A charity controlled by Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon raised more than $270,000 in 2024, tax-exempt funds that Nixon said she would use to support Cafe Resistance, the black power-themed bookstore and coffee shop she was launching in Jacksonville. But when Nixon opened the shop that same year, she placed it under the control of her for-profit LLC, and whatever became of the charitable fortune she raised in 2024 is now a mystery.
The IRS deadline for Nixon to report what she did with the money she raised in 2024 expired nearly a year ago. A Florida state disclosure she did make said she spent the majority of her charity's haul, $214,000, on "other." And ever since Nixon opened Cafe Resistance—a squat, cinderblock building in a downtrodden part of town that appeared, to a Washington Free Beacon reporter on multiple visits, to operate on a shoestring—her personal income has skyrocketed. This has led legal and tax experts consulted by the Free Beacon to question whether the Florida Democratic Socialist could be exploiting her charity to funnel funds to her personal LLC in violation of nonprofit laws.
Unanswered questions include how much of the $270,000 raised in 2024 Nixon actually spent on charitable endeavors at her ramshackle bookstore, and how she is spending the charitable donations she continues to raise for race-related "programming" at her store, such as black history classes and the distribution of free contraceptives. Nixon should have answered these questions nearly a year ago on a Form 990 tax return with the IRS by November of 2025, which would have offered a full accounting of her charity's activities in the 2024 calendar year, but she never did.
The Free Beacon contacted Nixon and her campaign on September 25 with a lengthy list of questions related to her charity and LLC, both of which she named the Moxie Group. Nixon did not respond to the inquiry; however, that same day, the Florida Department of State dissolved the Moxie charity as a business entity, and by the afternoon of Sept. 26, the charity—which allegedly "works to empower and uplift underserved and underrepresented communities," according to Nixon's charitable solicitations—had shut down its online fundraising portal, which had been active and soliciting tax-exempt funds the previous day. The Moxie charity's solicitation license in Florida expired January 28, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture, which did not return requests for comment.
Nixon, a Florida state legislator, won a surprise victory in the August Democratic primary, and her personal finances and hodgepodge of black-themed businesses—as well as her charity—are now under scrutiny. She has authored a children's book, The Adventures of Moxie McGriff, about black hair, cofounded a "Melanin Market," and her Cafe Resistance bookstore contains a shrine-like wall devoted to violent black militants, including some who have murdered police officers (there is also a sign with a Black Panther clenched fist at the front door).
Until recently, Nixon's personal finances were a mess. In June 2024, she disclosed to the state of Florida that she had a net worth of $13,000. Three months later, in September 2024, Nixon signed a financial affidavit showing she had a negative net worth of more than $256,000 and that she was spending nearly $3,000 more than she earned every month (Nixon filed the financial affidavit when she filed for divorce in 2024. She withdrew the petition late last month).
In her 2025 financial disclosures, however, Nixon revealed she had clawed her way back to an almost break-even net worth of negative $940 after raking in at least $270,000 from her jobs and investments. But she has since distanced herself from her own financial disclosures, stating in a post last week on Threads: "Do you all think if I made $270K a year I would be riding around in a 2006 Honda Pilot I bought on Facebook marketplace? Please be for real!" She recently said she's on a payment plan with the IRS.
Nixon announced in early 2024 that she would open Cafe Resistance in protest of Florida governor Ron DeSantis's (R.) actions to "ban" books containing sexually explicit content from public schools. At the time, Nixon told reporters her Moxie charity would operate the bookstore, according to news reports promoted by Cafe Resistance's Instagram account. And in fundraising solicitations posted to her X account in 2024, Nixon said donations to her charity would support the operation of the Cafe Resistance bookstore and coffee shop.
Nixon's solicitations made it appear that Cafe Resistance would be a charitable operation through and through. But when she opened the shop later in 2024, Nixon registered the business licenses under her personal for-profit company, the Moxie Group LLC. That was a dangerous move, according to Patrick Sternal, a former nonprofit tax law specialist in the IRS Office of Tax Exempt and Government Entities.
