While Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski thought it proper to vote to convict President Donald Trump during his impeachment after he was no longer president, she now says that the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is a waste of time.
“I am more than a little bit frustrated that we’re going to be taking up an impeachment process that most everybody understands is really nothing more than a messaging effort,” she told reporters.
Republicans are advising that Senate Democrats plan to dismiss the charges against Mayorkas. In February the U.S. House voted to impeach him for failing to secure the southern border with Mexico. More than 7.2 million illegal immigrants have entered the country during the Biden Administration — an amount greater than the population of 36 states
The House was originally expected to deliver impeachment charges this week. Then, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer changed the Senate schedule and publicly called the impeachment a sham that he will table with the help of his fellow Democrats.
When the Senate held a trial after Trump left office, 44 Republican senators voted it was unconstitutional for the Senate to try a president after he left office. Murkowski voted with the Democrats, however, to impeach a private citizen.
Mayorkas stands accused of failing to uphold his oath to defend and secure the United States, instead presiding over a lax border security regime that has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country. Critics argue that Mayorkas has deliberately neglected his duty to maintain operational control of the border, as mandated by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, resulting in an influx of illegal immigration and drug smuggling, including deadly narcotics like fentanyl.
Moreover, Mayorkas is accused of violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by implementing policies such as catch and release, which allow illegal aliens to enter the United States without proper documentation. House impeachment documents argue that these actions not only undermine national security but also contravene the law, leading to an increased risk of criminal activity and terrorism.
Furthermore, Mayorkas faces allegations related to the handling of Covid-19 at the border. Despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s order to prevent the introduction of potentially contagious individuals into the United States, Mayorkas stands accused of failing to enforce this order effectively. Impeachment articles assert that his refusal to expel aliens under Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act has led to the spread of Covid-19 within border communities and beyond, posing unnecessary risks to public health and straining local resources.
The Alaska House of Representatives passed the Operating and Mental Health budgets, HB 268 and HB 270 on Thursday, with unanimous support from House Majority members. The vote was 23-17. The consolidated efforts in HB 268 and HB 270, total $12.3 billion from all fund sources, including state and federal, plus Permanent Fund earnings.
HB 268, the state’s operating budget, contains these highlights:
Education: Substantial additional one-time funding of $174.6 million, equivalent to a $680 BSA increase, reaffirms our commitment to education. The budget also contains significant investments in K-3 education assistance, career and technical education initiatives, Head Start, and the READS act. School bond debt reimbursement is also fully funded at $44.9 million.
Public Safety: An infusion of $3.5 million for 10 additional VPSO positions and strategic investments in crime investigation and domestic violence prevention underscores the House’s commitment to safeguarding communities.
Statehood Defense: Bolstering resources to safeguard Alaska’s sovereignty, including additional funding for litigation and support for natural resources specialists, reaffirms state commitment to protecting our state’s interests.
Permanent Fund Dividend: Honoring the lawful commitment to Alaskans, the House’s version of the bill contains a $2,273 PFD, which would represent the third largest dividend in Alaska’s history.
Immediately, Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel slammed the budget, saying on social media that there will be cuts, and she indicated the cuts would come from the dividend.
“The Senate gets the Operating Budget next and we will, of course, rein in the spending. Our Bipartisan Coalition Majority is committed to not spend beyond available revenue, not spending from savings, and to allocate an affordable dividend.” That means the Senate is dedicated to not following Alaska Statute and the formula laid out in law. The Senate majority is dominated by Democrats.
Last year, the Senate held the budget until the last minute and then forced it back to the House with no time to respond, requiring a special session. Political observers will be keeping a close eye on Senate hostilities this year to see if the pattern repeats.
The 14-year-old student at Clark Middle School in Anchorage, having been savagely beaten by a violent gang of students in late March, finally returned to school Thursday. She was accompanied by a crowd of well-wishers led by Bob Lester, cohost of the KWHL morning show “Bob and Brock.”
Peyton Guthrie mustered all the poise of an adult when she arrived at the school at around 8 a.m. Thursday and approached the crowd of 20 people who had come to support her. A small group of police officers stood nearby, while Lester interviewed Peyton and her mother, Natasha Guthrie.
“In response to the harrowing incident, Bob Lester and Brock Lindow of Alaska’s Morning Show took initiative, rallying concerned members of the community to accompany the victimized student back to school on Thursday morning. This collective gesture aims not only to demonstrate unity but also to offer emotional solace to the affected family as the girl bravely returns to the unsettling atmosphere of her educational environment,” KWHL.com wrote about the return of Peyton to her school.
