Trump administration officials continued their attack on George Soros, a major donor to Democrats, this week, with the Justice Department now calling for an investigation into his Open Society Foundations, which provide large sums to artists across the globe.
The President has repeatedly directed his ire toward Soros and his family. (Soros’s son, Robert Soros, appears on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list alongside his wife Jamie.) Trump previously called for the 95-year-old billionaire and his son Alexander to be charged under the RICO Act, a federal law that makes racketeering a punishable crime in the US.
On Truth Social, Trump accused George and Alexander of “support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.” George has also faced the wrath of right-wing politicians in his native Hungary, where there is a “Stop Soros” law that discourages providing funds to undocumented immigrants.
Vice President JD Vance has claimed that the Open Society Foundations, along with the Ford Foundation, are “setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.” More recently, in the wake of the killing Charlie Kirk, Vance and Trump have accused Soros of funding leftist protestors.
The Open Society Foundations regularly award fellowships to artists and curators. The diverse list of previous fellows includes many artists well-known in the American art world, among them Firelei Báez, Yto Barrada, Nicholas Galanin, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Bouchra Khalili, Guadalupe Maravilla, Rouanne Abou-Rahme, and Dalton Paula. The artists each receive $100,000 through the fellowship.
Alongside these fellowships, the Open Society Foundations also funds organizations focused on human rights and democracy. According to its website, the foundations provided $1.2 billion funding in 2024 alone.
The foundation has also provided $15 million in funding to organizations facilitating the reclamation of African heritage.
Soros himself has personally given $50 million to Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, the top program of its kind in the US. (Melissa Schiff Soros, Robert’s ex-wife, is currently on the center’s board.) He has also granted mass amounts in funding to the college more broadly.
The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is calling for several US attorney’s offices to begin investigating the Open Society Foundations, with the directive alleging that the foundations are potentially engaged in “racketeering, arson, wire fraud and material support for terrorism,” per the article.
According to the Times, a lawyer for the Justice Department specifically cited claims made by the Capital Research Center, a conservative watchdog. The center alleged that the Open Society Foundations have “poured over $80 million into groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence,” including to groups critical of Israel such as Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group.
An Open Society Foundations spokesperson told the Times that these claims were “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
