Overview
BreakThrough News is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media and educational organization founded in 2020. Zoe Alexandra, BreakThrough’s news director, co-founded and edited another media outlet, Peoples Dispatch. Peoples Dispatch merged with BreakThrough News in June 2026. BreakThrough editor-in-chief Ben Becker was previously an organizer with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition and is a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Claudia De La Cruz, the PSL’s 2024 presidential nominee, served on BreakThrough News’s board of directors until 2023. Rania Khalek serves as chief correspondent, and Amanda Yee manages social media.
The House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News in 2026 after the organization failed to produce previously requested internal financial records.
Tax classification — 501(c)(3)
Location — New York, NY
Founded — 2020
Annual revenue — $1,547,233 (FY 2024)
EIN — 84-5071181
Notable connections — Benjamin Becker, executive director; Karla Reyes, board chair; Yari Osorio, treasurer; Rania Khalek, chief correspondent
Activities
BreakThrough News publishes articles and videos on its website, social media accounts and YouTube channel. Its Instagram account has more than 600,000 followers, and its YouTube channel has more than 1 million subscribers.
BT Live reports on “peoples liberation movements” around the world with a self-described “sharp left analysis.” On the podcast “Dispatches,” Rania Khalek comments on current events from a “left perspective.” Brian Becker, host of “The Socialist Program” podcast, offers “socialist commentary and education episodes.” Amanda Yee hosts the “China Report” podcast, which says it “helps you sort through the propaganda with an independent view of the country we are taught to hate.”
On the “China Report,” Amanda Yee often presents the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, also referred to as the CPC) favorably. Yee’s episodes have portrayed China — a one-party authoritarian state — as a democracy and delegitimized Taiwanese independence. Other episodes have defended the CCP’s ethnic unity law, which foreign policy analysts and human rights activists say harms ethnic minorities. The program has also promoted China’s “revolution and development model” in Latin America. Elsewhere, Yee has defended the CCP’s conduct during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, claiming it is a “fabrication” that has been “exploited by the West for over 30 years as evidence of the ruthless, authoritarian nature of the CPC to justify imperialist aggression against China.”
In January 2023, Khalek released a friendly interview with Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general. The interview was conducted in Beirut, Lebanon. Nearly five years earlier, in May 2018, the United States and several partner nations throughout the Middle East designated Qassem and other senior Hezbollah figures as terrorists. The United States has included Hezbollah in its list of terrorist organizations since 1995.
Structure and affiliations
Related Organizations
BreakThrough News reported no related organizations on Schedule R in its 2020–2024 Form 990 filings.
Affiliations
BreakThrough News reported 320 West 37th Street in New York as its address in filings for 2020-2024. The People’s Forum used the same address in filings from 2017 until 2024.
Claudia De La Cruz has served on the board of directors of both BreakThrough News and The People’s Forum. De La Cruz referred to herself as a co-founder of The People’s Forum on X.
Controversies
Critical Reporting
In early 2022, New Lines Magazine reported that BreakThrough News was “pressing Uyghur genocide denial” through its correspondent, Rania Khalek. New Lines described Khalek as “an apologist for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad” and reported that Khalek’s “previous media ventures, Redfish and Soapbox, were both exposed by journalists as cutouts of Russian state-funded media.”
In May 2023, The Daily Beast reported that “nearly all” of BreakThrough News’s “camera-facing personalities” were “veterans of Kremlin-backed outfits.” The Daily Beast listed: “former Radio Sputnik host Eugene Puryear; pundit Rania Khalek of video generator ‘In the Now;’ Kei Pritsker, Abby Martin, and Brian Becker of defunct propaganda organ RT America.” The Daily Beast also described Vijay Prashad, the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, as a “controversial academic” who is “both a vociferous defender of China’s repressive policies toward its Uyghur minority and a recurring guest on BreakThrough and its international siblings.”