Natasha Guthrie said, “Thank you so much everybody for being here, it really means a lot.” Guthrie has been on a mission to raise awareness about bullying and violence in Anchorage schools, and she is fighting for safety campuses so other students don’t endure the savage beating her daughter went through.
U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Rep. Mary Peltola have passed along their recommendation for Julie Kitka to serve as the Denali Commission Federal Co-Chair. If approved, Kitka would replace Jocelyn Fenton who started serving in the role of Interim Federal Co-Chair on March 6, 2024.
“Alaskans know what Julie Kitka can deliver when she’s taking the lead,” said Sen. Murkowski. “For 33 years, she served as the President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, successfully balancing the needs of a diverse group of tribes, village corporations, regional corporations, regional nonprofits and tribal consortiums, while advocating for Alaskan Natives on a local, state, and federal level. There is no one I can think who is more qualified to advocate for economic development in rural Alaska than Julie.”
“Julie Kitka has been a generational leader advancing the interests and improving the lives of Alaska Native people,” said Sen. Sullivan. “During her historic, 33-year tenure as President of the Alaska Federation of Natives, Julie elevated the voices of Alaska Native communities and tribes to the highest levels of our state and federal governments, and accomplished so much on behalf of tens of thousands of Alaskans. She also had an unwavering focus on connecting AFN to our Alaska-based military and veterans community that was another very impressive aspect of her tenure. Julie’s wealth of leadership experience and vast knowledge of rural Alaska uniquely qualify her to lead the Denali Commission and execute its important mission. I look forward to continuing to work with Julie in this new role to create opportunities for economic and infrastructure development in our rural communities.”
“Julie Kitka is a force of nature. Her work at the forefront of Alaska Native politics has inspired and motivated many across the state. I’ve known Julie for many years, and she has always spoken out for the issues Native and rural Alaskans face. As an organization dedicated to serving the needs of rural Alaskans, the Denali Commission needs a leader like Julie,” said Rep. Peltola. “I’m proud of the delegation’s selection, and I’m hopeful that we will see her approved and at work as soon as possible.”
The Denali Commission was established in 1998 by the late Sen. Ted Stevens to fund economic development and infrastructure in rural Alaska. The commission also serves as the lead agency to assist communities facing flooding, permafrost degradation threats and coastal erosion.
Under her leadership, AFN devolved into a leftist political organization to the point where it has become hostile territory for any Republican. AFN has become so radical that a number of Alaska Native corporations have left the organization in recent years, including Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Doyon, Tlingit Haida Central Council, and the Aleut Corporation. ASRC is the state’s wealthiest private corporation, while Doyon is Alaska’s largest private landowner.
Kitka was the recipient of the 2022 Ecotrust Indigenous Leadership Awards for her “tireless commitment to ensuring and advancing the rights of Alaska Natives.” Ecotrust is based in Portland, Oregon.
Firearm dealers will be required by the Biden Administration to run background checks on buyers who purchase firearms from gun shows or other places that are not actual stores. The rule also applies to online sales and even between private persons.
The Biden Administration says it has the authority to expand this curtailment of constitutional rights because of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was supported and voted for by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Sen. Dan Sullivan voted against it.
In response to the announcement, Senate Republicans will introduce a bill to repeal the Biden rule that was announced by the Department of Justice on Wednesday, which vastly expands required federal background checks. Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina will introduce legislation to repeal the rule.
The Biden rule says that “even a single firearm transaction may be sufficient to require a license, if there is other behavior to suggest commercial activity. For example, a person selling just one gun and then saying to others they are willing and able to purchase more firearms for resale may be required to obtain a license and run background checks,” according to the White House.
“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”
Executors of estates or personal representatives of estates will have to get federal firearms licenses under the new rule.
“From the outset, this bill was a compromise measure, spearheaded by a bipartisan group of 20 of my Senate colleagues. I join them in their commitment to showing the public that Congress knows the status quo on gun violence is not acceptable—that we can do more for school safety, for the safety of our communities, and to address the growing mental health crisis in this country,” said Sen. Murkowski after voting in favor of the bill in 2022. “This legislation emphasizes and provides additional funding for mental health and school safety programs to help ensure that kids and people of all ages are better protected. As a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment and a gun owner myself, it was essential to ensure that this legislation not violate the rights of law-abiding gun owners. It does not. While this legislation is not perfect, it is a responsive, responsible, and targeted approach to address the very serious mass shooting and gun violence incidents this country continues to face.”
