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Author: Akela Lacy

  • Inside the Slow Implosion of the Democratic Party’s Vaunted Campaign Tech Firm

    Less than two years after a British private equity firm acquired the campaign tech firm that holds the Democratic Party’s most sensitive data, the new parent company laid off at least 140 people.

    In a companywide email on January 12, Mark Layden, the chief executive of Bonterra, the new merged company created by the private equity firm, notified staff that, in its pursuit of “long-term, efficient growth,” 10 percent of the company would be let go. Within the next several minutes, people who were laid off received emails telling them that they no longer had a job. Numerous employees shared their experiences on social media.

    “Went to get coffee, by the time I came back to my comp I was locked out of all of the systems,” one Bonterra employee wrote on Twitter. “Folks lose jobs everyday but there was a better way. This was just tacky and apathetic.” Even some of those who kept their jobs announced their dissatisfaction; one tweeted the lack of warning was “just incredibly vile.”

    At NGP VAN — one of the two major organizations that run the Democratic Party’s vaunted organizing, voter file, and compliance tools — and EveryAction, the fundraising software company it operates under, some 40 people lost their jobs in the layoffs.

    For some employees and strategists, the layoff announcement was confirmation of exactly what they had feared from the start: that the private equity firm, Apax, would try to maximize revenue by cutting costs, firing people, and effectively hollowing out the acquired companies with potentially drastic implications for the Democratic Party and liberal organizations that rely on NGP VAN and EveryAction.

    “NGP VAN having a reduced staff will make it harder for us to do our jobs,” said one current NGP VAN employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal.

    “NGP VAN having a reduced staff will make it harder for us to do our jobs.”

    The cost cutting could have unintended consequences for the Democratic Party, said progressive strategist Gabe Tobias.

    “There are no nefarious purposes necessarily, like that they don’t want Democrats to win,” he said. “I don’t think they care. But what happens if they just start degrading service? No one can do anything about it. Everything sits inside of VAN, and almost everyone uses the other services they have.”

    While NGP VAN was one of the companies merged into Bonterra during the private equity purchase, it remained a standalone brand and has the monopoly on campaign tools and compliance reporting software for the Democratic Party, including its database of coveted Democratic National Committee voter file information. Loyal Democrats in the NGP VAN orbit fear the job cuts — across NGP VAN and EveryAction’s product, data services, client support, and sales departments — could hamper the entire party’s efforts.

    While cuts across multiple departments are typical in layoffs, the current employee said, NGP VAN is in a unique position. “We also happen to be a near-monopoly for the Democratic Party software and provide products/services to many labor unions and nonprofits,” they said. “It shouldn’t be owned by a British private equity firm and led by a nonpolitical ‘social good’ tech company.”

    NGP VAN EveryAction Workers Union, under the Communications Workers of America, represented some of those laid off. In a tweet last week, the union wrote, “We fear the direction of our union-built platform—the largest database for Democrats, large unions, and many progressive nonprofits—under private equity. So should you.”

    In early December, NGP VAN’s general manager, Chelsea Peterson, wrote a blog post offering assurances that, despite recent changes to the company, NGP VAN was “in it for the long haul” and that the company remains committed to serving in the progressive political tech space.

    “The fact that Chelsea had to write a blog post saying NGP is ‘safe’ shows it’s not,” said one former NGP VAN employee who left prior to the layoffs and requested anonymity to protect their livelihood. “The question no one is asking in the Democratic community is: Is private equity the best place for this data? Are they vulnerable to these types of cuts with no rhyme or reason? How does this affect the infrastructure?”

    The former staffer raised the organizations that worked with NGP VAN: the Democratic National Committee; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, its fundraising arm for the House; and other political action groups and advocates that spend on campaigns all rely on NGP VAN’s technology — “all of these groups have invested millions into this organization,” the staffer said.

    For Democrats, that infrastructure is of paramount importance. Where once several smaller shops ran the party’s fundraising and campaign technology, many of the most prominent firms — ActionKit, Mobilize, Salsa Labs, and Blue State — were acquired by NGP VAN and EveryAction. (In 2019, EveryAction acquired ActionKit, a service that The Intercept uses for its email newsletters and fundraising.)

    Now Apax, a private equity group with a broad portfolio of companies and both Democratic and Republican donors among its partners, has bought the whole operation and merged it with other acquisitions as Bonterra. (The DNC, DCCC, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which also uses EveryAction and NGP VAN, did not respond to requests for comment.)

    Apax is a buyout firm, the former staffer said, “which is not inherently bad — but let’s be honest — they didn’t buy NGP/EveryAction/Salsa etc. out of pure altruism.”

    “People often ask me — what’s the famous CEO question — like what keeps you up at night? I want you to know nothing keeps me up at night. I sleep like a baby.”

    Another current NGP VAN employee, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that Bonterra had internally discussed failing to reach its target growth numbers at the end of the last quarter. When staff asked about potential layoffs during a question-and-answer session, they said, management “gave a deflection non-answer.”

    According to a transcript of a December meeting obtained by The Intercept, Layden, the newly appointed CEO, was asked about his priorities in his new role. “People often ask me — what’s the famous CEO question — like what keeps you up at night? I want you to know nothing keeps me up at night. I sleep like a baby. It’s just [as] if I have no conscience.” (Bonterra declined to comment.)

    In early December, Bonterra announced that then-CEO Erin Mulligan Nelson would be leaving the company and that Layden had been appointed interim CEO. “Erin was widely liked and admired, and her departure was announced unceremoniously,” the employee said, speculating that the former CEO was “unwilling to play ball with private equity.”

    As other left-leaning and progressive organizations go through similar shifts, Democrats are concerned about the health of the party’s infrastructure ahead of 2024 elections.

    Democratic and progressive organizations that use EveryAction and NGP VAN should collectively demand investment in its services, said Tobias, the progressive strategist. “Either this company who now owns this thing promises us, signs agreements with us that they won’t cut costs, that they won’t degrade services, or we invest in alternatives,” he said. “It’s probably both, but it’s certainly not neither — which is what’s happening right now.”

    The post Inside the Slow Implosion of the Democratic Party’s Vaunted Campaign Tech Firm appeared first on The Intercept.

  • NYC Jails Want to Ban Physical Mail, then Privatize Scanning of Digital Versions

    The New York City Department of Correction wants to stop incarcerated people from receiving physical mail inside city jails. The department, known as DOC, said the proposed changes are part of an effort to increase safety in the jail system by cracking down on illegal contraband following the deaths of 19 people last year at Rikers Island, the city’s jail complex. Several of the people died from apparent drug overdoses, including at least one from fentanyl.

    The main source of contraband inside city jails, though, has been corrections staff, not mail, critics of the policy change said. Instead, the move to scrap physical mail opens the door to private firms to set up surveillance systems against incarcerated people. City officials and advocates are concerned about an apparent plan to contract with a company called Securus — a leading provider of phone calling systems for prisons and jails with a controversial past — to digitize detainees’ mail and make it available to searches.

    “Contractors are explicitly advertising unprecedented surveillance,” said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, speaking about firms like Securus that specialize in prison communications. “That’s surveillance that’s going to fall most harshly on marginalized communities.”

    The proposed changes follow a nationwide trend of prisons and jails moving to stop incarcerated people from receiving physical mail. Prisons in Pennsylvania stopped physical mail in 2018, and prisons in Massachusetts started sending incarcerated people photocopies of original letters. Last year, prisons in New Mexico and Florida adopted similar changes, and Texas has also limited in-person mail. There is little evidence that those changes have stopped the flow of drugs, the Vera Institute wrote in a March report: “With no evidence that these bans improve security, it’s only the for-profit contractors that stand to benefit from these arrangements.”

    One public official to raise the alarm about the mail policy changes proposed by the Department of Correction, along with the arrangement with Securus, is New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.

    “The proposed variance also represents a large-scale violation of the privacy and civil rights of people in DOC custody,” Lander wrote in a January 6 letter. “This is of particular concern given that the tablets, scanning, and delivery services will apparently be provided, for profit, by Securus Technologies, a vendor that has repeatedly undermined the privacy and civil liberties of people in custody.”

    The Department of Correction said the changes are designed for the safety of both staff and detainees. “Keeping our staff and individuals in our custody safe is paramount, and one of the key ways we can do that is by eradicating contraband in our jails,” a Department of Correction spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “We have zero tolerate [sic] for anyone smuggling contraband into our facilities, and that includes our staff, contracted providers, and visitors. Scanning mail onto tablets will not only help keep drugs out of our jails, but it will also likely increase the efficiency of mail processing. We are doing all that we can to ensure that our jails are safer for all who work and live here.”

    The Department of Correction did not respond to questions about whether it would contract Securus to digitize mail if the program is approved, but Danielle DeSouza, a spokesperson, pointed The Intercept to a City Council hearing where Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina addressed an existing contract with Securus to provide digital tablets in New York City jails, which could be used for reading digitized mail.

    Jade Trombetta, a spokesperson for Securus only said the company had not and would never sell data related to its digital mail service. Trombetta later asked for more time to answer questions but then referred The Intercept to the Department of Correction.

    There is ample evidence in New York that prison guards play a central role in contraband smuggling. Since 2017, more than two dozen guards have been arrested for bringing a variety of drugs into city jails after inquiries by the city’s Department of Investigation.

    “Correction officers and staff are a major entry point for the smuggling of contraband into the City’s jails,” Diane Struzzi, director of communications at the Department of Investigation, said in a statement to The Intercept.

    The Department of Investigation is not taking a position on the corrections department’s proposed changes to the mail system, but previous investigations by the agency have provided evidence that guards are often the source of drugs. The amount of drugs seized inside city jails spiked after New York City stopped allowing in-person jail visitors during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, The City reported in February. While some drugs were seized in mail, the bulk of drugs seized between April 2020 and May 2021 came from other sources.

    “It’s not going to help the overdoses or the use of drugs in the jails, which we know is a problem.”

    Prohibiting physical mail would not stop the flow of drugs into the city’s jails but would increase punishment and surveillance for incarcerated people and their loved ones, said Lucas Marquez, the associate director of civil rights and law reform at Brooklyn Defender Services, a public defense group.

    “It’s not going to help the overdoses or the use of drugs in the jails, which we know is a problem,” Marquez said. “We know that most drugs come in through staff, and this is not going to have an impact on that.”

    At a hearing earlier this month, the Board of Correction postponed a vote on the requested changes until its next meeting in February.

    Securus, the company advocates and elected officials said would get the mail contract, has a controversial history. Under a previous contract with the Department of Correction, the company illegally recorded phone calls between incarcerated people and their lawyers.

    The company has also come under fire for illegally recording privileged legal phone calls between incarcerated people and their defense attorneys in other states, as well as for upcharging incarcerated people and their loved ones for calling services.

    While New York City typically holds a competitive bidding process for contracted services, there has been no request for proposal or competitive bidding process for the proposed changes to the mail system.

    Elected officials in New York are already raising alarms about the potential for Securus to handle digitizing the city’s jail mail. Given the company’s history, the proposed changes “would be significantly increasing the City’s liability,” Lander, the city comptroller, wrote in his January 6 letter.

    In a January 9 letter to the Department of Correction, 10 City Council members, led by Crystal Hudson and Carlina Rivera, raised their own fears. “We are concerned about the fundamentally dehumanizing effects of such a system as well as the privacy and surveillance concerns that would come with it,” the members wrote.

    In addition to covering letters, the Department of Correction has also proposed a change that would limit packages received in city jails to a preapproved list of vendors like Amazon and Walmart, which would stop incarcerated people from receiving personalized care packages from loved ones or advocates.

    The mail and package proposals, combined with ongoing recording of phone calls “means that nearly every interaction a family member has with a loved one who is incarcerated will be tracked and recorded,” the council members wrote. “Such data can be retained far into the future and be used against people even if they have never been charged with a crime, have been released from jail, or have had charges dismissed. These records will likely be shared with law enforcement, regardless of any stated policy. Such widespread surveillance raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns.”

