Federal agencies tasked with giving out foreign aid have allocated more than $27 million for activist groups that also support legal defense efforts for leftist protesters in the U.S.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded the funds to the left-wing Tides Foundation and Tides Center across several presidencies, federal spending records show. Conservative organizations and politicians are now scrutinizing how the agencies spend taxpayer money after President Donald Trump announced a review of foreign aid projects and shut down USAID.
“If a conservative donor-advised fund like DonorsTrust was raking in million-dollar grants from a government department the Left and the media would be hysterical with outrage,” Parker Thayer, investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Tides is about as left-wing as a donor-advised [fund] can be, and has no business receiving a penny of federal grant money, no matter what cause the money is being funneled to through them.”
The State Department and USAID allocated the funds as early as 2014 to groups under the Tides label that help drive anti-police, anti-Israel activism. The purposes of the awards include “humanitarian activities,” supporting “civil society organizations” and other projects both foreign and domestic, according to official descriptions. The government has paid the Tides groups 72% of the grants so far.
The Tides Foundation did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The State Department and USAID awarded a combined $27,724,363 in grants to the Tides network of organizations since 2014, not counting subgrants and subcontracts. (USASpending.gov)
Defenders of USAID and foreign aid have argued that Trump’s restrictions could undermine America’s quest to advance“democracy” worldwide. However, millions of USAID and State Department dollars have not only gone toward Islamic terrorists but also organizations shaping domestic politics, which boosts their overall financial resources.
A majority of funds the State Department and USAID marked for Tides organizations were distributed under the first Trump administration. The largest of all grants was for the Tides Center as part of USAID’s “Civil Society Innovation Initiative” under its “Foreign Assistance Program.”
The program aimed “to support long-term and equitable economic growth and advance U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance,” a federal spending record says.
Across all presidencies, the two agencies also sponsored Tides to address “corruption” in foreign governments, promote “cultural exchange,” advance “humanitarian activities” and support “civil society organizations (CSOS) … both domestically and internationally.”
Another $4.06 million in State Department and USAID funds came in the form of subgrants and subcontracts, where entities receiving government funds gave them to the Tides Center and notified the government. The money was awarded to a Catholic nonprofit and two research organizations that passed it along to the Tides Center with the government’s approval.
Among other philanthropic programs, the Tides Center and Tides Foundation fund left-leaning groups that provide attorney representation or other legal support for people accused of unlawful conduct at protests. In some cases, the sponsored groups have helped activists under federal investigation – meaning the U.S. government funded a movement trying to undermine its own law enforcement.
The Tides Center is a fiscal sponsor for Palestine Legal, an organization giving legal defense and advice to anti-Israel activists facing “repression” from universities or law enforcement. A senior attorney at Palestine Legal told a leftist magazine in January that the group “has represented or advised hundreds of students since” the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023.
The group unsuccessfully sued Columbia University in March 2024 for suspending anti-Israel campus organizations that staged an unauthorized class “walkout” protest. It has also condemned universities for adopting stricter protest policies in response to the illegal encampments, violence, harassment of Jewish students and other chaos that engulfed college campuses at anti-Israel demonstrations since 2023.
Two other Tides-funded organizations, the National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights, have a history of assisting anti-police protesters tied to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements.
The National Lawyers Guild gives legal representation to activists and sends “legal observers” to watch for alleged police misconduct against protesters. Some legal observers have gotten arrested along with them.
The group boasted in 2021 that it “provided training and education to thousands of organizers and attorneys,” helped fight “federal prosecution and grand jury investigations” and “organized legal representation” for around 20,000 arrestees throughout 2020. In July 2023, New York City agreed to pay $13 million to rioters who clashed with law enforcement to settle a National Lawyers Guild lawsuit.
The Center for Constitutional Rights similarly came to the defense of Antifa-linked rioters who allegedly lit fires and attacked law enforcement in Atlanta, Georgia in 2023 to protest the construction of a police facility dubbed “Cop City.”
“We are working closely with local and national partners to challenge law enforcement’s labeling of activists protesting Cop City as terrorists and ‘domestic violent extremists,’ and to provide resources and support to communities on the ground who are fighting to ensure that Cop City will never be built,” the center wrote in August 2023. The group also lobbied authorities not to prosecute the Antifa agitators on domestic terrorism charges.
The Tides Foundation has donated more than $170,000 to the Center for Constitutional Rights since 2018, tax filings show. It also awarded the center a two-year grant in 2025 to fund a fellowship for an aspiring “social justice” lawyer, according to the foundation’s website. The National Lawyers Guild and its sponsoring foundation have received more than $1 million from the Tides Foundation.
Additionally, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center gave millions of dollars to Alliance For Global Justice, which was the fiscal sponsor of a “Legal Defense for Palestine” as of 2023, according to a now-deleted page on its website. Payment processing companies have halted business with the Alliance for Global Justice over its ties to Palestinian terrorists, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Alliance for Global Justice was also the fiscal sponsor of Samidoun, a group that has organized anti-Israel protests across the U.S. and is under terrorism sanctions.
Palestine Legal, National Lawyers Guild, Alliance for Global Justice and the Center for Constitutional Rights did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
The State Department’s press office did not respond to an inquiry about whether it plans to follow through on its pledged funds to the Tides network.
USAID could not be reached because its website is shut down as of Wednesday. Trump also closed the agency’s headquarters and moved to fire most of its staff, but a judge blocked the layoffs on Friday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio now leads both the State Department and USAID.
Elon Musk, who heads Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), seeks to abolish USAID over what he calls wasteful spending. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Republican lawmakers such as House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri have demanded that the IRS investigate the Tides Foundation to potentially strip its tax-exempt status for funding “antisemitic” protesters. An Israel-based think tank also says the Trump administration should take a closer look at the Tides movement’s money trails.
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