What would you say if you were told that you, the taxpayer, actually paid for their travel, meals, and lodging?
Indirectly, through federal taxes, you did pay for those who filled the entrances to the House chambers to influence and intimidate legislators during the vote to override Governor Dunleavy’s veto of SB 140. The bill would have increased K12 funding with no accountability for results.
Let’s follow the money. In this case, it was the Alaska Children’s Trust that funded the travel of the Great Alaska Schools’ lobbying effort to intimidate legislators into overriding the governor’s veto.
The Alaska Children’s Trust is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is limited by the IRS in funding lobbying efforts. It usually does good work by providing grants to organizations that protect children, educate parents, and help prevent child abuse.
One of the founders of the Great Alaska Schools organization is the current Rep. Alyse Galvin. She has lobbied for more and more K-12 spending for many years.
Here is the Facebook post from Great Alaska Schools organization stating that the ACT funded their travel to the legislature for lobbying:
Here are the grant criteria from its website:
“Eligibility. Applications are accepted from qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, tribes, local or state governments, schools, or Regional Educational Attendance Areas in the state of Alaska. Organizations that have received past awards and are in good standing are eligible to apply. Applicants with open Alaska Children Trust grants must be current on all grant reporting. Applications from organizations with outstanding grant reports will not be accepted.
“Non-Eligible: Individuals, for-profit, 501(c)(4) or (c)(6) organizations, non-Alaska based organizations, and federal government agencies are not eligible for competitive grants.
Applications for religious indoctrination or other religious activities, endowment building, deficit financing, fundraising, lobbying, electioneering and activities of political nature will not be considered.”
One can clearly see that the ACT violated its grant eligibility criteria in 3 instances:
– The Great Alaska Schools organization is not an eligible organization.
– The Great Alaska Schools is an independent expenditure organization. GAS only filed one report with APOC for 2014.
– Great Alaska Schools used the ACT grant to lobby legislators.
Maybe the ACT was pressured by one of its board members, Margo Bellamy, to pay for the lobbying activity. Bellamy, president of the Anchorage School Board, is the ACT vice chair.
So, where does the ACT get its funding?
Much of it comes from the federal government, otherwise known as you the taxpayer, through grants.
Here is the grant data from the ACT federal tax return for 2022 that shows it received government grants totaling $418,449:
It is not possible to break down how much of the government grants came from the State of Alaska.
But in FY 2019 one can see from the DHSS website how the ACT received $250,000 of federal money:
And in FY 2022 the ACT received $200,000 of federal funds; the State chipped in another $50,000.
Even the Municipality of Anchorage, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, and Georgetown University contribute to the ACT. Some of these donations probably go to better the lives of Alaskans. But remember, money is fungible and can be spent on lobbying Alaska Legislators too.
In other words, you, the taxpayer funded the lobbying efforts by the Great Alaska Schools to pressure and intimidate legislators to overturn the governor’s veto of AB 140, a bill that sent loads of money to the K-12 schools with no accountability for increasing student achievement.
Always follow the money. That will lead you to the truth.
The Anchorage Daily News held a company wide meeting Tuesday to announce it will be reducing print from 6 days a week to just Sunday and Wednesday, effective June 2.
The company is said to be expecting at least a 20% loss in circulation from the change in addition to the steady 16-19% loss it currently is experiencing each year.
A source told Must Read Alaska that the Sunday print run was just 6,400 copies, while in the 1990s, the Sunday edition was over 100,000 copies.
There will be layoffs and further restructuring in the coming months as a result of the changes, MRAK has learned.
The newspaper was purchased by millionaire Alice Rogoff in 2014. She changed the name to the Alaska Dispatch, the name of an upstart online news organization she had purchased from journalists Amanda Coyne and Tony Hopfinger. Rogoff ran the entire enterprise into the red and finally had to liquidate it as a bankruptcy reorganization.
The Binkley Company, headed by former state Sen. John Binkley, purchased the print and online Alaska Dispatch out of bankruptcy in 2017 and returned it to its former name, the Anchorage Daily News. Rogoff had paid over $30 million for the newspaper, while the Binkley Company purchased it from the bankruptcy proceedings for $1 million. Ryan Binkley, son of John Binkley, became president and CEO and Andy Pennington became the publisher.