    “Essentially what the provider advertises is a dragnet that will sweep up all incoming mail and will store it.”

    The Department of Correction is trying to downplay the extent of the proposed changes, said Krent, the Knight First Amendment Institute lawyer, “but essentially what the provider advertises is a dragnet that will sweep up all incoming mail and will store it.” Such a change far exceeds traditional review of mail in prisons in jails, Krent said. “And that’s really scary.”

    “It will lead to a huge increase in surveillance and monitoring of anyone that’s trying to send mail into facilities,” she said. Most contractors say they’ll keep mail for at least seven years following the end of the recipient’s period of incarceration. “That’s really frightening when you think about the fact that most people who are incarcerated are there on a transient basis, especially at a place like Rikers where people are awaiting trial,” said Krent. “The mail is being stored despite the fact that neither the recipient nor the sender has been convicted of any crime.”

    The changes could have a chilling effect on free speech for both incarcerated people in their loved ones — and potentially expose people to legal liabilities. Defense lawyers are concerned that Securus could sell information collected from mail or share the information with law enforcement. If the information is stored in a searchable database, it can be used more easily by law enforcement, Marquez said. “There’s definitely a big question when DOC and law enforcement have access to a database that has all this information,” he said. “These ‘guilty by association’ networks start forming.”

    Securus is a commercial entity that has settled numerous lawsuits over improperly recording phone calls inside prisons and jails. “What safeguards, if any, are there for them to be using that data, to sell that data, or to otherwise share that data with law enforcement?” Marquez said. “We know from their history of recording attorney phone calls and lawsuits against them all across the county, that they don’t have safeguards, they don’t care about safeguards. They’d rather pay a settlement.”

    Some advocates are concerned that if approved, the proposed changes would lead to more violence inside jails.

    “The system constantly punishes people with the least power, which is incarcerated people and their loved ones, without actually taking any accountability for the Department of Correction themselves,” said Ashley Conrad, an organizer with Freedom Agenda, a member-led project that organizes with people who have been directly or indirectly impacted by Rikers Island; Conrad has a nephew who is incarcerated at Rikers. “DOC and COBA” — the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association — “are trying to paint this picture that this mail variance is going to keep our jails safer but it’s actually not,” she said. “It’s going to cause more violence. It’s inhumane, it’s going to be even more hurtful.”

    Getting a handwritten letter from your daughter or wife could be the thing that keeps an incarcerated person from going into a dark mental space, Conrad said. “Say your wife sprays her perfume on a letter. It’s something to keep your mind in the right place,” she said. “People are literally in a gladiator school all day where you are fighting for your safety by all means. Any little thing can trigger you.”

    “The system constantly punishes people with the least power, which is incarcerated people and their loved ones, without actually taking any accountability for the Department of Correction themselves.”

    It’s not clear that the Department of Correction has eliminated other possible ways that drugs are entering jails, Rivera, the council member for a part of downtown Manhattan, told The Intercept. “Until we can actually see that the Department of Correction has put forward an effort to eliminate all other possible variables, it just seems cruel to eliminate this one sort of tangible human connection that is made through physical mail.”

    Rivera’s office has requested data from the department on plans to contract with Securus, and she said she has concerns about the possibility given the company’s history.

    “We have a lot of questions as to why this administration would go that route,” Rivera said. “I don’t have any details on whether an RFP was issued” — a request for proposals that announces project bids for public contracts.

    “We have had challenge after challenge in trying to secure information, data from DOC and from this administration,” Rivera said. “That lack of transparency has been incredibly frustrating.”

    Hudson, a council member representing parts of Brooklyn, told The Intercept the proposed changes would not address the growing crisis at Rikers and called for the complex to be shut down.

    “The proposed variances — stripping New Yorkers of their right to physical mail and further privatizing City services — do nothing to address the safety issues the Board of Correction is seeking to remedy. Rather than addressing the rot in their ranks, the Board is bent on further criminalizing, surveilling, and exploiting incarcerated New Yorkers and their loved ones,” Hudson said in a statement. “Our reflex has always been to punish. Now, we have the opportunity to shape the discussion in City Hall.”

    There are numerous other changes the Department of Correction could make to crack down on the presence of drugs in its facilities without taking away physical mail at the further expense of the mental health and stability of incarcerated people, said Veronica Vela, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society Prisoners’ Rights Project. The department, for instance, could make guards go through the same scanners that incarcerated people and their loved ones must go through during visitations.

    Instead, Vela said, the department prioritized other changes that could do more harm than good. Soon after he started the job in January 2022, Molina, the Department of Correction commissioner, sought to eliminate a rule that barred staff from wearing cargo pants. The rule had been in place to stop smuggling of drugs and alcohol after an undercover city investigator was able to smuggle drugs and alcohol into a DOC facility using cargo pants. The city, however, rebuffed the request to change the rule.

    “It’s a pretty telling move on his part,” Vela said, “that he comes into this department that’s in complete crisis and disarray, and he’s like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna get these officers cargo pants.’”

    The post NYC Jails Want to Ban Physical Mail, then Privatize Scanning of Digital Versions appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Party Drugs for PTSD: Study Moves Therapeutic Use of MDMA Toward Approval

    The party drug MDMA earned positive results for treating people living with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a new government study that confirmed other findings.

    The new study for the MDMA clinical trial program was completed in November and sponsored by a group called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The trial is part of an ongoing effort to obtain federal approval for use of MDMA in therapy as the number of people suffering from PTSD, mental illness, and opioid addiction continues to climb.

    Prior to federal criminalization of the use and possession of MDMA in 1985, the substance had been legally used in therapy treatments for at least a decade. As part of its decision to criminalize MDMA, the Drug Enforcement Administration said abuse of the substance had “become a nationwide problem” and posed “a serious health threat.”

    MDMA is only one of a handful of drugs, especially psychedelic drugs, that the federal government considered to be largely for recreational purposes — and therefore illegal — that are now slowly progressing toward government approval for legal uses. The drugs, among them psilocybin, which is found in “magic mushrooms,” are being studied for therapeutic uses.

    The Biden administration has signaled willingness to explore the potential to use criminalized substances to address a growing national mental health crisis, and officials in Congress have undertaken bipartisan efforts to ease access to federally banned substances for therapeutic uses. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’ latest clinical research on MDMA is a phase three study aimed at eventually winning Food and Drug Administration approval.

    The stigma against psychedelic and psychoactive drugs and the residual effects of the “war on drugs” kicked off by President Richard Nixon have stalled progress in one of the few areas of drug policy on which there is substantial bipartisan consensus.

    In May, the Department of Health and Human Services said it anticipated that the FDA would approve both MDMA and psilocybin for treatment of PTSD and depression, respectively, within the next two years. President Joe Biden’s administration has supported the creation of a federal task force to explore potential issues with psychedelic and entactogenic medicines. The White House did not immediately provide comment on the status of the task force or efforts to obtain FDA approval for either substance.

    In July, Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill that would let people with terminal illnesses access drugs classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act that have undergone a phase one clinical trial but have not yet received FDA approval. The bill was supported by the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, which includes several organizations that work to prevent suicide and deaths of despair among veterans and and nonveterans alike. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 20. (Spokespersons for Booker and Paul did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

    Last summer, the House also moved to expand research into psychedelic therapy. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, offered amendments to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would relax federal restrictions on the use of psychedelic treatments for veterans and active-duty service members struggling with mental illness.

    The post Party Drugs for PTSD: Study Moves Therapeutic Use of MDMA Toward Approval appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Did Republicans Know About George Santos Before the Election?

    With Election Day approaching, polling showed a tightening race in New York’s 3rd Congressional District: A blue seat on Long Island was in danger of being flipped. Aware of the threat, a political action committee aligned with House Democrats spent just under $3 million in independent expenditures to back their candidate and oppose his Republican opponent, George Santos.

    On Santos’s side, though, the last-minute cash infusions were paltry. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that backs House Republicans, did not spend any money on the race. The absence was conspicuous: The fund poured more than $1.5 million into the races in the neighboring 4th and 2nd Districts — both of which Republicans won.

    Outside help for Santos came in the form of $3,377 from the National Right to Life Victory Fund, according to OpenSecrets, and a $54,000 transfer from Take Back the House 2022 PAC, a group aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to federal filings — peanuts in a race that saw millions spent.

    “There’s simply no way that Republicans in D.C. weren’t aware of these same red flags.”

    Santos ended up not needing the boost: He won the race against Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman by 8 points. The win was notable only for being one of four New York congressional seats that flipped red — this one in a district that Democrats had held since 2013.

    Since the election, however, Santos has risen to infamy, as his official biography has largely fallen apart under scrutiny.

    The revelations have led Santos’s opponents to revisit the reasons behind national Republicans’ lack of attention to the close congressional race. “We knew from our research that George Santos’s past was full of deceptive claims and shady financial dealings — and we worked hard to make this known and hold him accountable,” Evan Chernack, Zimmerman’s former campaign manager, told The Intercept. “There’s simply no way that Republicans in D.C. weren’t aware of these same red flags.”

    The controversy has raised questions from political strategists, pundits, and elected officials as to how Santos was able to avoid the revelations until after the election, and what role media outlets and opposition researchers played in the failure. Santos’s lawyer claimed the reporting in the New York Times that blew upon the holes in Santos’s biography was a “defamatory” attempt to smear his name, but did not dispute any specific claims. In a tweet Thursday, Santos said he would tell his story “next week.” (Neither the Congressional Leadership Fund nor the Santos campaign immediately responded to requests for comment.)

    Since Santos’s resume crumbled, Republicans have been relatively quiet. On Thursday, Nassau County Republican Committee Chair Joseph Cairo said that while Santos deserves a “reasonable amount of time” to respond to recent reporting, “voters deserve a sincere accounting from Mr. Santos.”

    Santos had fundraised off an endorsement from fellow New York House Republican Conference Caucus Chair Elise Stefanik, who has been mum on the revelations. And McCarthy, who endorsed Santos in the Republican primary, has not commented on the inconsistencies in Santos’s biography.

    If Republicans did know about the inconsistencies in Santos’s biography, Zimmerman’s former campaign manager wonders why they didn’t — and still won’t — come out and disavow him. Zimmerman said, “All of this raises the question: How did GOP leadership continue to enable and support their chosen candidate while he lied to the voters of NY-03?”

    The post Did Republicans Know About George Santos Before the Election? appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • George Santos Moved to Florida in 2016, Voted There, Then Quickly Registered Again in New York

    A Republican representative-elect who appeared to falsify much of his resume also registered to vote in two states in 2016, according to public records, albeit with the second registration coming after Election Day.

    George Santos, who won his election in November against a Democrat in one of the four New York congressional districts flipped by Republicans, left his home in New York, voted in Florida some nine months later, and was registered back in New York days later, according to public records.

    Santos was evicted from a property in New York City in early February 2016, the records show. Within five days of the eviction court filing, he registered to vote in Florida. He voted in Florida on Election Day and, less than a week later, registered to vote in New York.

    The timeline of his eviction and voter registrations are just the latest verifiable morsels of Santos’s biography, following much of his resume falling apart after closer inspection this month. Santos’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In his campaign, his misrepresentations ranged from his career to his education and philanthropic ventures. He claimed he was a Wall Street financier with jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which had a record of his employment, the New York Times reported. Santos’s claims to have graduated from Baruch College were also unverifiable. He also said he employed four people who were killed in the June 2016 Pulse Night Club shooting in Orlando, a claim the Times was unable to substantiate. An animal rescue charity Santos claimed to run was not registered as a nonprofit with the IRS.

    Santos’s financial disclosures show that his salary grew significantly since his first congressional run against Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., in 2020, when he earned $55,000 at a company called LinkBridge Investors. Santos’s most recent disclosure lists a salary of $750,000 from the Devolder Organization, an LLC he created in May 2021. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 this cycle.

