WASHINGTON, D.C. — Far-left activists from the network funded by communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
For years, CodePink activists, easily recognizable in hot pink T-shirts, have heckled lawmakers and officials in public settings with a tactic called “bird dogging,” cornering targets, peppering them with hostile questions, like “Why do you support baby killers?” and shaming them on social media with tactics that amount to humiliation rituals.
On Veterans Day, the agitators found themselves on the other side of the lens, and they didn’t like it.
For six hours on Wednesday, Fox News Digital followed members of CodePink, BreakThrough News, the People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and allied groups in the Singham network through the halls of Congress during a lobbying event organizers called the “Taxpayer Uprising.”
But when the cameras turned on them, they angrily refused to answer questions and covered the camera lens, one time with a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf and another time with a backpack designed with the pattern of a watermelon, a symbol adopted by the Palestinian movement. Then, they responded with smears and ad hominem attacks.
Finally, they published their footage of the confrontations, turning their objections to being filmed into content for their followers. One follower congratulated them on their success deploying “psychic militancy.”
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The day began just before 10 a.m. inside the Rayburn House Office Building, where activists in pink CodePink T-shirts and keffiyehs walked into a breakfast gathering of the U.S. House Bagel Caucus.
At 9:59 a.m., they surrounded Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and pointed their cameras at him. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, wore a shirt emblazoned with the message “NO WAR ON IRAN” and pressed him on Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which she called a “merging” of the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
“It is not a merging of the militaries,” Goldman said. “It is a collaboration on technology that we depend on Israel for, and they depend on us for, and it is for our own national security.”
He asked the activists whether they supported Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas and Hezbollah.
“We’re not funding them. We’re funding Israel,” Benjamin replied.
When the liberal congressman called the situation in Gaza “absolutely horrific” and said he wished Hamas would allow in the aid Israel was trying to send, the group members groaned in unison. CodePink activist Tighe Barry, Benjamin’s husband, in a pink shirt and pink hat, yelled at him: “You’re a real congressman, and you just made that statement?”
“That was a horrific lie that you just said,” Barry shouted at him. “As a sitting congressman, I take deep offense at that.”
“Alright, here we are. We’re enjoying the Bagel Caucus here,” Goldman said before walking away. “Thank you for talking. Take care of yourself.”
CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin moved through the building wearing a backpack designed with the pattern of a keffiyeh, the checkered scarf that has become a symbol of the pro-Palestinian movement.
At 10:06 a.m., the group shuffled to the Rayburn cafeteria, where organizers had set up tables numbered by lobbying group. Pink signs reading “TAXPAYER UPRISING” and “WAR IS NOT GREEN” sat on the tables.
Confrontations began within minutes. “No, no. Hey, out of here,” a CodePink volunteer told the reporter at about 10:09 a.m.
Asked for an interview, Barry turned to his fellow activists and balked, saying, “Why would I?”
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A woman at the check-in table asked the reporter to “move your camera away.” Another activist used a keffiyeh to block the camera’s view, and a Muslim woman in a headscarf put her hand over the lens.
At about 10:12 a.m., an activist hoisted a pink backpack printed with watermelons in front of the Fox News Digital camera.
A young man in a keffiyeh, with a name tag that read “Finn,” then planted himself in front of the camera and moved with it as it tried to pan around him.
“Is this what you do in your free time, is like, wander around?” he taunted.
Melissa Garriga, CodePink’s media contact, refused to answer any questions, priding herself to the team on refusing to answer emailed requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
Asked a question by the reporter standing right in front of her, she cupped her hand behind her ear and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Can you speak up?”
Asked again, she responded, “I still can’t hear you. You’re gonna have to talk a little louder. Sorry.”
Then, again: “Can you please speak up?”
Asked about Singham’s funding of CodePink, Garriga waved her hand across the lens. “I don’t have to respond to you,” she said.
At 10:14 a.m., Garriga put her hand fully over the camera: “Just buzz off,” she said.
The activist with the “Finn” name tag returned and held a gray jacket over the lens, then a canvas tote bag, then a keffiyeh, one after another.
Minutes later, a red-haired woman in a keffiyeh waved her hands in front of the camera.
Shortly after 10:20 a.m., CodePink co-founders Jodie Evans and Benjamin took charge of the room. Evans married Singham in 2017 when he sold his company, Thoughtworks, for an estimated $785 million. He used some of those proceeds to pump $285 million into a network of nonprofits that have been pro-China and pro-communist. Several of their leaders hit the halls of Congress on Wednesday.
“Alright, everybody, we want to start our program,” Evans said at 10:22 a.m.
Benjamin urged them to confront lawmakers wherever they found them.
“Remember, they work for us. They’re not better than us. They are public servants,” she said. “And so, if you see them, try to engage them.”
She told the activists how to spot members of Congress in the hallways: They wear lapel pins and aren’t holding anything, because staff carry documents, binders and other items for them, she said.
“The worst it could be is they say, ‘I’m not a congressperson,'” she said.
Singham has denied acting at the direction of the Chinese government. Asked if her husband would do an interview, Evans, the only member of the entourage to respond professionally to questions, smiled and said, “No, he’s shy.”
Fresh from a propaganda tour to China, the Singham network activists pressed lawmakers to slash the military budget, pull out U.S. troops and end U.S. military ties with Israel — demands that align with China’s foreign policy agenda.
Rania Khalek, a co-host of “BT Live” at BreakThrough News, slipped into the cafeteria.
When Fox News Digital asked Khalek about BreakThrough’s funding from Singham, she responded, “Oh dear. I’m not speaking to you.”