The pattern is part of the decline of newspapers across the country. The Juneau Empire reduced its print edition to twice weekly a year ago, as did the Peninsula Clarion. Both are now being printed out of state. The ADN contracted its printing out to the Frontiersman when it changed hands to the Binkleys. It was once a daily newspaper, but has recently reduced print editions to five days a week.
Just last month, the ADN was lobbying the Legislature to preserve the paid public notices in order to slow the decline. Senate Bill 68, recognizing that most newspapers have most of their readers online anyway, calls for publishing the notices in the Alaska Online Public Notice System, by mail, and by “other means as deemed necessary.”
The newspaper has always had a liberal bent, but has become hard-left starting with the transfer to Rogoff in 2017.
The ink was hardly dry on the Juneau School District FY 2025 budget passed last month before a local group filedpetitionsto recall the school board president, Deedie Sorensen, and vice president, Emil Mackey.
Petition supporters have 60 days under state statute to secure enough signatures to force a recall vote.
The petitions chronicle a litany of grievances stemming from the recall supporters’ inability to convince the board to keep both high schools open in the face of declining student counts and significant budget deficits.
The audacity and unsupported accusations of the petitions are eye-opening. Rob Palmer, Juneau’s City Attorney, ruled that, of the15 separate charges (seven for Sorenson, and eight for Mackey),13 were legally insufficient and were thrown out.
The sole remaining charge for each is identical: “Failure to understand the FY24 budget and accounting errors resulting in $7.9M deficit and taxpayer loan from CBJ.” Ironically, the FY24 budget is unrelated to JSD school closures and was crafted and recommended by previous Superintendent Bridget Weiss and unanimously approved by the board in 2023.
Palmer’s legal opinionnotes that “regarding [legal] sufficiency, it does not matter if the petition’s statement contains untrue or mischaracterized facts. It does not matter if the petition’s statement omits facts…”.
Although the board voted 5-2 to approve the school consolidation plan and unanimously to approve both the 2024 and 2025 budgets, the recall group targets only two board members for recall. This alone is reason for potential signers to reject the petition. It’s clear the group’s effort isn’t about better schools but, rather, about shifting blame.
For years, previous school administrators and school board leadership overlooked their own demographic projections and budgeted for unrealistic student populations.
Several past board members and school officials won’t have to answer questions about why the school district is in this predicament.
Bridget Weiss, JSD’s superintendent for five years, left in 2023. In a 2018 Juneau Empire article, Weiss stated she was “more optimistic for the future, saying that if Juneau’s economy can provide jobs and be attractive to young families, enrollment could turn around” even though evidence pointed to the opposite occurring.
Brian Holst, currently director of the Juneau Economic Development Council, served nine years on the board and five as president, leaving in November 2023. Paul Kelly served three years on the school board, two of those years in a leadership role, departing in 2021 to run successfully for the Juneau Assembly last year.
They all left the party before the tough decisions had to be made. The current school board was left to clean up the mess.
Deedie Sorensen and Emil Mackey had the courage to speak up, no longer allowing the board to ignore Juneau’s student population decline that is primarily responsible for the district’s deteriorating financial condition. Sorensen and Mackey consistently and rationally advocated for a budget that prioritized people and programs over buildings, and, in doing so, convinced a majority of the board to do the same.
Yet the petitioners blame those two board members for necessary school closings caused by a financial debacle that has been brewing for years.
That is some kind of twisted logic.
What the petitioners and their supporters won’t tell you is that the school district has been living on borrowed time. Maintaining the status quo or taking half-measures isn’t an option. The board’s own demographic projections envision losing another 1,200 students over the next ten years.
Within a short time, an elementary school (or two) will likely need to be closed. In two years, the district must begin repaying the $4.1 million loan included in the financial rescue package approved by the CBJ Assembly. With Juneau’s dwindling student population, the district’s structural deficit won’t be cured without more cuts and closures, even if the Legislature passes increased education funding for school districts.
But petition boosters don’t want you to know that. They want you to shoot the messengers.
Before starting a war, maybe the people behind this recall effort will have the courage to look in the mirror and, like Pogo, realize that “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening became a regular opinion page columnist for the Juneau Empire. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers’ expense, RealClearInvestigations has found.
The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration’s unprecedented demand that every federal agency “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”
A dizzying array of overwhelmingly “democracy-focused” entities with ties to the Democratic Party operating as charities and funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from major liberal “dark money” vehicles are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register the voters, deliver them the ballots, and figuratively and sometimes literally harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump.