    On his campaign website, Santos described the LLC as his family’s firm, where he was a managing member who oversaw asset allocations. The organization, which is based in New York and registered in Florida, dissolved in September. The day after the New York Times reported multiple inconsistencies in Santos’s resume, Santos reinstated the LLC, according to public records from the Florida Department of State. (The reinstatement was first reported by Talking Points Memo.) Its mailing address is listed at an apartment in Merritt Island, Florida, which public records show was purchased by a couple in August.

    According to campaign finance disclosures, Santos’s campaign raised just under $400,000 from individuals and organizations in Florida.

    In a statement Monday, Santos’s lawyer did not dispute any of the reported inconsistencies but said the Times was “attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.” On Thursday, Santos wrote in a tweet that he had a “story to tell and it will be told next week. I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more.”

    The post George Santos Moved to Florida in 2016, Voted There, Then Quickly Registered Again in New York appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Elon Musk’s Growing Purge of His Twitter Critics — at the Behest of the Far Right

    Among the slew of accounts abruptly suspended from Twitter this week was the anarchist media organization It’s Going Down, an anticapitalist and antifascist collective that has covered the far right since its founding in 2015.

    Several of the media accounts — including at least eight journalists from outlets including The Intercept, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — had covered the suspension of left-leaning accounts in recent weeks by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk claimed that the accounts had violated Twitter’s terms of service by reporting on his suspension of another account, @ElonJet, which automatically tweeted the location of Musk’s personal jet using public information.

    “We weren’t told a reason. We didn’t even tweet that day that we were kicked off.”

    Unlike the other suspended media accounts, It’s Going Down had not tweeted about the ElonJet saga. Instead, the outlet’s account was suspended from Twitter after it drew attention to protests against a new police training center in Atlanta called “Cop City” — though the reasons for It’s Going Down’s suspension remains unclear.

    “We weren’t told a reason,” said a person involved with It’s Going Down, who agreed to speak only under the condition of anonymity. “We didn’t even tweet that day that we were kicked off.”

    Earlier this month, It’s Going Down had posted a thread criticizing suspensions of other anarchist and antifascist accounts; the thread included a photo of Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein. “I don’t know, maybe that ruffled his feathers,” the person said.

    On the subject of their own banning, the person involved with It’s Going Down pointed to tweets by a far-right activist who had been flagging the anarchists’ account, sometimes directly to Musk, over a period of months. “The far-right troll Andy Ngo was tweeting at Musk to ban us,” the person said. “I’m sure that’s probably what it was, if we had to guess.” (Ngo did not immediately respond to a Twitter DM. Twitter, which, under Musk’s ownership, saw its communications department decimated, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

    Ngo’s possible role in the suspension of It’s Going Down from Twitter would follow the now-familiar pattern: far-right activists tweeting directly at Elon Musk with specious claims that left-wing Twitter accounts are engaged in violence. Earlier on Thursday, before the ban, Ngo tagged Musk in a tweet that posted a blog about the arrests and claimed that protesters were “using Twitter to raise cash, @elonmusk.” Ian Miles Cheng, another far-right activist, replied and asked if Musk would “consider setting up a dedicated task force at Twitter to deal with violent extremists like Antifa?”

    “Twitter obviously must be fair to all, so will aim to stop violent extremism being promoted by any group,” Musk replied. (Since taking over Twitter, Musk has reinstated neo-Nazi and fascist accounts.)

    Several hours later, Ngo cheered the It’s Going Down suspension from Twitter. Ngo had repeatedly targeted It’s Going Down in other public exchanges with Musk on Twitter and falsely claimed the group was a part of “Antifa,” an organization that does not exist, and that it incited violence and shared extremist propaganda.

    The person from IGD said they weren’t aware of Ngo tweeting about the group in relation to the Atlanta protests, but that he had targeted their coverage of a protest against an anti-trans group earlier this month.

    The controversy around the Atlanta police-training facility, dubbed “Cop City” by its opponents, grew on Tuesday when a group of protesters who have been occupying the site for more than a year clashed with a joint task force of police. The authorities, including agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department, went in to remove barricades set up by the protesters, five of whom were arrested; on Wednesday, they were indicted on domestic terror charges.

    “They’re gonna try to throw the book at these people with domestic terrorism charges in order to try to stop a pretty broad rejection of this massive counterinsurgency training facility,” the person involved with It’s Going Down said. Slated to be built on the site of a former prison farm at the cost of $90 million, “Cop City” would be built atop the largest green space in an overwhelmingly Black part of the city, drawing opposition from local organizers.

    Sean Wolters, a protester who lives near the planned facility, said he thought the police were employing heavy-handed charges to demoralize and break up the protests: “None of it is meant to stand up in court, but simply to suppress opposition to Cop City.”

    “It’s a clear pipeline from lies from the police to Andy Ngo to action taken by Twitter against those who support the Defend the Forest movement.”

    What police claim about protesters in bond hearings and press releases doesn’t have to be proven true, Wolters said. “These lies are then picked up and repeated by right-wing figures like Andy Ngo, who then has direct communication with the head of Twitter,” he said. “It’s a clear pipeline from lies from the police to Andy Ngo to action taken by Twitter against those who support the Defend the Forest movement.”

    In a statement on Thursday, It’s Going Down said its suspension was further evidence of Musk’s sympathies toward the far right and his attempts to censor its critics on Twitter — and part of a pattern of social media giants censoring the anarchist site. (It’s Going Down had been banned on Facebook for allegedly being on a list of “organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity.”)

    “Today’s suspension is only the latest instance of IGD and other grassroots media platforms being banned and censored by tech companies working to advance the agenda of both the far-Right and the State,” the group wrote. “IGD was removed from Patreon at the request of far-right troll Tim Pool, kicked off of Facebook in the midst of Donald Trump’s response to the George Floyd protests, and finally banned from Instagram.”

    The post Elon Musk’s Growing Purge of His Twitter Critics — at the Behest of the Far Right appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Federal Prisons Failed to Stop a Pattern of Sexual Abuse Against Women

    The findings of a Senate investigation detailed at a Tuesday committee hearing revealed a pattern of rampant sexual abuse against women incarcerated in federal prisons.

    In cases in at least four federal prisons in New York, California, and Florida, multiple women were sexually abused for extended periods of time over months or years. The revelations came just five months after an explosive committee hearing exposing corruption and abuse in the federal prison system.

    “They failed to monitor, supervise, discipline, and remove male correctional officers, predators sexually abusing female inmates.”

    The abuse was not confined to those four facilities. Three formerly incarcerated women gave testimony on the abuse they faced at the hands of federal prison guards in New York, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

    “The system failed at every level, management from the warden on down repeatedly,” said Linda De La Rosa, a woman who was previously incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, a minimum security prison. “They failed to monitor, supervise, discipline, and remove male correctional officers, predators sexually abusing female inmates.”

    The Bureau of Prisons, which operates under the Department of Justice, repeatedly failed to investigate known predators, De La Rosa said, and her attacker was known to have abused other women at the facility.

    “It is not enough just to call this horrible,” she said. “I believe the problem is the ‘old boys club,’ prison staff, managers, investigators, correctional officers. They all work together for years, if not decades. No one wants to rock the boat, let alone listen to female inmates.”

    Tuesday’s hearing in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations detailed findings from a bipartisan investigation launched in April, including the bombshell that both senior federal prison guards and rank-and-file employees sexually abused incarcerated women in at least two-thirds of federal prisons that hold women.

    The Bureau of Prisons “failed to prevent, detect, and stop recurring sexual abuse in at least four federal prisons, including abuse by senior prison officials,” the committee wrote in its report. At California’s Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, for example, the former warden and chaplain both sexually abused incarcerated women.

    The recently appointed Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters said at the hearing that she looking forward to working with the Senate subcommittee’s support to make reforms. She told USA Today that she would consider early release for incarcerated people who had been sexually assaulted.

    On Tuesday, the committee, which is a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, reiterated some of its conclusions from the July hearing, including that failures at the highest levels of Bureau of Prisons management enable ongoing and unchecked abuse and corruption within the federal prison system.

    The eight-month investigation found that the Bureau of Prisons failed to hold employees accountable for misconduct. The agency’s internal investigative practices “are seriously flawed,” the committee wrote. The Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Internal Affairs currently has a backlog of 8,000 cases, including hundreds of sexual abuse cases, “and does not report case closure rates in a way that would indicate its progress in clearing the backlog.”

    While senior Bureau of Prisons officials told the committee that a “culture of abuse” existed within the federal prison system, the agency failed to utilize the mechanisms in place to identify and prevent sexual abuse against incarcerated women.

    Audits conducted by the Bureau of Prisons intended to assess sexual abuse within prisons were never systematically analyzed, and the bureau missed “a key opportunity to identify problematic facilities or employees,” the report said.

    In closing remarks, Subcommittee Chair Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., told Peters, the new Bureau of Prisons director, that he admired her objectives for reform, and encouraged her to “embrace the possibility that you can turn this agency around with everything that you’ve got.”

    Peters’s predecessor, Michael Carvajal, testified to the committee in the previous investigation, which focused on corruption and abuse in a federal prison in Atlanta. Ossoff said Carvajal was “willfully blind” to what was happening in Georgia.

    “You will be held accountable for knowing,” Ossoff said to Peters. “And I believe you have an opportunity to establish a legacy as a reformer who saves lives and protects vulnerable people from sexual assault.”

    The post Federal Prisons Failed to Stop a Pattern of Sexual Abuse Against Women appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Incarcerated People Forced to Do Dangerous Work for “Slave” Wages at Height of Pandemic

    At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, news outlets reported that incarcerated people in New York were being forced to make hand sanitizer and coffins. Though elected officials and advocates for criminal justice reform were quick to criticize what they called the use of “slave labor” in the state’s pandemic response, the extent of this work by the incarcerated was never known.

    New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision data obtained by The Intercept reveals that people incarcerated in state prisons were also forced to perform a range of other jobs for penny wages during the height of the pandemic, including asbestos abatement and removal of lead paint.

    “Covid pulled the curtain back on what has always existed in New York, which are these slave-like conditions for people who are incarcerated,” said Lisa Zucker, a senior attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. People incarcerated in jails aren’t just making license plates or mass-producing hand sanitizer, Zucker said: “Literally the chairs that members of the legislature sit on are made by incarcerated people. When you call the Department of Motor Vehicles, you are talking to someone incarcerated at the Bedford Women’s Facility.”

    “Covid pulled the curtain back on what has always existed in New York, which are these slave-like conditions for people who are incarcerated.”

    Seven states have abolished slavery for people convicted of crimes, which is allowed as an exception to the prohibition of slavery in the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. New York’s state constitution has no provision mentioning slavery, nor any protections for incarcerated workers. “Alabama’s in there, so it’s embarrassing and shameful that New York has not done this,” Zucker said.

    People incarcerated in New York state prisons have documented their working conditions in letters to legal advocates, five of which were shared with The Intercept. The letters describe unlivable wages of cents per hour; retaliation against people who miss or refuse to perform work, in the form of assault and threats of relocation to more dangerous cell blocks; and inability to afford basic necessities required to survive in prison.

    In a statement to The Intercept, Department of Corrections spokesperson Thomas Mailey said incarcerated people participating in asbestos abatement services programs was akin to training for eventual release, and that the jobs followed federal workplace safety guidelines. The department has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse or harassment, Mailey said, launching investigations and, when appropriate, disciplining rule violators and referring cases for criminal prosecution.

    “In delivering such programs, the Department must recognize the right of every individual to receive humane treatment and to have their health and safety protected,” Mailey said. He also referenced a report following the 1971 Attica prison uprising: “It is to be noted that idleness amongst the population must be avoided for overall safety and security.”

