As summer enters its final days, attention turns to why early-year anti-ICE protests and riots in Minneapolis did not develop into a sustained nationwide wave of unrest comparable to the 2020 BLM riots. Those demonstrations created a potential flashpoint, but protests failed to spread like wildfire across left-wing-controlled cities - in what could have only been a 2020 redux of the "Summer of Love" Marxist revolution.
Operation Metro Surge deployed thousands of ICE/CBP and federal officers to the Twin Cities starting in late 2025. Confrontation began as left-wing groups used activists to mount pressure campaigns against federal officers pursuing illegal-alien criminals. This resulted in two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens: Renee Nicole Macklin Good on 7 January and Alex Pretti on 24 January.
What immediately followed were protests/riots, and left-wing groups certainly had their "George Floyd" catalyst for full mobilization, with protest infrastructure moved into the region. But by spring and into summer, whatever spark that movement had completely faded into the abyss.
Not even Neville Roy Singham, the Shanghai-based Marxist tech financier who funds U.S. NGOs and works with left-wing activists such as CodePink and the ANSWER Coalition, could fire up any meaningful protests against President Trump's foreign-policy decisions that directly impact Beijing, whether on Venezuela, Cuba, and/or the Strait of Hormuz.
What we do know is that a multi-agency federal task force, with the State Department and Treasury at the core, has launched investigations into the nonprofit world and could very soon strip tax-exempt status from George Soros' far-left Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, some of which are responsible for funding protests and riots, or, as in SPLC's case, funding the opposition.
The New York Post recently reported that Treasury officials are drafting a framework to audit NGOs suspected of exploiting their 501(c)(3) status for political activity, illegal conduct, or support of radical groups, which has only put left-wing billionaire foundations and donor-advised funds on notice.
The question is whether the federal government's war on the radical left and foreign subversion network that seeks to sow chaos has shaken that protest-industrial complex to its core. A source told the NYPost that officials were "like a dog with a bone" and reckoned that many NGOs and their donor bases could be "on borrowed time."
The absence of summer riots by the radical left is more concerning because these groups are certainly retooling their attachments to popular movements. Just wait - the next one could be right around the corner.
Let's also add that the lack of USAID funding could certainly be another driver.