These efforts, now buttressed by the federal government, amplify and extend what Time magazine described as a “well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies,” who had worked behind the scenes in 2020 “to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” to defeat Trump and other Republicans. The “shadow campaigners,” Time declared, “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”
Heading into 2024, “there is not a ‘shadow’ campaign,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “There is an overt assault on President Trump and those who wish to vote for him occurring at every level of government and with the support of all major institutions.”
By contrast, Republican Party stalwarts lament that no comparable effort exists on their side. The GOP’s turnout and messaging efforts seek to thread a difficult needle by encouraging early and absentee voting and ballot-harvesting – pandemic-era measures that Trump and supporters blame for his 2020 electoral defeat – while the party simultaneously fights the mainly blue-state laws that made the practices possible. The party’s position is further complicated by its standard-bearer’s warnings of a rigged election bigger than in 2020, which some speculate could turn off moderate swing voters.
The IRSpermits tax-exempt nonprofit groups to engage in voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives so long as they do not “refer to any candidate or political party” nor conduct their activities “in a biased manner that favors (or opposes) one or more candidates prohibited.”
These entities have become magnets for funds not only from wealthy donors, who can contribute without traditional campaign finance limits – and get a tax break to boot – but also abundantly endowed private foundations that are prohibited from engaging in partisan activities.
In recent years, dozens of progressive-oriented 501(c)(3)s, now pulling in upwards of $500 million annually, have engaged in purportedly neutral efforts to impact elections, according to Hayden Ludwig, director of Policy Research at the election integrity-focused advocacy group, Restoration of America.
In practice, critics like Ludwig argue, left-leaning charities flout the law by registering and mobilizing demographics that tend to vote disproportionately Democratic behind a veil of non-partisan democracy promotion.
During the 2020 election, for example, the Voter Participation Center solicited millions of ballot applications in swing states – many of them prefilled for respondents. This nonprofit, like its peers, is clear that it isn’t targeting just any voters, but what it and progressive activists have dubbed a “New American Majority” of “young people, people of color and unmarried women.”
Tom Lopach, a longtime Democratic Party operative and the center’s president and CEO, told RCI in a statement: “We do the work that state election officials typically do not do – seeking out underrepresented voting-eligible Americans Tom Lopach … This is difficult but necessary work that brings democracy to eligible Americans’ doorsteps.”
In 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan showed how supposedly neutral efforts can have a partisan impact when they funneled some $400 million through two progressive–led but purportedly nonpartisan nonprofits into election offices across the country.
That money disproportionately wentto jurisdictions that Joe Biden won in the pivotal battleground states that delivered his victory, often flowing to left-leaning nonprofits to whom election offices outsourced the administration of sometimes critical functions.
In April 2022, a primary conduit of these so-called “Zuckerbucks,” the Center for Tech and Civic Life, announced the launch of a successor to the 2020 effort – the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a five-year $80 million program “to envision, support, and celebrate excellence in U.S. election administration.”
“The left has assembled an impressive ‘election-industrial’ complex of non-profit organizations that is constantly working towards goals like ‘promoting participation’ targeting ‘underrepresented minorities,’” said Jason Snead, executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project. Such terms, Snead says, “are code for identifying and mobilizing liberal voters.”
Election experts view such activities as potentially decisive.
“‘Nonpartisan’ and ‘charitable’ voter registration and get-out-the-vote groups” are the Democratic Party’s “electioneering super-weapon[s],” said Parker Thayer, an analyst with the conservative-oriented Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.
Born of a plan “commissioned by [Hillary] Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, funded by the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, and coordinated with cut-throat Democratic consultants,” Thayer writes in an extensive analysis of the group’s efforts, “the Everybody Votes campaign [has] used the guise of civic-minded charity to selectively register millions of ‘non-white’ swing-state voters in the hopes of getting out the Democratic vote.”
It does so by funding and training over 50 community groups to register voters to close“the voter registration gap in communities of color,” which it attributes to “modern forms of Jim Crow laws,” such as voter ID requirements, the group’s executive director, Nellie Sires, said in a January 2024 interview.
From 2016-2021, the Everybody Votes Campaign, doing business as three entities, collected over $190 million from major Democratic Party donors, unions, and environmental activists. Some of the largest donors include the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund; the New Venture and Hopewell Funds, managed by for-profit consulting firm Arabella Advisors; and the George Soros-funded Foundation to Promote Open Society – all 501(c)(3) public charities or private foundations forbidden from supporting “voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias.”