    For people behind bars, the primary concern is not one of idleness but being treated with dignity. “Even though we are incarcerated we are supposed to be in these prisons for correction, not to be used for slave labor. We are fathers, sons, brothers, and most of all humans,” wrote one incarcerated man in a letter obtained by The Intercept. People in prison are supposed to learn to fix their mistakes, learn trades, become a better family member, and “earning a living by working for it,” he added. “Many of us left kids outside these walls and want to do for them but how can you making $6 every two weeks? What part of correction is this?”

    NYCLU is part of a coalition of more than 35 legal advocacy, grassroots organizing, and criminal justice groups promoting several bills in the state Legislature that would end forced labor in New York and provide protections for incarcerated workers, including a fair wage, safe labor conditions, and pathways for employment after release. Also part of the coalition, called 13th Forward, are Vocal New York, New York Communities for Change, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Bronx Defenders, and the Legal Aid Society, which obtained the prison labor data through a Freedom of Information Law request and shared it with The Intercept.

    While the Covid-19 pandemic heightened attention to forced labor in New York state prisons, elected officials who say they’re concerned about the nexus of crime, mental illness, and homelessness should treat the issue as one of public health, Zucker said. “If you don’t treat people as human beings when they’re in prison, what do you expect them to feel like when they get out?”


    A bottle of New York State Clean Hand Sanitizer, made with forced prison labor through the company Corcraft, stands outside a business in Hudson, New York, on June 28, 2020. As part of the phase 3 of reopening, the city of Hudson has implemented a "Shared Summer Streets" program that will allow businesses and pedestrians the space needed to operate with social distancing. Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    A bottle of New York State Clean Hand Sanitizer, made with forced prison labor through the company Corcraft, stands outside a business in Hudson, N.Y., on June 28, 2020.

    Photo: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Within the state’s Department of Corrections is a division called Corcraft, which operates its prison industries. Corcraft provides products to public agencies throughout the state, including the New York Police Department and the State University of New York. As one of New York’s three preferred source organizations, Corcraft has a partial monopoly on goods and services purchased and sold by state agencies, and state law requires state institutions and public benefit corporations to purchase goods from the state’s preferred sources if they meet the agency’s needs in form, function, and utility.

    Corcraft made $550 million from 2010 to 2021. “The revenue received from the sale of products and services covers the expenses associated with operating the program,” the Corcraft website says.

    Wages for Corcraft jobs range from 16 to 65 cents per hour and are capped at $2 per day. Job titles include taxi and truck drivers, tailors, welders, nurse aides, plumbers, laundry operators, maintenance laborers, porters, mechanics, and various other industrial jobs, including digging graves and burying indigent people. Incarcerated people perform jobs both outside and inside prisons, including those required to keep facilities running, like dining, maintenance, repair, and health services.

    Incarcerated people doing the jobs inside facilities, including dangerous jobs like asbestos and lead paint removal, effectively keep the prison system functioning. “It’s dehumanizing to pay people those slave wages,” Zucker said.

    “New York State has created a perverse incentive by relying on products made from the theft and exploitation of incarcerated people’s labor,” the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit that contracts to do public defense work in New York City, wrote in a January report on state prison labor. “Similar to the discriminatory scheme of convict leasing, we see higher rates of incarceration in Black and Latinx communities across the state thus forcing more Black and Latinx workers into unsafe and unfair prison labor that feeds the state’s desire for cheap products at the expense of Black and Latinx communities.”

    In a letter shared with The Intercept, one person who has been incarcerated for three decades and worked numerous jobs described the prison labor system as a “slave to master kind of relationship/treatment with most staff” and said they had been punished and assaulted “because I refused to work according to this particular officer’s liking.”

    The wages paid by prison jobs aren’t enough to afford basic things like clothes, toothpaste, or toilet paper. “With inflation and price of goods constantly rising, it’s hard to get what’s needed,” the incarcerated person wrote. “The 60 cent stamp is almost a two-day pay.” The state claims to spend $60,000 a year on each individual prisoner, but “that’s extremely hard to believe when one is living in abject poverty.”

    Half of individuals incarcerated in the U.S. provided at least 50 percent of their family’s income before being imprisoned. Penny wages and financial penalties for misbehavior or missing work can even put incarcerated people in debt, prolong their imprisonment, and make it harder to find employment after release, increasing the chances of recidivism.

    “With inflation and price of goods constantly rising, it’s hard to get what’s needed. The 60 cent stamp is almost a two-day pay.”

    The state’s prison labor system originated 200 years ago at Auburn Prison, where prisons started forcing incarcerated people to work during the day as an alternative to the previous system of constant solitary confinement. Incarcerated people have been making products for New York state for more than 100 years.

    One of the labor program’s main goals “was to create a self-sustaining prison system,” Zucker said. “It’s just a vicious cycle. An endless supply of workers are imprisoned to support the very prison that is incarcerating them.”

    And while the jobs range in function and physical difficulty, there is no distinction between good jobs and bad jobs in a system of forced labor, said Jackie Goldzweig Panitz, a paralegal in the employment law unit at Legal Aid who has been working on the group’s campaign to end prison labor and obtained the Department of Corrections data through a Freedom of Information Law request. “Every job is dangerous when someone is denied worker’s rights,” Goldzweig Panitz said.

    A common theme emerged in letters from currently incarcerated people shared with The Intercept: Prison labor is a form of slavery that takes away their dignity on top of the punishment inflicted by their incarceration.

    “As a mother and grandmother I feel inadequate because I am no longer able to order gifts from a catalog for birthdays nevermind to clothe myself,” one currently incarcerated woman wrote. “I am forced to have to ask my son for a pair of decent sneakers or go without groceries to save up for them. This system is extremely unfair, especially for those of us so far away from our families. They pay to communicate with us, they pay to see us, why should they pay to feed and clothe us too?”

    “I am unable to make more money to better my situation and certainly can NOT to prepare for a new life in society. I question where is the rehabilitation if we are forced to depend upon others to meet our needs?”

    New York legislators are currently considering reform bills that would prohibit forced labor in prisons and establish a state prison labor board to oversee the implementation of changes to the system. The first bill was referred to the state Senate Judiciary Committee in March, and the second was referred to the Crime Victims, Crime, and Correction Committee in January. (Asked whether the Department of Corrections would support either bill, Mailey, the spokesperson, said the department does not comment on possible or pending legislation.)

    The 13th Forward coalition is also supporting a bill to amend the state constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, including for people convicted of crimes. “When you talk about institutional racism, you’re talking about things that are baked into the system that nobody even notices anymore. I think that’s true of prison labor,” Zucker said. “It’s been this way for over 100 years and no one challenges it. Because people feel like, ‘Oh you did the crime? Well, obviously we can treat you as slave labor.’”

    It’s difficult for the general public to understand that when you commit a crime, the punishment is being separated from your family for many years in an institution, Zucker said.

    “That is the punishment,” she said. “To treat people like slaves is beyond punishment. And it does nothing for rehabilitation and reentry. And those two things are something we all should be concerned about, because those are matters of public safety.”

    The post Incarcerated People Forced to Do Dangerous Work for “Slave” Wages at Height of Pandemic appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Pennsylvania’s Governor-Elect Ran on Saving Democracy. Then He Appointed a Trump White House Lawyer.

    In 2007, when Josh Shapiro was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the Democratic Party found itself in a bind. Shapiro had been in office for just two years, first elected in 2004 in an uphill battle for an open seat once held by his Republican opponent, a former member of Congress. Shapiro won by 10 percentage points, and his campaign became a model for centrist Democrats seeking to strengthen the party’s base in red parts of the state.

    Although he was a newcomer, Shapiro quickly gained the respect of his Democratic colleagues. The party had just won control of the state House, but they had a one-seat majority and couldn’t agree on who should be speaker. That’s when Shapiro made a phone call.

    On the other end of the line was Republican state Rep. Dennis O’Brien. Shapiro suggested a deal: O’Brien could become the Republican speaker for a Democrat-held chamber, and Shapiro would be the first-ever deputy speaker. The trade — a Democratic majority for Shapiro’s newly created leadership position — foretold the style of politics Shapiro would engage in over the next 15 years.

    Since his win in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race last month, Gov.-elect Shapiro has packed his transition team with Republicans, lobbyists, wealthy donors, and corporate executives from companies like Comcast, Aramark, and Independence Blue Cross. But one member of Shapiro’s transition personnel committee stood out: Though Shapiro’s entire election strategy was that he was the anti-MAGA candidate, his team included James Schultz, a former associate White House counsel under President Donald Trump.

    [TK quote critical of the pick]

    Shapiro’s team, which declined to comment for this article, framed Schultz’s appointment as an effort by the incoming governor to encourage bipartisanship, building a broad tent and bringing people together in an extension of his campaign messaging. During the GOP primary, Shapiro spent ad money publicizing Republican candidate Doug Mastriano’s pro-Trump positions; Mastriano said he owed Shapiro a debt of gratitude. Then Shapiro undertook a strategy of waving his centrist banner and beat Mastriano by almost 15 percentage points in the general election.

    Winning over Republicans that opposed Trump’s full-throated embrace of election denialism was a key part of the strategy, according to a memo released by the Shapiro campaign on Thursday. His campaign was backed by prominent Republicans, including Schultz, who defected from the GOP after Mastriano, an election denier, won the primary; Schultz said Mastriano would “damage the conservative mission.”

    “Josh campaigned as a moderating voice, so it’s not surprising that he would surround himself with diverse perspectives,” said Ken Snyder, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “Jim worked for Trump, but also stood up to him by opposing his endorsed candidate Doug Mastriano. In today’s Republican Party that shows courage. It’s good that Josh would reward courage.”

    After serving as a lawyer for Trump’s 2016 Republican National Convention and transition team, Schultz took his position as a White House attorney for much of Trump’s first year in office. As he was leaving office, he said his plan was always to do a short stint and that the controversies around Trump did not affect his decision.

    In an interview at the time with Politico, Schultz defended the Trump White House, saying it was being unfairly maligned by critics lusting for power. “Some in the news media unfairly criticize this administration and take every opportunity to take shots, even when they’re not justified,” he said. “There have been folks out there trying to make a name for themselves in that space by being critics in order to set themselves up for other positions down the road.” He also praised Trump’s work reshaping the federal judiciary.

    In the past, Schultz sometimes took a hard-line conservative tack. In 2013, when he was general counsel under former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, Schultz wrote a brief opposing same-sex marriage that included a comparison of gay marriage to child marriage. The brief was widely denounced — including by Schultz’s boss at the time, Corbett, who disavowed the comparison after the fact, as well as Shapiro, who has long been vocal in support for the right to gay marriage.

    Mark Segal, founder and publisher of Philadelphia Gay News, said he worked with Schultz on an affordable LGBTQ+ housing project under Corbett and considered him a friend. Segal said he later lobbied Corbett through Schultz to stand down on the gay marriage case. Asked about Schultz’s later work for Trump, Segal said, “I think right now we’ve all learned that Trump does not listen to his attorneys.”

    Among fellow Democrats, Shapiro’s critics have long feared that his ascent would mean compromises with Republicans that put the party at risk by spurning the base that got him elected. They cited his support for everything from scholarships for alternatives to public educations that could bleed Philadelphia’s crumbling school district to his moderate positions on criminal justice reforms.

    In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Schultz praised Shapiro for being “tough on crime” and opposing Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s embattled progressive district attorney. Shapiro and Krasner have butted heads since the chief city prosecutor took office, though Shapiro has refused to comment on an unprecedented Republican-led effort to impeach Krasner.

    The post Pennsylvania’s Governor-Elect Ran on Saving Democracy. Then He Appointed a Trump White House Lawyer. appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Hakeem Jeffries Was a Literal No-Show on the Green New Deal

    In the fall of 2019, several months after progressive lawmakers introduced the first ever piece of legislation for the Green New Deal, climate organizers in New York City held a forum on climate change in the congressional district represented by Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

    One hundred people attended, mostly Jeffries’s constituents, said two of the organizers.

