The powerful Republican-controlled U.S. House Ways and Means Committee has subpoenaed records of Manhattan-based activist group The People’s Forum, an activist group that has led local protests against ICE and the war in Gaza, and supported other left-leaning causes, according to documents provided to Gothamist.
The July 21 subpoena to Manolo De Los Santos, the organization’s executive director, seeks contracts and communications with foreign entities, information about donors and grant recipients, along with documents and communication with the left-wing tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who was born in the United States and is based in China.
Committee Chair Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, said in a statement to Gothamist that the documents would help “expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] influence operations inside the United States.”
De Los Santos, in an interview, said the subpoena was part of a “wholesale political attack on free speech … against individuals and organizations in opposition to the Trump administration.”
The People's Forum describes itself as a "a movement incubator for working-class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad." In addition to leading protests, the group hosts workshops, discussion forums, film screenings and other events in support of social justice causes.
In a July 21 letter to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which is providing legal representation to The People’s Forum, Smith said the subpoena was necessary to help investigate “whether existing legal standards governing tax-exempt status adequately account for foreign influence and control.”
The letter cited a Fox News report that asserted more than $22 million from a fund controlled by Singham had flowed to The People’s Forum between 2017 and 2022. The organization has previously defended its decision to take funding from Singham, who The New York Times has reported worked closely with the Chinese government to fund pro-China messaging across the world.
De Los Santos said of the inquiry: “It’s nothing more than a witch hunt that is reviving the ghost of Joe McCarthy.”
The People's Forum isn't the first New York City group to be investigated by a congressional Committee in recent years. The Republican-controlled U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security last year began investigating the Chinese-American Planning Council, a New York City nonprofit. That panel alleged in an April 2025 letter that the taxpayer-funded group’s know-your-rights training sessions may help undocumented people evade immigration enforcement agents.
Smith’s committee previously requested documents from De Los Santos in September 2025 and May of this year, citing similar concerns about the group's work. After the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund objected, Smith said in a July letter that he would resort to “invoking compulsory process” to obtain the documents, claiming that the group’s objections were “without merit.”
Correspondence from Smith also cited The People's Forum's opposition to the war against Iran and other Trump administration policies. In a September 2025 letter, the lawmaker accused the organization of “using tax-exempt status to spread foreign propaganda while acting as a foreign agent.”
Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard with the fund wrote that the congressional inquiry “appears to be part of a broad scale political attack on cherished First Amendment rights, targeting viewpoints with which the Committee leadership disagrees.”
