California Taxpayers Have Been Funding the Protests Against Them and the Amount Is Shocking

The next time you watch footage of professionally organized demonstrators flooding the streets of Los Angeles, waving matching T-shirts and pre-printed signs while chanting against federal immigration enforcement, there is something worth knowing: you may well have helped pay for it.

New research published Friday reveals that California’s state government has funneled more than $115 million in taxpayer dollars to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles — an organization whose self-described core function is protest organizing, political advocacy, and direct opposition to federal law enforcement.

Independent researcher Cam Higby published his findings on February 21, drawing directly from California’s own public expenditure database at open.fiscal.ca.gov. His analysis focuses on CHIRLA, which has received over $100 million from California state agencies alone, with the total figure across all government sources reaching $115 million.

This is not a fringe accusation or a speculative claim — it is a documented flow of public money, traceable through official state records, to an organization that openly boasts of organizing protests, running voter registration campaigns, and taking credit for specific Newsom administration policies.

🚨🧵CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT PAYING PROTESTORS OVER $100M

I have discovered that the state of California is using taxpayer funds to subsidize non-profit organizations whose core function is to organize protests.

CHIRLA (@CHIRLA) has taken over $100M alone in tax-payer funds… pic.twitter.com/tH85DVGGqB

— Cam Higby 🇺🇸 (@camhigby) February 21, 2026

CHIRLA, founded in 1986, describes itself as “one of the largest and most effective advocates for immigrant rights, organizing, educating and defending immigrants and refugees in the streets, in the courts, and in the halls of power.” That final phrase — “in the streets” — is not rhetorical flourish. The organization’s own website lists a Rapid Response Network explicitly designed to “shut down detention centers,” a high school program that trains students to become political activists, and a college student mobilization effort pushing federal mass amnesty legislation across 30 California universities. CHIRLA also operates an affiliate organization in Mexico and a separate political action fund through which it endorses candidates.

The political entanglement runs deep. Higby’s investigation revealed that CHIRLA made nearly 100,000 voter contacts during the 2020 election cycle — what the organization openly classifies as “get-out-the-vote” work. If any portion of the $100-million-plus in state funds supported those activities, it would potentially constitute an illegal use of public money for electioneering.

Federal and state law generally prohibit the use of government grants to fund partisan political activities. Higby explicitly flagged the issue in his reporting, calling the possible violation “serious.”

The funding scandal is not entirely new — it has been building since last summer. When anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles turned into full-scale rioting in June 2025, RedState journalist Jennifer Van Laar traced the money and found that CHIRLA had received approximately $34 million from California state agencies in just the fiscal year ending June 2023 — nearly three times what it received the prior year.

The agencies contributing to that funding stream included the California Department of Social Services, the California Arts Council, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, and — remarkably — the Department of Homeland Security, the very federal agency CHIRLA’s network was actively working to obstruct. Seventy-five percent of CHIRLA’s total revenue in that fiscal year came from government contracts.

Congress took notice. The House Judiciary Committee opened a formal investigation into CHIRLA’s use of public funds, requesting all documents and communications relating to federal funding and demanding a detailed accounting of how those funds were spent. Senator Josh Hawley launched a parallel inquiry, writing directly to CHIRLA Executive Director Angelica Salas and noting that credible evidence suggested the group had provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals involved in the riots.

IRS records obtained by Fox News showed CHIRLA had received $34 million in government grants, including three separate grants from the Biden administration totaling $750,000. President Trump subsequently cut federal funding to the organization, though California state money continued to flow.

Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican, introduced the No Tax Dollars for Riots Act in direct response to the revelations. President Trump endorsed the bill in a Truth Social post, writing that “these radicalized groups” get “paid to incite riots, burn down or destroy a city, then come back to the trough to get money to help rebuild it.”

The Trump administration instructed that no federal funds go to such groups regardless of whether Congress passed the legislation. California Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez formally requested a state audit, saying there was “zero excuse” for taxpayer money to fund activities connected to the riots.

What Higby’s new report adds to that picture is scale and pattern. The $34 million figure from the 2023 fiscal year was alarming enough. The cumulative $115 million total, drawn from years of state expenditure records, reframes the picture entirely. This was not an accident of bureaucratic mismanagement or a one-time grant that slipped through the cracks. It represents a sustained, multi-year financial relationship between the Newsom administration and an organization that openly coordinates street protests, trains high school students as political operatives, runs candidate endorsement machinery through its action fund, and maintains a hotline network that actively alerts illegal immigrants to the movements of federal immigration agents. Higby says CHIRLA is only the first organization in a longer list he intends to expose.

The question this raises is not merely about bad policy or misplaced priorities. It is about whether California’s government has been systematically using public revenue to build and sustain infrastructure for political protest movements — infrastructure that then serves to oppose the policies of a federal administration Gavin Newsom has made no secret of despising.

Whether that constitutes a legal violation, a profound conflict of interest, or simply the most brazen example yet of a blue-state government operating as an opposition political machine is a question that congressional investigators, state auditors, and — ultimately — California voters are going to have to answer for themselves. The money trail, at least, is no longer a theory. It’s a public record.