    “This kind of thing should be a no-brainer for him. But that’s not consistent with how he’s played the politics.”

    New York Communities for Change and the Sunrise Movement had put the event together with Jeffries in mind. Since arriving in the House seven years earlier, Jeffries had risen quickly to be the Democratic caucus chair. The organizers hoped he would engage with constituents who supported the Green New Deal.

    “He refused to come,” said NYCC policy director Alicé Nascimento. “We ended up having literally an empty chair at the center of the room to signal the fact that he was not there.”

    Jeffries sent his district director in his place. “It’s very clearly stiff-arming,” said Pete Sikora, who directs the climate and inequality campaigns at NYCC.

    Jeffries has become known in New York and nationally for his hostility to the Democrats’ left flank. While he has supported progressive policies on issues like criminal justice reform, he has vocally opposed progressives in other arenas — most notably backing their opponents in primary elections. “This was an attempt to try to break through that,” Sikora said of the 2019 Green New Deal event. (Jeffries’s spokesperson did not respond to a question about the event.)

    Last week, House Democrats elected Jeffries as minority leader for the upcoming session, putting him in line to eventually become speaker of the House should Democrats retake the majority. Jeffries’s ascent to party leader presents a new opportunity to lead on climate issues and invest in fighting climate change, Sikora said, not only helping his district — which received more relief funding after Hurricane Sandy than any other district in the city — but also creating jobs across the country.

    “This kind of thing should be a no-brainer for him,” Sikora said. “But that’s not consistent with how he’s played the politics.”

    In response to a request for comment, Jeffries’s spokesperson Christie Stephenson said that the representative has consistently invited challenges from the left and that anyone who objected to his record “is welcome to primary him in Brooklyn in June 2024.” She added, “That these invitations have been consistently declined, despite being offered repeatedly by Chairman Jeffries directly, speaks for itself.”

    Ahead of his election as caucus leader, Jeffries made efforts to strengthen his relationships with progressive lawmakers and met with members including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and several members of the Squad. But to climate organizers on the left who have lobbied Jeffries on environmental issues in his district for years, his absence from the 2019 forum was indicative of his broader attitude toward the left, not just on policy but on overall political strategy.

    Now that he’s in line to become speaker, Jeffries’s approach to politics matters more than ever, Sikora said. “Our hope is that he begins to adjust how he deals with this type of vision and this type of politics, because it’s not just symbolic. It matters a lot in the way that he approaches bills and policies,” he said. “There’s a bunch of real concern here.”

    Jeffries is one of only a handful of Democrats in New York’s congressional delegation who has not co-sponsored legislation on the Green New Deal, though he told CNN earlier this month he’s backed other climate change legislation. (Stephenson pointed to his role in passing the July 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included $368 billion slated for climate and energy spending.) Jeffries has not signed onto the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which currently has five signatories from New York’s 19-member Democratic congressional delegation.

    Jeffries has also been active in state and local primary elections, where climate issues have split progressives and the Democratic machine. “There’s a whole electoral history here of confrontations between the climate left and his candidates,” Sikora said.

    State Sen. Jabari Brisport told The Intercept that Jeffries asked a local community organizer to challenge him in this year’s primary, although the campaign never materialized and Jeffries did not publicly campaign against him.

    “He’s just not where Democrats are on a lot of progressive issues,” Brisport said.

    Even on issues where Jeffries has sided with progressives, like backing Medicare for All, Brisport said serious work had to be put in to get him to co-sponsor the legislation. “It was like pulling teeth getting him to even sign on,” Brisport said, pointing to a pressure campaign by the Democratic Socialists of America. (The organizer declined to comment on the record. “The situation as it relates to DSA primary challenges is what it is,” Stephenson told The Intercept, including the link in her email.)

    Former Jeffries spokesperson Michael Hardaway previously disputed claims that NYC-DSA pushed Jeffries to sign onto the legislation and noted that he had previously supported similar legislation from former Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “long before any so-called lobbying effort by some in gentrifying parts of Brooklyn.”

    Stephenson said, “Those individuals on the far left who are having a meltdown about the rise of Hakeem Jeffries not being disrupted from below are intentionally misrepresenting the longtime support that Leader-elect Jeffries has shown for universal health care coverage legislation.”

    State Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest said she personally delivered petitions to Jeffries while campaigning for Medicare for All before she was eventually elected to represent his old assembly district in 2020, ousting his protégé, incumbent Walter Mosley. “You have to kind of work hard to get him onto more progressive legislation,” she said. “I’ve delivered petitions to him, and the look that this man had on his face when I handed him a stack of petitions way back when, when I was working on the Medicare for All campaign — yeah, no.”

    While Souffrant Forrest beat her primary challenger this year, she said, “Jeffries did not offer me any kind of support.” The Medicare for All campaign is an example of what progressives should be doing on other issues like climate change, Souffrant Forrest said. Jeffries has consistently campaigned against progressives, but “for him to be successful as a Democratic leader, it’s time for him to see that the progressives are there, the left is there, and to meet us. And to listen, both here and in Congress.”

    Though Jeffries himself was first elected after ousting an incumbent, he has not smiled on primary challengers from the left against his centrist Democratic colleagues.

    After progressive candidate Morgan Harper lost her race against Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, in 2020, Jeffries posted a tweet in which he appeared to blame progressives for starting a “fight” with incumbent Democrats. “Meltdown? Not us,” Jeffries tweeted, seeming to reference a headline from an Intercept story on the primary. “They started this fight. We will finish it.”

    Last summer, Jeffries teamed up with conservative Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., to start a political action committee to protect incumbent Democrats facing primary challenges from their left. A new dark-money cutout spent more than half a million dollars backing incumbents in each of the same five races, and each candidate it backed won the primary.

    Brisport also pointed to Jeffries’s endorsement earlier this year against an incumbent progressive in the state Senate; Sen. Robert Jackson beat the challenger and kept his seat. Jeffries also made a late endorsement against another candidate backed by the NYC-DSA in a City Council race last year; the DSA candidate lost.

    “Sometimes it seems like, do they even really want to win?”

    While Jeffries campaigned in support of several embattled congressional Democratic candidates in New York this cycle, the party’s losses across the state are weighing on the minds of progressives as party leadership transitions to a new guard that operates, in some ways, much like the old one. There may be space for Jeffries to work with progressives on policy, but differences in political strategy could pose a more intractable issue.

    Jeffries now has an opportunity to forge stronger relationships with the left in New York and around the country, although he’ll have to address those major strategic differences, said Liat Olenick, co-president of Indivisible Nation BK.

    “He has done a lot to protect incumbents from progressive challengers in local and federal races and that is a concern for him being in leadership,” Olenick said. “It’s incredibly frustrating to see Jeffries and some of his allies in leadership put more effort into defeating young, energetic, progressive candidates than actually defeating Republicans.”

    Particularly after Democratic losses last month in New York, Olenick said, the question remains: “Sometimes it seems like, do they even really want to win?”

    The post Hakeem Jeffries Was a Literal No-Show on the Green New Deal appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Philly DA Larry Krasner: In Midterms, Democrats Went “Republican-Lite” on Crime

    Ahead of midterm elections earlier this month, Republicans talked about one thing above all else: crime. They said Democrats were to blame for what they claimed was an unprecedented spike in crime, and spent tens of millions of dollars on ads hammering that message, hoping it would help deliver what was widely anticipated to be a red wave.

    The plan failed and Democrats emerged victorious, retaining control of the U.S. Senate and winning several key governor’s races.

    Democrats who embraced a range of criminal justice reforms won races in contested swing states, including Pennsylvania. The party had one of the most successful midterm cycles under an incumbent president of either party in decades.

    For some Democrats, the success is cause for celebration, but it’s also evidence that the party should have campaigned harder on criminal justice reform. One such Democrat, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, pointed to John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro’s races in Pennsylvania for a U.S. Senate seat and the governor’s mansion, respectively. Both had embraced some criminal justice reforms, both faced relentless soft-on-crime attacks, and both emerged victorious.

    “It is possible that criminal justice reform, like any other issue that fundamentally touches large numbers of reluctant voters, could be the salvation of democracy,” Krasner said in an interview on an episode of Deconstructed. “It really could drastically increase voter turnout.”

    Krasner’s remarks came amid an unprecedented effort by Republicans in the Pennsylvania Legislature to remove him from office. After a series of hearings, an ad hoc committee — formed to purportedly address his misdeeds, which relied on flimsy evidence — didn’t make a recommendation but vowed to keep investigating Krasner indefinitely. After Democrats won the state House last month, hard-line Republicans sought to push ahead with the impeachment in the lame-duck session. After some political wrangling, the Republican leader scheduled the vote and Krasner was impeached. He is awaiting a trial in the state Senate, a logistical predicament given the dwindling session, where impeachment is expected to be an uphill battle for Republicans.

    While Krasner commended Fetterman for embracing his work on the state clemency board in the face of Republican attacks, the reform-minded district attorney was quick to note that many Democrats shy away from talking about the well-documented ill effects of mass incarceration.

    “Rather than the Democratic Party answering directly this Willie Horton-style attack on big cities that are diverse and attack on big city prosecutors who are reform prosecutors, rather than the Democratic Party attacking it head-on,” he said, “they did that dumb thing that, sadly, they sometimes do, which is go Republican-lite, get off in the corner, try not to talk about it.”

    Krasner has been a lightning rod on issues of criminal justice reform since his campaign to become Philadelphia district attorney in 2017. He ran as an unabashed reformer in a city that jailed more people than any other in the Northeast. He pledged to prosecute police for misconduct, reform bail, and generally slow the pipeline to incarceration in the city. Many of his promises were fulfilled, then met with fierce resistance, with Republican lawmakers attempting to strip his authority. Krasner prevailed and sailed to reelection last year against a police-backed challenger.

    Some of those who deal regularly in the criminal justice system agreed with Krasner that campaigning boldly on reforms could help galvanize turnout. There’s no separation between people harmed by violence and people harmed by mass incarceration, said Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a public interest law firm that has opposed Krasner’s impeachment.

    “We need Democrats talking more about that than trying to constantly distinguish themselves as, ‘Well, I’m just as tough on crime as the Republicans,’ because they’re going to lose that battle every time,” he said. “People aren’t going to come out for people who are hedging their bets.”

    The post Philly DA Larry Krasner: In Midterms, Democrats Went “Republican-Lite” on Crime appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • The Dangers of Democrats Boosting MAGA Republicans

    In July, just weeks before Arizona’s gubernatorial primaries, the state Democratic Party sent an unusual press release. The message addressed a Republican primary, criticizing the outgoing GOP governor’s handpicked successor, Karrin Taylor Robson, a real estate developer, in favor of her opponent, Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor backed by President Donald Trump.

    The Democratic release dryly thanked Robson “for her longtime financial support to help elect Democratic candidates up and down the ballot” and described her past attacks against Lake for giving to Democrats as “hypocrisy.” Arizona Democrats insisted they were not spending on the race, but the email was widely interpreted by mainstream media and conservative outlets as an attempt to interfere in the Republican primary to boost Lake. Two weeks later, Lake pulled further ahead in polls and by early August won the Republican gubernatorial primary.

    Last week’s election for governor was so close that it took almost a week to count enough ballots to call it. On Monday, Lake lost the general election to the Democratic candidate, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, by less than 1 percentage point.

    “The Democratic Party leadership should treat the rise of the authoritarian right as a real threat, not a talking point.”

    The Arizona race was one of several key primaries in which national Democrats boosted Republicans they deemed more or less unelectable — candidates like Lake who denied the results of the 2020 presidential election. In what was anticipated to be a brutal midterm cycle, boosting extreme candidates could, the theory went, help Democrats fare better in general elections.

    The strategy ended up working in Arizona. Yet even in defeat, Lake and some of the other extremist Republican candidates still out-performed expectations. For some political observers who work with Democrats, the Arizona race shows how dangerous the strategy could be in emboldening anti-democratic sentiment and fueling polarization.