The Everybody Votes Campaign distributed the funds to a slew of left-leaning state-based voter registration organizations largely in eight pivotal states from 2016 to 2019 – Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada – and then to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 2021.
According to Thayer’s analysis, the Everybody Votes Campaign’s voter registration push “would have provided Democrats more votes than the total margins of victory in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania,” securing Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
‘4 to 10 Times More Cost-Effective’
One notable backer of the Everybody Votes Campaign is Mind the Gap, a “Moneyball-style” Silicon Valley Democratic Super PAC founded by Stanford law professor Barbara Fried, and connected to the political activities of her convicted crypto-fraudster son, Sam Bankman-Fried.
The analytics-focused outfit prepared a confidential strategy memo leaked in advance of the 2020 election, noting that “501(c)(3) voter registration focused on underrepresented groups in the electorate” would be the “single most effective tactic for ensuring Democratic victories” – “4 to 10 times more cost-effective” on after-tax basis at “garnering additional Democratic votes” relative to alternatives like “broadcast media and digital buys.”
Mind the Gap recommended that donors contribute to three organizations: the Voter Participation Center and its sister organization, the Center for Voter Information for mail-based registration efforts, and Everybody Votes for site-based registration efforts.
The largest grant recipient, receiving $24 million during the 2016-21 period, was State Voices, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan network of 25 state-based coalitions … that collectively partner with over 1,200 organizations” consisting of “advocates, organizers, and activists … work[ing] together to fight for a healthy democracy and political power for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and all people of color (BIPOC).”
Another top recipient, raking in over $10 million, was the Voter Participation Center.
According to the Capital Research Center, the Everybody Votes Campaign would collect and spend over $50 million in connection with the 2022 midterm elections – the most recent period for which financials are available. All told, since its founding in 2015, the Campaign says, its network has registered 5.1 million voters, of whom 76% are people of color; 56% are women; and 47% are under the age of 35.
Last November, the news outlet Puck reported on a secret memo circulated by Mind the Gap regarding its plans for 2024. “Our strategy early in the 2024 presidential race will be to massively scale high-performing voter registration and mobilization programs,” the memo read. The PAC again specifically directed donors to the Everybody Votes Campaign, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Lopach, who has worked in Democratic Party politics his entire career, bristled at RCI’s questions regarding critics’ claims of a partisan bent to its work. “The presumptions baked into the questions … emailed to us are inaccurate and reveal the reporter’s own biases,” he responded, while emphasizing the organization’s targeting of “underrepresented voting-eligible Americans.”
Thayer has dubbed Everybody Votes the “largest and most corrupt ‘charitable’ voter registration drive in American history.”
Of such organizations’ claims of nonpartisanship, Howell told RCI: “If they were truly interested in an informed participatory constitutional Republic, they would have an even-handed approach to registering voters.”
“Call me when they show up to a NASCAR race, Daughters of the American Revolution event, or a gun show,” Howell added. “Then we can pretend for a minute that these are beyond just facial efforts to appear somewhat neutral.”
Challenges for GOP
But NASCAR races have not been hubs for GOP-led voter registration efforts either. Restoration of America’s Ludwig estimates that the right may spend as little as 1% of what the left spends on voter registration efforts.
A recent memofrom the Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC that aims to elect conservatives, noted that in the 2022 election cycle, while $8.9 billion was spent on federal elections, there were zero large independent expenditure organizations on the right focused on get-out-the-vote efforts or “ballot chasing.”
Republican Partyvehicles and conservative outfits like grassroots-oriented Turning Point Action, a 501(c)(4), are engaged in such efforts in the 2024 cycle, but the scale and sophistication of their political counterparts’ efforts would appear unrivaled at this point.
Election experts attribute this gap to several factors beyond the GOP’s focus on other tactics to win elections, or ineffectiveness. They note that Democratic voters tend to be more concentrated in urban areas and college campuses, making it easier to run efficient registration drives. As regards early and absentee voting and ballot harvesting, it is not clear if these efforts will substantially grow the pool of Republican voters versus merely enabling the party to “bank” votes earlier.
With respect to the use of 501(c)(3)s to conduct such activities, Ludwig said some conservatives may still be fearful of running afoul of the IRS – through exploiting tax laws to pursue efforts perceived to be partisan effectively on the taxpayers’ dime – in the wake of its targeting of Tea Party groups for extreme scrutiny during the Obama years.
