Within minutes of President Trump announcing military strikes against Iran, a familiar constellation of left-wing activist groups sprang into coordinated action. And within hours, Chinese state media was amplifying their message to a global audience.
The sequence is worth examining closely.
The U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack early Saturday morning against Tehran, killing Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and degrading the Iranian military. President Trump posted a video to Truth Social at 2:30 AM. Only four minutes later, at 2:34 AM, the ANSWER Coalition posted a tweet. By 2:46 AM, the Party for Socialism and Liberation had followed. By 2:52 AM, the People's Forum swung into action. And by 4:31 AM, BreakThrough News joined the chorus.
Four minutes. That's the gap between a presidential announcement and a supposedly grassroots protest movement materializing online. Spontaneous outrage doesn't come with pre-formatted graphics and synchronized posting schedules.
By Sunday, Chinese state outlets had picked up the story and run with it. Xinhua published a piece headlined around New Yorkers protesting U.S. military action on Iran. The Global Times shared it. China.org published it. China Daily reposted it. CGTN produced video coverage. By Monday, People's Daily had reposted a separate Xinhua article about protests in San Francisco. CGTN's national correspondent in Washington, Walter Morris, narrated footage noting that "we have also seen a growing number of anti-war protests in several major U.S. cities."
These are not independent news organizations exercising editorial judgment, Just the News reported. The Justice Department has stated that Xinhua is "directly subordinate to the State Council of the People's Republic of China" and reports to the Communist Party's Propaganda and Public Information Departments. The Global Times was designated as a "foreign mission" of the CCP by the State Department during the first Trump administration. CGTN received the same designation due to its Chinese state control.
So the pipeline is straightforward:
The only question is whether this is coincidence or coordination.
The groups at the center of this operation share a common financial thread: Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy Marxist businessman described by The New York Times as working in Shanghai and attending at least one CCP workshop. Then-Senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it plainly:
It appears that organizations tied to Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen, have been receiving direction from the CCP.
Singham has denied the accusation. In 2023, he told the Times:
I categorically deny and repudiate any suggestion that I am a member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives.
The organizational chart tells a different story. According to New Lines Magazine, Singham worked as a "strategic technical consultant" with Huawei from 2001 to 2008. His offices are described as being shared with the Maku Group. He served on the Central Committee of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans married Singham in 2017 and has been described as personally recruiting Americans for pro-CCP trips to China.
The People's Forum, one of the groups that mobilized Saturday morning, tweeted in December 2021 about meeting "Roy Singham." Its co-founder, Claudia De La Cruz, who was the PSL nominee for U.S. president, acknowledged the connection herself, saying "I co-founded and co-directed … the People's Forum." The Forum lists her as a member of the PSL central committee, which she co-founded in 2018.
BreakThrough News, the outlet that posted at 4:31 AM Saturday, was founded in 2020 by Ben Becker, Brian Becker's son. Brian Becker is the national director of ANSWER and reportedly a founding member of PSL. He is also listed as an "instructor" on the People's Forum website.
It's a closed loop. The same names cycle through the same organizations, funded through the same networks, amplified by the same Chinese state media apparatus.
Layan Fuleihan, the education director at the People's Forum, appeared in the Xinhua coverage and delivered a rally speech Saturday. Her framing was predictable:
Iran poses no threat to the United States. We will not fall for the lies that were used to deceive us 20 years ago.
She also told the crowd that the U.S. has "over 5,000 nuclear warheads ready to be launched" pointed at "the towns and cities of everyday people like you and me all across the world." The implication is unmistakable: America is the aggressor. America is the threat. This is not an anti-war position. It is an anti-American one.
Fuleihan's track record removes any ambiguity. The day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, she praised Hamas publicly, saying the media would call them terrorists but that "actually what happened is that the oppressed people of Palestine broke out of the open-air prison they have been subjected to."
This is the person Xinhua chose to feature.
Fuleihan also appeared in a BreakThrough News segment where she described the speed of the mobilization as proof of organic opposition:
In just the few hours after Trump launched this illegal attack on Iran, the people inside the United States have begun to mobilize.
She framed the protests as spontaneous, saying a "call went out in the early hours of the morning" for a national day of action. But the timeline doesn't support spontaneity. The People's Forum posted a call for action at Times Square on "TODAY, SAT. FEB 28" at "2PM." CGTN listed protests in Washington, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. These were organized actions in major cities, launched within minutes of a military operation, with graphics and logistics ready to deploy.
De La Cruz shared the ANSWER tweet and added her own commentary, calling the strikes "another unnecessary war" and "an attack on the sovereignty of another nation." The framing across every group was identical. Not similar. Identical.
The House Oversight Committee voted in January to subpoena Singham. The House Ways and Means Committee also sent letters last month demanding information from the Singham-linked People's Forum and BreakThrough News. Congressional scrutiny is finally catching up to a network that has operated with remarkable openness for years.
This is not the first time these groups have mobilized on command. Just the News previously reported in January on similar protests organized around the Trump Administration's arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. The pattern repeats: a U.S. action that challenges an authoritarian regime, an instant protest response from the same cluster of organizations, and Chinese state media ready to broadcast it.
The value for China is obvious. Every protest amplified by Xinhua or CGTN serves the narrative that American military action lacks domestic support. It gives Beijing footage to play across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It transforms a handful of activists in Times Square into evidence of a nation in revolt.
The left-wing groups involved will insist they are exercising their First Amendment rights. And they are. But the First Amendment protects speech. It does not immunize coordination with a foreign adversary's propaganda machine from public scrutiny. When your protest materializes four minutes after a presidential announcement, gets featured on Chinese state television by Sunday, and is funded through a network that a sitting Secretary of State says receives CCP direction, the "grassroots" label doesn't hold.
Beijing didn't need to plant agents in Times Square. It just needed to fund the right organizations and point the cameras.