    “The Democratic Party leadership should treat the rise of the authoritarian right as a real threat, not a talking point,” Maurice Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, said in a statement to The Intercept. “Helping MAGA Republicans to win their primaries was reckless and irresponsible. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite us all.”

    Not every election where Democrats employed the strategy ended up as close as Arizona. The party scored resounding wins in governors’ races in Maryland, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, as well as a crucial Senate election in New Hampshire.

    Ken Snyder, a national Democratic campaign consultant with experience in Pennsylvania, who saw “smashing success” in Pennsylvania and Illinois, said, “This time the tactic worked more often than it didn’t.”

    In races where the gambit clearly worked, Democrats spent millions boosting Republican candidates. Though Democrats didn’t spend to back Lake in the Arizona race, they did pour more than $53 million to back Republican primary candidates in races in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Nevada.

    The Democratic Governors Association spent $2 million to boost the primary campaign of Maryland Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox in a race that Democratic candidate Wes Moore won handily.

    In Pennsylvania, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro’s campaign raised eyebrows when it spent $840,000 on ads highlighting Republican Doug Mastriano’s extremism during the primary; Mastriano told a local news outlet he’d have to send Shapiro a thank-you card for the ad. Shapiro won the general election by 800,000 votes. In total, Pennsylvania Democrats spent at least $1.2 million boosting Mastriano.

    Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., spent more than $3 million boosting the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. Following a tight race, Bolduc, another 2020 election denier, lost the race to Democratic incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan.

    And in Illinois, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker used tens of millions from both his campaign and the Democratic Governors Association’s coffers to help elevate far-right candidate Darren Bailey to the Republican nomination. Again, voters rejected Bailey and went heavily for Pritzker.

    Concerns over the high-dollar amounts were twofold. First, the extraordinary financial cost of backing extremist Republicans came as other struggling Democratic candidates have said they were spurned after requesting support from the party.

    In addition, some Democrats worried that the push to boost far-right Republicans might alienate the party’s donors. “Historically, this has been a well-known tactic with minimal repercussions,” said Lauren Tsuboyama, a Democratic strategist at the consultancy Blue State. Today, donors might not want to see their money going to extremist Republicans: “Now, more than ever, voters — especially Democratic voters — are paying closer attention to where their hard-earned donations are being spent.”

    Another potential downside for Democrats could have been their chosen MAGA Republican candidates being defeated in their primaries. “It looks like you’re running against the person you feared the most,” said Snyder, the Democratic consultant, noting that the more moderate GOP member would have a baked-in centrist narrative. That’s not how it played out, though.

    In Colorado, Democrats put just under $6 million into more extreme Republican candidates who lost primary races for governor, Senate, and Congress. Democrats nonetheless beat the more moderate Republicans in all three races.

    In Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party fundraising organ, spent half a million dollars on ads boosting a Trump-backed candidate. The incumbent Republican, who had voted to impeach Trump last year, lost the August primary by 3 points, but Democratic candidate Hillary Scholten went on to win the race by 13 points anyway.

    “Foregrounding Republican extremism wins Democrats elections. When you’re devising campaigns, a really risky way to do that is by playing in those Republican primaries.”

    For a party that’s had trouble crafting a coherent message around its achievements under President Joe Biden, Republican candidates touting election denials seem to have worked as an effective foil.

    “While there is cognitive dissonance in this strategy,” said Alyssa Cass, a Democratic strategist who worked on Democratic candidate Pat Ryan’s competitive race in New York’s 18th District, “I’m not someone that shared the hand-wringing over it initially.”

    Conventional wisdom leading up to the election — including polling, guidance, and general advice for Democratic strategists — was that messaging to voters that democracy was under threat wasn’t effective, Cass said. “This election shows that that was really wrong,” she said. “Foregrounding Republican extremism wins Democrats elections. When you’re devising campaigns, a really risky way to do that is by playing in those Republican primaries.”

    A few hundred or a thousand votes the other way could have delivered a different outcome, Cass said, but the particularly grim political stakes this cycle played in Democrats’ favor.

    Moreover, the dangers of stoking extremism and polarization, Snyder said, should be the responsibility of Republicans: “Whose fault is it when a radical extremist wins a Republican primary?” he asked. “I think national Republican leaders need to look in the mirror for having created this dynamic in which candidates with extreme radical views can win their primaries to begin with.”

    The post The Dangers of Democrats Boosting MAGA Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Pennsylvania GOP House Leader Blessed Larry Krasner Impeachment Vote After Heated Caucus Meeting

    In a contentious Monday caucus meeting of Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff blessed a Judiciary Committee vote on impeaching Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. On Tuesday morning, the committee passed an article of impeachment in the heavy politicized case to the full state House.

    Benninghoff’s moves to bless the committee vote and bring the impeachment before the full House came amid threats from a right-wing fringe of Pennsylvania House Republicans to withhold support for his continuing leadership position, according to five people familiar with the deliberations. Republicans had long suggested that they would try to hold the impeachment vote before the end of the legislative session. Entering the caucus meeting, though, there was no firm commitment to hold the vote during the lame-duck session — before Democrats, who are poised to win control of the state House, can take over. Following the meeting, the votes were quickly scheduled.

    Two of the sources said Republican state Rep. Martina White, who represents northeast Philadelphia and is a close ally of the city’s police union, had made it known that if Benninghoff did not run the articles, he may not get support from the bloc of leadership votes she has influence over. (In a statement to The Intercept, White said any claim that she threatened leadership over Krasner’s impeachment was “utterly ridiculous.”)

    “If indeed this has become another political football in leadership, in the politics of internal caucus leadership elections, then that’s a hell of a thing.”

    The members of Benninghoff’s party pushing the vote were exploiting weakness in his position due to, among other things, Republican losses up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania during midterm elections last week. Benninghoff decided to run the article of impeachment even after Republicans lost their majority to show he’s “still fighting,” according to one person with knowledge of the process who requested to speak anonymously because of their work with the legislature.

    “If indeed this has become another political football in leadership, in the politics of internal caucus leadership elections, then that’s a hell of a thing,” said Elizabeth Randol, legislative director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. “This is a serious thing.”

    The ACLU of Pennsylvania has opposed the impeachment efforts and described them as a “sham.” The ability to impeach an elected official is the most serious power afforded to the state House, Randol said: “It’s bad enough that it’s been used in this really reckless way but on top of it, if indeed it’s being used to negotiate leadership, it’s absolute political malpractice.”

    The votes in the state House mark the culmination of years of attacks on Krasner’s office by Republicans who claim, without evidence, that his policies of criminal justice reform have driven a rise in crime in Philadelphia. Krasner’s overwhelming reelection last year did not stop the tide or attacks against him, including continued efforts to pass laws that strip his office of prosecutorial authority or limit him to two terms.

    Several members of Philadelphia’s police union, which has been vocal in its animosity toward Krasner’s focus on police misconduct, were present at the Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, according to photos of the meeting obtained by The Intercept. Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby was also in the building but did not attend the hearing, according to a source. (McNesby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

    The GOP efforts have been led by the chair of House Republicans’ campaign arm, and echo a theme across the country of Republicans attempting to boost their prospects by playing on voters’ fears about crime. The attacks against Democrats came at all levels of government, but reform-minded prosecutors have been particular targets.

    After the strategy failed to help Republicans keep control of the state House, aides close to Krasner were unsure that Republicans would go ahead with the vote. But on Tuesday morning, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve articles of impeachment against Krasner. The full House vote is expected to vote on the matter Wednesday, one of the final days of the chamber’s legislative session.

    White, the state representative, said that Benninghoff was keeping his word to the caucus on bringing a floor vote on impeachment. “When we were last in session, the entire Caucus leadership team — of which I am a member — stood at a press conference united on this topic. We remain so today,” White said. “At that time, Leader Benninghoff said if the Articles of Impeachment came out of the Judiciary Committee, they would be run on the House Floor. He made that commitment prior to this week and is keeping his word as this process moves along.”

    Asked about the threats, a spokesperson for Benninghoff told The Intercept in a statement that the office would not comment on internal caucus deliberations. “The effort to hold DA Krasner accountable has been and remains about only one thing: protecting lives, reducing crime, and ensuring Philadelphians can feel safe and be safe in their communities,” Benninghoff’s press secretary Jason Gottesman said. “When the impeachment articles were introduced in October, Leader Benninghoff was clear that if these Articles came out of the Judiciary Committee, they would receive a Floor vote. Nothing between now and then has changed that.”

    Democratic strategists and politicians had feared that Republican attacks on Democrats as “soft on crime” would hamper the party’s candidates in midterm elections last week. The attacks, though, failed in many races — particularly in Pennsylvania, where Democrats won major statewide races and garnered a majority in the state House for the first time since 2010.

    Democratic state Rep. Jason Dawkins, a Judiciary Committee member from Philadelphia who lost his brother to gun violence, spoke at the impeachment vote hearing to the futility of trying to impeach Krasner as a way to address crime after voters just last overwhelmingly repudiated Republican attacks on crime in Philadelphia and across the state. “We just had an election last week where this issue was at the top of the ticket that folks were sending out all throughout this commonwealth about how lawless Pennsylvania, particularly Philadelphia, looked,” Dawkins said. “What you saw was a direct response to those ads.”

    In more than 300 years, Pennsylvania has impeached just a handful of officials, Democratic state Rep. Joseph Hohenstein said during Tuesday’s hearing. The last person to be impeached, in 1994, was a judge “guilty of actual criminal conduct,” Hohenstein said. “This article of impeachment has asked us to stretch the definition of misbehavior in office outside of criminal conduct. But when we look at how impeachment has been handled over hundreds of years, we’ve never done that,” he said. “We don’t do this lightly because we don’t overturn elections.”

    “This doesn’t fit any legal precedent in Pennsylvania or in the entire country.”

    The attacks on Krasner are part of a broader national backlash against the widespread criminal justice reforms enacted in the wake of protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. Support for reforms that hold police accountable, decriminalize nonviolent offenses, and take a more holistic approach to addressing the root causes of crime drove voters to the polls in record numbers that year, and presented a growing electoral problem for Republicans and tough-on-crime Democrats who were not able to galvanize young Black and brown voters in the same way.

    “Today’s resolution is a weaponization of our state constitution for partisan political purposes,” Democratic state Rep. Mike Zabel, a former prosecutor in Philadelphia, said during the Judiciary Committee meeting on Tuesday. “You don’t get to give prosecutors discretion and then tell them what that discretion is.”

    “Tomorrow’s politically unpopular figure may be different than today’s,” Zabel said. “Today we’re facing this hard fact. The Philadelphia district attorney has not committed an impeachable offense.”

    Zabel voted in late September with many of his Democratic colleagues to hold Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House impeachment committee. The contempt vote took place on the first day of the city’s first-ever murder trial for an on-duty cop, for killing a young, unarmed Black man. The committee issued its final report last month, which did not recommend impeachment but called for ongoing investigation for an unspecified period.

    “There is a limit to the partisan games that I’m willing to play,” Zabel said. “I ask you to vote no on this resolution, not on some validation of Larry Krasner, but as a rejection of using the constitution to target political enemies.”

    “This doesn’t fit any legal precedent in Pennsylvania or in the entire country.”

    The post Pennsylvania GOP House Leader Blessed Larry Krasner Impeachment Vote After Heated Caucus Meeting appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • New York Democratic Party Chair Takes No Responsibility for Elections. So What Does He Do?

    On Wednesday, after it became clear that Democratic losses in New York could help Republicans retake the House, the state’s Democratic Party chair deflected.

    “I’m not going to take responsibility for or blame, if you will, for losses that we had here,” New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs told City & State. Instead, Jacobs said, the blame lay with progressives.

    Republicans need to net five seats to take control of the House and have so far flipped four. They include congressional seats in the backyards of party leaders: two in the Hudson Valley, including House Democrats’ campaign chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney; and two in Long Island, where Jacobs also chairs the Nassau County Democratic Committee.