‘Bidenbucks’: ‘Zuckerbucks’ on Steroids
Since the 2020 election, Democrats have opened a second apparent electioneering front that Republicans could not match even if they wanted to: The rise of so-called “Bidenbucks,” which uses the “unlimited funding, resources, and reach” of the federal government and agency offices located nationwide,” to turn out favored voters, according to Stewart Whitson, legal director of the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability.
In March 2021, President Biden introduced Executive Order 14019. The directive on “promoting access to voting” orders every federal agency, more than 600 in all, to register and mobilize voters – particularly “people of color” and others the White House says face “challenges to exercise their fundamental right to vote.” It further directs the agencies to collaborate with ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits in pursuit of its goals.
As RCI has previously reported, EO 14019 appears to have been designed by left-leaning think tank Demos and implemented in consultation and sometimes coordination with a slew of progressive, labor, and identity-focused groups with the goal of generating up to 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually.
The ACLU and Democrats have reportedly helped execute the order. RCI additionally found that at least two recipients of grants under the Everybody Votes Campaign, the NAACP and UnidosUS – formerly the National Council of Raza – were also listed on an email as participants in a July 2021 listening session on the executive order convened by the White House and agency officials.
Whitson, whose organization unearthed that email in its fight to expose details about the order, emphasized that “[U]nlike 2020 wherein the shadow campaign was conducted by private citizens seeking to influence government election operations from the outside, the threat we face in 2024 is being launched from within the government itself.”
Facing both congressional scrutiny and litigation, the administration has closely guarded the strategic plans agencies were to develop to carry out the order, how they are implementing them, to what end, and with whom.
Perfunctory press releases, reports from groups supportive of the order, and documents slowly ferreted out via FOIA requests and litigation, however, demonstrate that relevant agencies have sought to drive voter registration via public housing authorities, child nutrition programs, and voluntary tax preparation clinics.
In August 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued updated guidance calling for the agency to register voters at naturalization ceremonies.
More recently, the Department of Education did the same, blessing the use of federal work-study funds to pay students for “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration,” and other activities. Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, recently told the Epoch Times that the Department had previously threatened schools “that you better be registering students or you could lose your federal funds.”
When asked by RCI to respond to Walter’s claim, the Department of Education would not. Over two dozen Pennsylvania state legislators challenged the order via a lawsuit in January. Citing alleged unlawful attempts by several agencies to register Keystone state voters, the lawmakers asserted: “By engaging in a targeted voter registration effort of this magnitude, focused specifically on these agencies and the groups of potential voters they interact with, leveraging the resources and reach of the federal government, this effort appears to be a taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote effort designed to benefit the current President’s political party.”
Echoing this view, Whitson’s Foundation for Government Accountability submitted an amicus brief noting that “all of the federal agencies FGA has identified as taking active steps to carry out EO 14019 have one thing in common: They provide government welfare benefits and other services to groups of voters the vast majority of which have historically voted Democrat.”
The plaintiffs alleged the executive order violated both Pennsylvania law limiting voter registration efforts to non-federal actors, and constitutional provisions reserving election laws to the states. On March 26, a district court dismissed the case, claiming the plaintiffs lacked standing. Whitson told RCI that others would likely lodge similar lawsuits, building on the Pennsylvania legislators’ case in the wake of the dismissal. Days later, The Federalist reported that the plaintiffs intended to appeal their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson did not reply to RCI’s inquiries regarding the executive order.
Opposition and Circumvention
Republicans have had more success opposing the use of Zuckerbucks and other private monies used to finance public elections. More than two dozen states would move to ban or restrict such grants in response to the activities observed during the 2020 election.
Most recently, Wisconsin, where some of the most controversial Zuckerbucks-related efforts took place, was added to that list when, on April 2, voters approved a constitutional amendment barring the private funding of elections.
Despite this crackdown and the feds seemingly stepping into the breach, efforts to privately finance election administration persist. The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence bills itselfas an initiative to bolster “woefully unsupported” election offices to “revitalize American democracy.”
The organization says it services jurisdictions – 11 listed on its website, ranging across states from Arizona to California and Wisconsin – with “training, mentorship, and resources.” Alliance officials did not respond to RCI’s inquiry about whether it would be terminating the relationship with the city of Madison, Wisconsin., in light of the passage of the recent ballot measure that would seem to have barred it. Nor did it respond to RCI’s other inquiries in connection with this article.