Congressional Investigations and Subpoenas
On September 15, 2025, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to open “a formal evaluation to determine the applicability of any relevant sanctions and any other civil remedies or criminal penalties enforced by Treasury — to include the freezing or seizure of assets — with respect to certain far-left entities, organized and funded by Neville Roy Singham.” The letter listed 19 entities alleged to have ties with Singham, placing The Party for Socialism and Liberation first, People’s Forum ninth and BreakThrough Media nineteenth. The committee rested its account of Singham on The New York Times reporting and on a Network Contagion Research Institute report. As of September 2026, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Treasury, had not publicly announced any action in response to the committee’s request.
In a separate letter dated February 9, 2026, the House Ways and Means Committee demanded that BreakThrough News “turn over certain documents.” The committee, which oversees tax-exempt organizations, questioned whether BreakThrough News was acting as a “foreign agent” or operating outside its tax-exempt purpose. The committee said it was “disturbed by the connections between BreakThrough News and Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’) linked organizations.”
On July 21, 2026, the committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News. The subpoena said that the organization’s response did not “include a single responsive document and misrepresented both the scope and purpose of the Committee’s oversight.” BreakThrough announced the subpoena on July 22, calling it “a flagrant abuse of power, and a direct attack on our work as journalists and on the First Amendment generally.” It said it “already complies with all tax, audits and public reporting requirements” and is “not charged with any crime.”
BreakThrough responded to the committee through counsel on August 7, 2026, refusing to comply and arguing that the subpoena lacked a valid legislative purpose and violated First Amendment protections.
Alleged ties to Neville Roy Singham
The People’s Forum was among the “Chinese Communist Party linked organizations” named in the committee’s July letter. The New York Times reported that Singham funds the People’s Forum, which shares a New York address with Dongsheng News. Singham said it “provides unique progressive coverage of China that has been sadly missing.”
A report from March 2026 found that between 2017 and 2022, “more than $22 million dollars” went from donor-advised funds linked to Singham to The People’s Forum. The People’s Forum provided BreakThrough News with $80,575 in donated rent in 2021 and $318,596 in noncash office and studio space in 2022, for combined in-kind support of $399,171.
In May 2023, Singham was photographed at the opening of a media institute in Shanghai, seated next to Yu Yunquan, then President of a think tank unit within the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. Singham also attended a CCP propaganda forum in July 2023 which included a breakout session he attended on how to promote the CCP abroad.
Finances
In 2024, BreakThrough reported more than $1.5 million in revenue, including more than $1.4 million in contributions. It spent $823,036 on salaries, other compensation and employee benefits, which cumulatively accounts for 55.4 percent of its $1,485,913 in total expenses.
Reporting from Fox News connected the Justice and Education Fund as well as the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund to Mr. Singham. Despite a comment from Goldman Sachs’s spokesman Tony Fratto who said that Goldman had “terminated” Singham’s donor-advised fund in 2024, the extent to which Singham’s finances were connected to BreakThrough News is unclear.
In July 2026, following the House of Representatives Committee’s subpoena, BreakThrough News stated that “Our most important source of funding comes from our viewers and supporters, and we haven’t received a dime from any foreign institutions or states.”
BreakThrough’s returns from 2020 through 2024 did not include Schedule C, which is used to report specified political campaign and lobbying activities.
Compensation
BreakThrough’s website lists six people on its team: Zoe Alexandra, news director; Ben Becker, editor-in-chief; Matthew Belen, features director; Rachel Hu, community content and media education director; Rania Khalek, chief correspondent; and Amanda Yee, social media manager.
Part VII Section B of BreakThrough’s 2024 filing lists Rania Khalek as BreakThrough’s only independent contractor paid $100,000 or more, receiving $101,449. Benjamin Becker, as executive director, received $95,724: $67,779 in reportable compensation and $27,945 in other compensation.
BreakThrough News reported “Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits” to be $528,517.
Board of Directors:
Benjamin Becker, Executive Director
Karla Reyes, Board Chair
Yari Osorio, Treasurer
Michael Chrisemer, former board member
Revenue and expenses
Assets and liabilities
Founded in 2026, the Civil Defense Institute is a nonpartisan investigative research organization. We research people, organizations and networks whose conduct undermines civil society and Americans’ freedom to participate in public life. Our work examines extremist and conspiracy-driven campaigns, foreign influence, organized harassment and the institutions that enable them.