    “That’s in his backyard,” state Sen. Jabari Brisport, a stalwart progressive Democrat and Jacobs critic, told The Intercept. “He’s literally from Nassau County.”

    “I only really see his name come up when he’s yelling at the progressive lane of the Democratic Party, or when he’s trying to avoid blame.”

    As the carnage for Democrats in New York crystallized on Wednesday, party leaders across the state swiftly called for Jacobs’s resignation. Asked about those calls, incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who won reelection on Tuesday even as the party suffered down the ballot, told reporters she had no plans to replace him.

    After Tuesday, though, many New York Democrats wonder if the party’s blind spots could weaken their hold on the solidly blue state. With Jacobs distancing himself from the losses, many are asking the question: What does Jay Jacobs actually do?

    “To be honest, I had the same question of what Jay Jacobs does all day,” state Sen. Jabari Brisport told The Intercept. “I only really see his name come up when he’s yelling at the progressive lane of the Democratic Party, or when he’s trying to avoid blame for losses up and down the ballot for Democrats. And it wasn’t just this year, it was last year, too.”

    In lengthy comments to The Intercept, Jacobs explained that most of his critics are misunderstanding his role as state party chair. “First everyone needs to understand what the State Party is and is not. The State Party is a coordinating and infrastructure building organization,” he said, by way of introduction. “As Chair, I oversee that effort and raise a lot of money to fuel those efforts.”

    “I know that there are lots of people that think I’m the worst person in the world,” he said, “but the truth is I’m probably only in third or fourth place.”

    He said the party apparatus will help fund mailers when campaigns ask, but that it does not drive campaigns, choose candidates, or conduct other activities undertaken by groups like the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or state-level Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee. “Those entities are the lead for candidate selection, campaign strategy, campaign staff & consultant selection, polling and field organizations,” he said.

    At least one answer for what Jacobs does for his job is: his day job. In addition to his role as state Democratic Party chair, Jacobs is the chief executive officer of TLC Kids Group, an organization that runs children’s summer camps in the Northeast, where he said he is a volunteer.

    In his capacity with TLC Kids, Jacobs also pursues centrist Democratic electoral politics — also with notable flops. Jacobs and the company gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee this cycle and backed centrist Democrats, including Maloney, who lost his race to a Republican, and Vedat Gashi, who was beaten in the primary. Jacobs said, “Not only did my company contribute (at the legal limits) but I contributed personally and am proud of it.”

    Jacobs has long shown disdain for the party’s progressive wing. In 2019, shortly after Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed him to chair the state party, Jacobs launched efforts to sideline progressives. First, he pushed a ban on fusion voting, which allows different parties to nominate the same candidate. Then later, Jacobs worked to raise the threshold for parties to appear on the ballot — an apparent effort to keep the Working Families Party off of it.

    Asked about his reported remarks in City & State blaming progressives for 2022, Jacobs said, “I don’t believe that I said that in the manner you articulated. If I did, I should not have said it that way.” He added, “New York State is much larger and its constituency much more ideologically diverse than Astoria, Queens — and everyone needs to remember that.”

    Some progressives remained unconvinced that a party honcho bears no responsibility for electoral losses.

    “Jacobs says he isn’t responsible for the New York Democratic Party,” said progressive strategist Gabe Tobias. “Good. So quit — and let someone run the party who actually cares about our issues and our voters.”

    Jacobs said calls for his resignation were misguided. “A lot of the finger pointing is coming from those who did little to nothing or ran in districts that they couldn’t lose if they campaigned against themselves!” Jacobs said. “I got no credit for any of our 2020 wins. I only hear from them when we lose. This is not personal. It’s simply because I remain an outspoken voice of the moderate wing of our Party.”

    Figures in the Democratic Party have consistently criticized the electoral strategy Jacobs pursued during his tenure as party chair. Last year, they complained when Democrats saw setbacks in Jacobs’s own Nassau County, when Republicans won seats from their party across the board. Earlier this year, Jacobs was criticized for using his position atop the New York State Democratic Party to interfere in Democratic primaries against progressive candidates.

    “You have these candidates out in Long Island, in South Brooklyn, and in Eastern Queens that really could have used that help,” Brisport said, of Jacobs using the limited resources to attack fellow party members. In the onetime party stronghold of South Brooklyn, for instance, Democrats in the state Assembly suffered significant losses this year.

    Sometimes, Jacob’s heated rhetoric about progressives drew fire. In last year’s race for mayor of Buffalo, Jacobs, in his refusal to endorse her, compared progressive Democratic nominee India Walton to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Walton went on to win the Democratic primary against incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, but lost the general election campaign after Brown banded with Republicans to run a write-in campaign. Jacobs, who was forced to apologize for the Duke remark, marshaled no state party support for Walton.

    In other instances, Jacobs’s tactics have come under scrutiny, even from national Democratic figures. In 2020, Jacobs came under fire from the offices of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for using their images on ads against the Working Families Party.

    Jacob’s fixation on attacking progressives, his critics say, has caused him to drop the ball on consequential issues for the party. Last year, Democrats in New York failed to approve several ballot measures, including one that would have improved the independence of the state’s redistricting process. Conservatives ran ads against the measures, and Democrats spent nothing to counteract that messaging; Jacobs has said he hadn’t been asked to help. Three of the five proposals which Democrats had expected to pass failed by wide margins.

    “He was so busy last fall yelling at India Walton, the Democratic nominee in Buffalo, that he did not support those candidates out in Long Island and also failed to spend any money on Prop 1, which would have stopped Republican judges from gerrymandering the lines this year,” Brisport said. “That’s just last year.”

    While Democrats like Jacobs and Hochul struggled to answer for the party’s losses on Tuesday, other officials and strategists were more clear-eyed in spelling out the failures.

    “There’s a reason the state party failed to protect House seats across New York: Rather than focus on fighting Republicans, Jacobs has spent years using the party’s resources and money to attack anti-corporate Democrats like the Working Families Party,” Democratic strategist Monica Klein told The Intercept. “Jacobs spent a full year using a state commission to make it harder for the WFP to keep its ballot line. Under the past Governor, anyone who threatened Andrew Cuomo’s agenda of corporate-friendly politics and governance was attacked by Jacobs’ Democratic Party. And the party hasn’t changed course under a new administration.”

    “He really thinks that the fight to save the Democratic Party relies on him ousting the leftists and socialist left from the party.”

    It’s not enough to blame Jacobs for Democrats’ losses without charting a clear path forward, Brisport said. He agrees with fellow New York progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Jacobs needs to resign or be fired. Brisport also wants the party as a whole to think more broadly about who will define its future, and how.

    “He really thinks that the fight to save the Democratic Party relies on him ousting the leftists and socialist left from the party,” Brisport said, “and has put his time and energy there while Republicans just lap up seats all across the state.”

    Shortly before Democrats achieved a supermajority in the state Senate in 2020, Jacobs told reporters that he had a word of “caution” for the party: “Let’s slow it down.” The lesson of this year is just the opposite, Brisport said: Moderation in Albany didn’t translate into wins on Election Day. “My read of this session is that we did things to sort of appease concerns of legislators in the suburbs,” Brisport said. “We didn’t create any new taxes, even though we should have to fund social programs.”

    Centrist Democrats have been plodding along with their agenda — the legislature passed tax credits for homeowners, rolled back the state’s bail reform law, and implemented a gas tax holiday — but it hasn’t yielded fruit for the party. “We did all these things, and then Republicans won those races anyway,” Brisport said. “So if anything, we should just be doing the opposite, in my opinion. I hope we learned our lesson.”

    The post New York Democratic Party Chair Takes No Responsibility for Elections. So What Does He Do? appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • With Senate Race Too Early to Call, Pennsylvania Democrats Rack Up Wins in Quicker Decisions

    In Pennsylvania, one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country, between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, remains too early to call, but Democrats are racking up victories in the state.

    Democrats kept control of the governor’s mansion despite a competitive campaign run by Republican candidate Doug Mastriano. Democrats gambled on promoting the far-right candidate in the Republican primary, and the strategy paid off for Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro. Shapiro’s campaign spent just under $1 million on ads that highlighted Mastriano’s ties to Trump and extreme positions.

    Democrats also held onto a congressional seat in Pittsburgh, with soon-to-be Squad member Summer Lee emerging victorious against Republican candidate Mike Doyle. The loss also represents a blow to the election efforts of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

    The deep-blue seat suddenly looked shaky in the last weeks of the election when internal, private polls started to show Doyle, who shares a name with the outgoing Democratic incumbent, gaining on Lee. Democrats scrambled to fight millions of dollars spent by Republicans against Lee. The National Republican Congressional Committee attacked Lee as soft on crime, including in ads in a neighboring district that shares a media market with Pittsburgh.

    Once the race tightened, AIPAC came in with a last-minute flood of cash. AIPAC’s election arm, United Democracy Project, had worked with major Democratic firms to attack Lee in the primary, and spent more than $3 million on the failed effort.

    Progressive groups including Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, and SEIU Healthcare PA spent more than $1.6 million backing Lee. In a press release on Tuesday night, WFP Pennsylvania organizing director Nicolas O’Rourke called Lee’s win a victory against “right-wing and corporate forces” and said Lee would “join a growing bench of Working Families Democrats in Congress who will fight for higher wages, lower costs, safe communities, and clean air and water.”

    The Republican ads against Lee in the neighboring 17th District were aiming to tie her to the Democratic candidate there, Chris Deluzio. The seat is currently held by Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa. Lamb gave up his seat to run in the Democratic Senate primary, which he lost to Fetterman by more than 30 percentage points in May.

    So far in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Democrats have been cautiously optimistic, with Fetterman so far outpacing President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in several key counties.

    The post With Senate Race Too Early to Call, Pennsylvania Democrats Rack Up Wins in Quicker Decisions appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • Will Police Money Tip Minnesota Attorney General Race Against Keith Ellison?

    While Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is expected to hold the governor’s mansion, Democrats in the state are bracing for losses of other key positions down ballot. One of the races Democrats are watching with trepidation is Attorney General Keith Ellison’s reelection bid. Ellison is facing a tight race against Republican candidate Jim Schultz that could hand the position to a Republican for the first time in almost half a century.

    Ellison won praise for his office’s handling of the murder case against the police officers who killed George Floyd, but the high-profile prosecution may also be the fulcrum on which his campaign is defeated: Facing the stiff challenge, the more than $300,000 spent on the race by police unions could prove decisive. That police money is going to back Schultz’s campaign, which has gone to great lengths to paint Ellison as being  fundamentally “anti-police.”

    Though the police spending doesn’t dramatically swing outside spending totals, it could have an outsized effect because of how policing issues have come to the forefront across the nation, especially in the Minnesota race, where the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests loom large. In a political environment where even moderate Democratic criminal justice reformers are facing attacks from national and state Republicans on crime, the similar ads from police against Ellison could resonate with voters despite what critics said was misleading messaging.

    Though Ellison has a history of working on issues of police misconduct, his campaign and its backers suggested that his push for reform — including a ballot measure last year in Minneapolis that would charter a Department of Public Safety, but not eliminate the police department — is not about being against cops.

    “It’s unfortunate that when you decide to stand up for regular Minnesotans and hold some police accountable when they do bad things, that a handful of people can try to label you with this broad brush as being against all of them,” said JaNaé Bates, a minister and the communications director for Faith in Minnesota Action, which is spending to back Ellison. Bates added that the police unions spending to back Schultz are “making it appear that Ellison is anti-police, when the reality is he’s just been anti-bad policing.”

    Though Schultz is playing on fears of rising crime, the AG’s office in Minnesota doesn’t prosecute the vast majority of criminal cases, which the county attorneys typically handle. Ellison, though, was asked by the governor — with the consent of county prosecutors and after a request from Floyd’s family — to lead the case against former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin. The successful prosecution raised the ire of police groups.