Most of these partnerships were initiated with jurisdictions in states that have not banned Zuckerbucks, though it has sought to circumvent such prohibitions in Georgia and Utah. The stated goal of the Alliance for Election Excellence is to support voters via measures like assisting participating centers in “redesigning” forms to make them more intuitive and purchasing infrastructure “to improve election security and accessibility.”
Alliance launch partners include entities such as:
The Center for Civic Design, which works with election offices “using research, design, accessibility, and plain language to remove barriers in the voter journey and invite participation in democracy;”
The Elections Group, to “implement new programs or improve processes for voters and stakeholders”; and
The Center for Secure and Modern Elections to “modernize the voting system, making elections more efficient and secure.”
Critics argue this seemingly more modest effort is, in reality, an ambitious Zuckerbucks rebrand.
Snead’s Honest Elections Project published a report in April 2023, based in part on documents received from FOIA requests, indicating “that the Alliance is a reinvention of CTCL’s scheme to use private funding to strongarm election policy nationwide.”
Among other takeaways, it found that:
The Alliance offers services that touch every aspect of election administration, ranging from “legal” and “political” consultation to public relations, guidance, and assistance with recruitment and training.
The Alliance is gathering detailed information on the inner workings of participating election offices and developing “improvement plans” to reshape the way they operate.
The report shows that many of the alliance’s launch partners, starting with the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Civic Design, are funded by major Democrat-tied, so-called “dark money” groups such as the Democracy Fund and Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund and Hopewell Fund.
The Democracy Fund is led by Democrat tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar, which has granted some $275 million to like-minded organizations from publications like Mother Jones and ProPublica to the Voter Registration Project since its founding.
The District of Columbia recently closed a criminal investigation into Arabella, whose fund network reportedlyspent nearly $1.2 billion in 2020 alone, after probing it over allegations its funds were pursuing political ends in violation of their tax-exempt statuses. The Center for Secure and Modern Elections, the Honest Elections Project says, pushes “left-wing priorities like automatic voter registration” and is run by the New Venture Fund. The Elections Group’s CEO and co-founder, Jennifer Morrell, previously served as a consultant at the Democracy Fund.
The Capital Research Center’s Walter uses a football analogy to explain why he sees these efforts as untoward. He told RCI: “Election offices are the refs in elections; the parties are teams trying to score. You’d be puzzled if you heard Super Bowl refs say they’re trying to boost points scored. You’d be outraged if you learned those refs had received money and training from people who previously worked for one team’s offensive coaching staff. That’s what left-wing political operatives, using left-wing money, are doing, and it’s clearly unfair.”
Non-Trump Lawfare
Democrat-aligned groups continue to engage in litigation, like that brought by chief election lawyer Marc Elias, aimed at loosening election laws to their benefit. Snead told RCI, “There are more than 70 active lawsuits right now targeting voter ID laws, anti-ballot harvesting laws, signature verification, drop box regulations, and more.”
After securing victory in a lawsuit requiring signature verification for mail voting in Pennsylvania, the RNC touted its engagement as well in 81 election integrity cases this cycle. Swing-state Wisconsin is another major battleground for such efforts.
There, Elias’ legal team has challenged witness signature requirements and bans on election clerks filling address information on mail-in ballots. It and others are also working to overturn a state Supreme Court decision finding drop boxes illegal. The Badger State’s now liberal-majority Supreme Court announced in March it would take up the case.
Cutting against these efforts are not only the state’s citizen-approved Zuckerbucks ban, but another Badger-passed April 2 ballot measure amending the state’s constitution to prohibit those other than “an election official designated by law” from carrying out election-related tasks.
Watchdogs like Howell are concerned that left-leaning electioneers and lawfare forces collectively are pursuing an “election ‘dis-integrity’ strategy … to greatly expand the universe of ballots while limiting any ability to ensure that they are fairly cast and counted.”
“It’s a basic recipe for fraud.”
Elias says those seeking to combat such efforts are engaged in “voter suppression and election subversion.”
Democrats also have the federal government working on their side on the litigation front – and in ways extending beyond the veritable lawfare barrage the Biden Justice Department has leveled at Donald Trump.
Speaking in Selma, Ala., on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 police assault on civil rights marchers, Attorney General Merrick Garland declared that “the right to vote is still under attack.”
Garland vowed the Department of Justice was punching back, including “challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID requirements.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