A man in a pink shirt stepped backward to plant himself in front of the camera. Khalek raised her phone, filmed the reporter and asked, “Are you harassing us?” She then answered her own question: “Yes.”
Asked whether she was with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a woman standing with Khalek smiled and replied, “Am I?” She has led Party for Socialism and Liberation protests at the White House and is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
At 10:26 a.m., two activists stepped in front of the camera at once and another pushed a cafeteria chair into the reporter’s path.
At 10:33 a.m., Khalek walked behind Benjamin and Evans with the activist from the Party for Socialism and Liberation to hit offices.
By 10:35 a.m., the activists had moved to the second floor of the Rayburn building, where U.S. Capitol Police officers stood outside Room 2267, the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. A yellow sign taped inside the office door read, “OFFICE CLEARED.”
The activists only met with a staffer.
At 11:11 a.m., Benjamin did a stand-up video in front of Jeffries’ door, casting the image of a dramatic confrontation between activists who “packed” the small office foyer and Jeffries.
At 11:20 a.m., Khalek exploded.
Near the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, “The fact that you pretend to care about free speech right now while literal journalists in Gaza are being, like, executed, sniped in the head by the IDF with U.S. weapons, is a freaking joke. Okay? Nobody cares what you think.”
Holding up her phone, she added, “I’m literally doing journalism right now. See?”
Asked whether it was acceptable for Singham network activists to disrupt congressional hearings, Khalek answered with a question of her own: “Is it okay to fund genocide?” Then she walked away. At 11:22 a.m., she lashed out, calling the reporter a “genocide apologist.”
Another activist stepped in front of the camera and took over. “Shame on you. You’re completely shameless,” she said. “You are a disgrace to this profession!”
The Party for Socialism and Liberation activist filmed the exchange with Khalek.
BreakThrough News later posted the confrontation on Instagram and X, quoting Khalek, who lives in Lebanon, saying: “Stop justifying bombing my country!”
One follower praised the outburst as “psychic militancy.”
Her outburst over, Khalek proceeded to go chase lawmakers.
At 11:25 a.m., a woman in a pink CodePink shirt draped a keffiyeh over the camera lens, then followed the reporter and raised it onto the lens again.
Olivia DiNucci, CodePink’s D.C. coordinator, wore an olive jacket that read “STOP ARMING ISRAEL.” DiNucci has heckled Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and scores of others, and has written first-person accounts of her own arrests and disruptions inside Congress. On Wednesday, she threw her hand in front of the camera.
“We just don’t wanna talk to you, because you’re complicit in genocide,” she yelled. “Is that really hard for you to understand?” She continued: “We’re not interested in talking to people who support murdering babies.”
At 11:34 a.m., Benjamin, Khalek and the Party for Socialism and Liberation activist intercepted a congressman walking past the Rayburn House Office Building sign, pressing him on the activists’ demands.
“That’s propaganda,” he responded.
By lobbying day’s end, at 3:28 p.m., on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., spoke to Fox News Digital, as the activists stood with their signs, cordoned away behind police barricades. Their signs read “WELCOME TO DC / LET’S END WAR” and “HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE.”
“Some people like yelling and screaming and making a lot of noise,” Scalise said. “They sure do want attention focused on them so people can see how radical they are. And some of these people are just against the foundations of what made this nation great.”
“We’re here at a Veterans Day ceremony of all things and they want to protest,” he said. “Anybody who would protest Veterans Day, you know, they need to really check themselves. Maybe there’s another country that they like better than America, they’re free to go there. We love this country.”
Scalise added, “Ask Europe who liberated it. It was the United States with our allies that stopped the Nazis, stopped fascism, and we’ve always been the ones, America, standing up to the bad guys.”
“You just follow the money when you see who funds some of these groups that hate America,” he said. “It tells you everything you need to know.”
The money behind the groups involved in the lobbying day is substantial.
According to IRS filings, Singham has given $1.098 million to BreakThrough’s BT Media Inc., $1.33 million to CodePink and $22.44 million to The People’s Forum.
CodePink lists 56 organizations taking part in the Taxpayer Uprising with an estimated $40 million in annual revenues, according to Fox News Digital’s investigation. The coalition includes the Council on American-Islamic Relations, American Muslims for Palestine, the Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee and the Communist Party USA, which says on its website that it “is guided by Marxism-Leninism.” Other participants describe themselves in socialist terms, including Friends of Socialist China, which calls itself “a platform based on supporting the People’s Republic of China and promoting understanding of Chinese socialism,” and Qiao Collective, which says it is “committed to the principles of socialist internationalism.”
They’re not grassroots groups. They have big revenue totals: CAIR Foundation at $9.4 million, the People’s Forum at $7.1 million, the Institute for Policy Studies at $5.7 million, Nonviolence International at $3.7 million, Global Exchange at $3 million, American Muslims for Palestine’s AJP Educational Foundation at $2.1 million, CodePink at $1.8 million and BreakThrough at $1.5 million.
Fox News Digital couldn’t identify any group registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the Justice Department’s FARA database. Last year, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote a letter raising concerns about CodePink’s pro-China lobbying. Rubio has pressed the Justice Department about Chinese Communist Party information warfare through these nonprofits. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has sent subpoenas to the People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and a related Tricontinental thinktank as allegedly aligned with the Chinese Communist Party propaganda operation.
Overnight, CodePink posted the video where she spoke to her team’s camera in front of Jeffries’ office, with the caption, telling the world: “We just packed the office of Hakeem Jeffries.”