Billionaires support groups behind 'No Kings,' but they didn't spend $300M to fund protests

[Thiệu Ngô]

Billionaires fund organizations on both the left and right. That doesn't mean they spent $300 million on "No Kings."

By Rae Deng

Claim:

The "No Kings" protests in October 2025 against U.S. President Donald Trump's administration were financially backed by billionaires, who provided nearly $300 million for the movement.

Rating: Mostly False

What's True

Billionaires of all political stripes fund groups that push their preferred sentiments, and some of the organizations working on the "No Kings" movement have received grant money or other funds from charities with ties to billionaires such as George Soros.

What's False

Billionaires did not spend $300 million on funding the "No Kings" protests.

Following "No Kings" protests across the United States and in cities worldwide against U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration in October 2025, social media users spread a rumor that billionaires funded the rallies.

Posts on X and Facebook claimed that billionaires such as George Soros, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates provided nearly $300 million in total for the No Kings movement. These posts often included a chart purporting to show how the money flowed from billionaires to the protests via various organizations. The rumor also spread via conservative news outlets, including Fox News.

Lawmakers such as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed Soros, specifically, financially backed the "No Kings" protests. Many posts — including one from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida — alleged that the supposed billionaire backers meant organizers misrepresented No Kings as an organic grassroots movement.

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As of this writing, No Kings had partnered with more than 200 organizations to coordinate its protests. Some of these organizations have received grant funding or other forms of financial backing from charitable groups founded by billionaires such as Soros.

However, the list circulating online misrepresents the protests' funding structure. In truth, the $300 million amount appears to represent publicly available information about how much money the aforementioned charitable groups have given to organizations supporting No Kings.

These organizations — including the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National LGBTQ+ Task Force — have many more initiatives aside from No Kings. Furthermore, the list counted grant funding given to these organizations years before Trump's second term.

As such, we rate this claim mostly false.

Here's what a national spokesperson for No Kings, Eunic Epstein-Ortiz, said via email about whether No Kings receives any funding from partner organizations:

No Kings is not an organization, nor is it a formal entity that can accept donations. It is a coalition of over 270+ partners, and a decentralized movement driven by volunteers and activists across the country. Organizations support the No Kings coalition by providing training, toolkits, and limited resources, but the vast majority of events are organized, promoted, and funded locally by grassroots volunteers.

Snopes reached out to several other major organizations on the list circulating online and will update this story if we hear back. We also reached out to the Government Accountability Institute for more information and will update this story if we hear back.

Origin of rumor

The rumor appeared to originate from Seamus Bruner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative think tank founded by Peter Schweizer and Steve Bannon. Both have ties to Breitbart News, a far-right media outlet known for spreading falsehoods.

In an Oct. 16 X thread, Bruner claimed No Kings is "FUELED BY BILLIONAIRES." One example he gave included $72 million that Open Society Foundations — Soros' charity — "directly contributed to official No Kings 2.0 organizers and protesters." ("No Kings 2.0" presumably references the fact that the first No Kings protests happened in June 2025, followed by the second in October.)

Bruner also released a "FULL CASH ANALYSIS" via an X post, which appeared to be where the list circulating came from.

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While many of the rumors online alleged that the $300 million was directly tied to No Kings — the far-right WLT Report, for example, claimed No Kings essentially paid $40 to $60 for each protester, based on the $300 million amount — Bruner clarified in a reply to an X user that the "dough" funds more than "civil unrest."

Bruner claimed that the $300 million he traced goes to causes other than No Kings organizing, including "mass illegal migration, K-12 indoctrination, ballot harvesting & [Get Out the Vote], climate alarmism etc. etc."

"The money is fungible and the entire ecosystem is designed to weaken America," Bruner wrote.

In other words, Bruner's "cash analysis" X post and subsequent claims based off of his work conflated funding that liberal billionaires have sent to progressive organizations and other causes with those organizations' participation in No Kings.

No Kings' funding structure

Both the June and October 2025 No Kings protests were conceived of and organized by Indivisible, a progressive group founded in response to Trump's election in 2016, alongside "a coalition of pro-democracy partner organizations," as mentioned above.

There is very little definitive information on the amount of money the No Kings protests used to organize, in part because No Kings is a coalition, not an organization with financial records. However, in the age of social media — where online flyers and information spread like wildfire — there's also no evidence that No Kings took significant funding to put on protests.

"The strength of No Kings comes from its decentralized nature, where local activists take the lead, and collective action is fueled locally by shared values," said Epstein-Ortiz, the No Kings spokesperson.

A Google search found no reputable reports stating that No Kings paid people to protest Trump. No Kings' website explicitly calls for volunteers.

It is true that Indivisible and other organizations partnered with the No Kings movement have received funding from billionaire-backed charities such as Open Society Foundations.

A search for "Indivisible" on Open Society Foundations' grants page indicated that Indivisible Project, a component of Indivisible, has received $5,010,000 from the Soros-founded charity from 2021 to 2023. This number was an exact match to the amount on the list circulating online that claims to show how much billionaires gave to No Kings.

However, the descriptions of the grants did not specifically state that Indivisible had to use the money on No Kings or protest movements like it. A $3 million grant in 2022, for example, was for "the grantee's social welfare activities." Furthermore, this money was given to Indivisible before Trump was elected to a second term as president.

We also cross-referenced the total amount in grants, dated 2021 to 2023, that Open Society Foundations gave to several organizations on the list — and found exact matches for each one, including Jewish Voice for Peace, Corporate Accountability Lab and Equal Justice Society.

A spokesperson for Open Society Foundations, Sean Savett, said via an email that the charity network supports "a wide range of independent organizations that work to deepen civic engagement through peaceful democratic participation."

"However, we did not provide any funding to organizations specifically for the No Kings rallies," Savett said. "I'd add that our grantees make their own decisions about their work, consistent with the law and the terms of their grant agreements."

Thus, while Snopes has not independently verified every single number on the list circulating online, evidence demonstrates the dollar amounts are at least somewhat based on the amounts that organizations involved with No Kings have received from charities with ties to billionaires.

However, that has no bearing on direct funding for No Kings, given that the data used is outdated and not directly related to the organization of No Kings. Given that information, it is false that billionaires spent $300 million on No Kings.

Snopes previously reported on a satirical claim that Soros filed for bankruptcy after funding the No Kings protests.