"There are several red flags here," Sternal told the Free Beacon. "The intermingling of the bookstore/café with the charity is itself problematic. This looks like private inurement insofar as charitable funds seem to be flowing to the LLC and ultimately to Nixon, who is an officer and director of the charity. Private inurement is absolutely prohibited under 501(c)(3)." Inurement is a legal term for when an insider improperly benefits from a nonprofit organization's assets. In addition to civil penalties, it can lead to criminal embezzlement charges.
"If the IRS were to determine she is benefiting personally from the charity, its exemption could be revoked and she may have personal tax liability," Sternal added.
The questions about Nixon's charitable income are just the start of a potential legal quagmire she could face just weeks before the midterm elections. Cafe Resistance has provided Nixon's Senate campaign with unfettered access throughout 2026 to host free campaign rallies, phone banks, and fundraising events at the shop. With few exceptions that don't appear to apply to Nixon's business entities, federal laws prohibit corporations and charities from donating free services to political campaigns.
"She appears to be using tax-deductible dollars to subsidize her campaign," said election law attorney Jason Torchinsky. "That's a big problem for the IRS, and it sounds like that may be happening here. Frankly, it also may be a problem for the Florida Department of Agriculture."
Though Nixon has yet to file a Form 990 with the IRS for her charity, the available evidence indicates it did well in 2024. In January 2025, Nixon filed a financial statement with the Florida Department of Agriculture reporting that her charity raised more than $271,000 in 2024, $144,000 of which it received in the form of grants from liberal grantmaking nonprofits including the Groundswell Fund, the Women Donors Network, and the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, none of which returned requests for comment.
From there, however, Nixon's reporting gets muddy. In her 2024 financial report to Florida, which required few details, Nixon claimed her Moxie charity spent $14,000 on occupancy and $19,400 on contract workers, presumably related to rent and wages for Cafe Resistance. But most of the charity's revenue—$214,000—was spent on unexplained "other" expenditures, according to the report.
The missing IRS Form 990 for Nixon's charity, however, has far stricter reporting requirements than the state of Florida. The disclosure, which was due no later than November 2025, would have provided more detail on the $214,000 in "other" expenses the charity claimed in 2024 and offered clarification on the nature of the shared business relationship between it and her for-profit LLC, including whether any safeguards were put in place to prevent Nixon from unduly benefiting from her charity.
In more recent fundraising solicitations, Nixon has said her Moxie charity is "housed" within Cafe Resistance and uses its charitable donations to fund the bookstore's "programming," which includes free black history classes and the distribution of Plan B and other contraceptives. Nixon shut off those fundraising streams just hours after the Free Beacon contacted her for comment on this story on Sept. 25.
The separation between Nixon's charity and LLC in the operation of her Cafe Resistance bookstore has often been nonexistent. The email address her charity uses in its disclosures to the Florida Department of Agriculture, for example, is the same email address the bookstore uses to solicit bookings for birthday parties and private events, the revenue from which Nixon's for-profit LLC presumably collects.
Nixon's charity and LLC are both corporations, and corporations are generally prohibited from providing event space to political campaigns for free, unless they have a practice of regularly providing their spaces to outside groups for free, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Nixon's campaign hosted an official event in January at Cafe Resistance, as well as volunteer phone banks to drive voter turnout and campaign fundraising events. She has filmed campaign ads at the shop urging viewers to "vote for me," and the Free Beacon spotted Nixon's Senate campaign paraphernalia on display throughout the store during several visits in September. Nixon's campaign has reported no disbursements to her LLC or charity for its use of Cafe Resistance's space.
When a Free Beacon reporter called Cafe Resistance on Sept. 16 to ask how to donate to Nixon's charity, the employee who answered directed the reporter to donate to Nixon's Senate campaign at the address on file with the FEC. Moments later, the same employee claimed Nixon's charity was "totally separate" from her campaign and that the reporter could donate books or cash to the Moxie Group in person at Cafe Resistance.
Five days later, on Sept. 21, an employee who identified herself as the manager of Cafe Resistance told a Free Beacon reporter who visited the bookstore in person that she had no knowledge of any charity operating within the shop. The manager claimed she was working for Cafe Resistance as a volunteer.
