergence carries broader implications.
The report concludes that “the anti-ICE movement, much of it under DSA direction, serves as a domestic front in a global conflict between states,” and that the organization promotes a narrative vision that “absolutely converges with the interests of Venezuela, Cuba and China.”
The Network Contagion Research Institute emphasized that its findings don’t allege criminal wrongdoing but state that the pattern of conduct, narrative alignment and foreign engagement “warrants further scrutiny,” particularly as protests continue, and congressional investigators investigate a phenomenon known as “malign foreign influence” operating inside the United States.
The Tuesday hearing will feature testimony from multiple experts focused on malign foreign influence and nonprofit transparency.
With a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, Republican lawmakers have five witnesses: Sohn; Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center; Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust; and Bruce Dubinsky, founder of Dubinsky Consulting. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, is scheduled to speak as a witness on behalf of Democratic lawmakers.
Illustrating its synchronicity with foreign adversaries questioning the legitimacy of the U.S. government, the DSA’s local chapter in Minneapolis bragged in a new Facebook post on Sunday that “ICE’s legitimacy is dwindling” but cautioned “their terror continues.”
It’s promoting a digital toolkit among members with pre-scripted messages, signs and “community letter” for another anti-ICE action on Feb. 11 against the “violent federal immigration enforcement surge” that has been “destabilizing communities, and is violating our freedom across the country.”
The DSA’s target: more Target stores.