    MN Police PAC, a political action committee for the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, has spent the bulk of that $300,000, most of it on television ads against Ellison. Part of that spending went toward $24,500 in text ads backing Schultz. The Schultz campaign has also received two maximum contributions of $2,500 each from the union’s legislative fund and the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis Contingency Fund. Individual police officers from across the state have also contributed to Schultz’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.

    Neither the Schultz campaign nor the police groups responded to requests for comment.

    As officials like Ellison who support reforming the criminal justice system and holding police accountable have won election in recent years, state and local law enforcement groups have waded deeper into elections for what were once typically uncontroversial offices. The police spending on the Ellison race is part of a larger pattern across the country of police-backed committees spending to influence races for attorney general and district attorney — and to oppose the tide of criminal justice reforms that swelled after Floyd’s murder.

    “Jim Schultz and his wealthy backers, like the police union, are spending millions of dollars to sow division and fear.”

    “Jim Schultz and his wealthy backers, like the police union, are spending millions of dollars to sow division and fear,” Ellison campaign communications director Faisa Ahmed said in a statement to The Intercept. “These are the same groups that bankrolled the defense of Derek Chauvin and are consistent in their fight for one standard of justice for themselves and another for the rest of us. It looks like they have found their guy in Jim Schultz.”

    So-called independent expenditures have played an outsized role in the race. Ellison has raised about $1.5 million to Schultz’s $1.1 million, but other outside spending groups poured in millions. Attorney general associations for both parties each spent more than $1 million, with the Republican Attorney Generals Association coming under fire for using a political action committee that has faced allegation at the state campaign finance board that it coordinated illegally with Schultz’s campaign.

    Schultz has campaigned on shifting the primary focus of the attorney general’s office from prosecuting consumer protection and antitrust case to taking on a bigger role in criminal prosecutions. He has vowed to move resources to county attorneys to focus on crime. Before he became attorney general of Minnesota, Ellison had already made a name for himself as a representative of Democrats’ rising progressive wing during six terms in Congress. He had earlier worked as a civil rights lawyer tackling police misconduct.

    The post Will Police Money Tip Minnesota Attorney General Race Against Keith Ellison? appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Democratic Consultants Cash In on AIPAC Spending — Even as It Tries to Hand the House to Republicans

    Four major Democratic firms worked with a Super PAC that is now spending $1 million to defeat one of their party’s congressional candidates.

    The Super PAC for the country’s largest pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, put close to $3 million into the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District — spending that turned into contracts for two of the Democratic consultants to go after a progressive in their own party, state Rep. Summer Lee.

    Lee, however, prevailed and now the PAC, United Democracy Project, is spending more than $1 million against her in the general election, backing her Republican opponent Mike Doyle.

    UDP paid the two Democratic firms to run ads against Lee and to conduct polling and research on its behalf during the primary. The firms include giants in the Democratic consulting industry like Waterfront Strategies, a cut-out of GMMB, and SKDK, whose partners include veteran Democratic strategists.

    National Democratic groups are now scrambling to boost Lee’s campaign as UDP has poured more than $1.2 million into mail and broadcast ads attacking her within the last week.

    As pro-Israel politics in the U.S. become more polarized and Israel itself lurches to the right, Israel’s most staunch supporters are increasingly Republicans. AIPAC has taken heat for what its critics say is its own increasing Republican bent — and its willingness to go along with extreme GOP politics. As of April, AIPAC has endorsed more than 100 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

    “Democratic consulting firms should not be working with organizations actively supporting insurrectionists and threatening our majority.”

    The spending by AIPAC against progressives like Lee is seen as part of that trend, and critics are concerned that Democratic groups are participating in and even profiting from the attacks.

    “Democratic consulting firms should not be working with organizations actively supporting insurrectionists and threatening our majority,” said Connor Farrell, the founder and CEO of Left Rising, a consultancy that has worked with Lee’s campaign. “Firms that do need to be held accountable by party leadership.”

    The salvos against Lee were UDP’s first attack ads in any general election since its launch in January. UDP decided to run the ads after conducting private polling that showed the race tightening quickly. In a midterm cycle already expected to be brutal for Democrats, some of the party’s top firms have worked closely with a group that could cost a seat they’ve held for more than two decades.

    Both MVAR and Waterfront Strategies are currently working for UDP to run ads supporting Democratic congressional candidate Kevin Mullin in California’s 15th Congressional District. Spokespeople for MVAR, Waterfront Strategies, and SKDK, did not respond to requests for comment.

    Between late April and the May 17 primary, UDP paid more than $1.3 million to Waterfront Strategies and $24,000 to SKDK to run ads against Lee. Both firms represent some of the biggest names in Democratic politics and are run by veteran strategists on campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

    The parent company for Waterfront Strategies, GMMB, was founded by Jim Margolis, who advised both Obama’s and Clinton’s presidential campaigns and was a senior adviser when Clinton was secretary of state. The firm’s clients have included national Democratic groups like Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC.

    SKDK’s founders include Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser and former communications director in the Obama White House, and Doug Thornell, who was previously the lead media strategist for the Democratic National Committee and was an official at both the party’s Capitol Hill fundraising organs, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

    Other major Democratic firms worked with AIPAC on unspecified races. UDP paid Impact Research, a firm started by Joe Biden’s campaign pollster, just under $100,000 between March 15 and April 12. Impact Research did not respond to a request for comment. MVAR, a firm founded by the DCCC’s former executive director, Jon Vogel, took AIPAC contracts to run ads in several other Democratic primaries, opposing progressives Nina Turner in her race and Jessica Cisneros in her primary against Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, as well as to back Valerie Foushee over progressive candidate Nida Allam in North Carolina. MVAR also worked for UDP on other unspecified races.

    With national Republican groups pouring money into ads attacking Lee, the race in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, which covers solidly blue Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs, has tightened to within 4 points in recent weeks, according to private polls. The National Republican Congressional Committee had already spent several million dollars on ads against a candidate in a neighboring district that demonized Lee — ads that overlapped with her race’s media market.

    Last week, The Intercept reported that the DCCC committed to spending six figures on behalf of Lee’s campaign, in part to fight against the attacks from the GOP House campaign arm. DCCC also commissioned a poll, released Tuesday, showing Lee ahead by 14 points. During the Republican primary, the DCCC had also tried, unsuccessfully, to challenge Doyle’s signatures to stop him from appearing on the ballot. A judge threw out the challenge.

    When AIPAC ran ads earlier this year against former Maryland Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards during her primary in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, House Speaker Nancy issued a rare rebuke of the group and recorded a video dismissing the ad’s claims. In Lee’s case, Pelosi has given $2,000 to her campaign but has not commented on the latest spending by UDP. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.

    At least one other member of Democratic leadership with close ties to the AIPAC lobby has contributed to Lee’s campaign in recent weeks. The leadership PAC for House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., gave the maximum contribution to Lee’s campaign on October 14. Spokespeople for Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., did not respond to requests for comment on the spending by UDP.

    Jeffries’s spokesperson Christie Stephenson pointed to his contribution to Lee’s campaign and said that last month, the member of Congress had expressed concern about how close the race was getting. “In early October, he also communicated his concern to several unions and progressive organizations about the tightening nature of the race,” Stephenson said in a statement to The Intercept.

    “His clear-throated support for keeping this seat in Democratic hands speaks for itself.”

    The post Democratic Consultants Cash In on AIPAC Spending — Even as It Tries to Hand the House to Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • AIPAC’s First Attack Ad in Midterms Hits Would-Be Squad Member Summer Lee

    The flagship pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is intervening in a race for a House seat that’s growing uncomfortably close for Democrats in deep-blue Pittsburgh. And, with its super PAC’s first attack ads of the 2022 general election, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is going after a familiar target: Pennsylvania state Rep. Summer Lee, a would-be member of the growing progressive Squad in Congress.

    After spending close to $3 million and failing to defeat Lee during Pittsburgh’s Democratic congressional primary in May, the United Democracy Project, the political action committee for AIPAC, is again trying its hand at defeating Lee’s insurgent campaign. On Saturday, UDP dropped just under $80,000 on new mail ads against Lee’s campaign.

    UDP made the ad purchase after conducting an independent internal poll that showed a tight race, spokesperson Patrick Dorton told The Intercept. He declined to share the poll but said it showed a “very competitive race.”

    “Eight days before Election Day, they are spending thousands to elect an extremist anti-choice, insurrectionist-aligned Republican.”

    AIPAC’s direct entry into electoral politics — it has long had clout in Washington, but its super PAC only launched in January — has engendered criticism that the famously bipartisan Israel lobby was increasingly siding with Republicans to go after progressives who stand up for Palestinian human rights.

    In the newly redrawn 12th District of Pennsylvania, AIPAC appeared to be launching a one-two punch with the National Republican Congressional Committee. Dorton, the UDP spokesperson, pointed to NRCC ads running in a nearby district that attempt to tie the Democratic candidate there to Lee. National Republicans have spent millions on the neighboring race so far and have pledged to spend six-figures to defeat Lee’s campaign. “Like in the primaries, we are focused on races where we can have an impact,” Dorton said.

    Dorton would not say whether the group plans to spend more on the race ahead of Tuesday’s election.

    “AIPAC’s Super PACs spent millions of dollars in the Democratic primary attacking Summer Lee, falsely suggesting she wasn’t a real Democrat,” Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats, which recruited Lee to run for Congress, said in a statement Monday. “Now, eight days before Election Day, they are spending thousands to elect an extremist anti-choice, insurrectionist-aligned Republican.” Rojas called on Democratic Party leadership to denounce “AIPAC’s active tole in campaigning for and funding a Republican Majority in Congress.”

    At least one of Lee’s potential colleagues in the Squad criticized the new spending on Monday. In a tweet, Ocasio-Cortez slammed AIPAC for “working for Republican control of Congress and further destabilization of US democracy.”


    Another, separate private poll obtained by The Intercept shows Lee with a slim four-point lead over Republican Michael Doyle — who, in a movie-like twist, shares a name with the retiring Democratic incumbent who was first elected to Congress in 1994. The poll showed 16 percent of voters still undecided. “It’s definitely closer than it should be,” said one strategist close to the campaign, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. Doyle, the Republican, said he supports a federal abortion ban with certain exceptions.

    Until this month, House Democrats’ campaign arm had not planned to spend any money on the race. A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the NRCC’s counterpart, confirmed that the group is planning to spend six figures of its own in paid communications on Lee’s behalf.

    Lee’s campaign had sought financial help from the DCCC when the attack ads against a Democrat in a neighboring district showed up. The ads, which were part of a multi-million dollar spending spree by the NRCC against Democratic congressional candidate Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania’s 17th District, mentioned Lee by name and reached her district’s media market. Released last week, the latest NRCC ad tries to link Deluzio to Lee and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and claims that the three are “delusional” on crime, “defunding our police, abolishing prisons, making us less safe.” The ad claims that Deluzio is “so delusional he donated money to radicals like Lee and AOC.”

    UDP’s ad took up the same themes. “Why do politicians like Summer Lee have to take everything to the extreme?” the UDP ad reads. The mailer sent to voters in the 12th District features a picture of Lee standing in front of screenshots of her tweets calling for prison abolition and defunding the police.

    “This is a race where there is clear pro-Israel candidate and an anti-Israel candidate in Summer Lee,” said Dorton, the UDP spokesperson. Asked about the optics of its first attack ad, Dorton said UDP is a “single-issue” organization and supported several pro-Israel progressive candidates of color in Democratic primaries.

    Lee, a rising Democratic star, has not said much about Israel in her short political career. Virtually all the criticisms of her from pro-Israel figures stem from a single tweet thread where she compared Palestinians and Black Lives Matter protesters, decrying the justifications offered for the indignities suffered by marginalized groups. In an interview following the tweets, Lee said aid to Israel should be conditioned on progress toward a peace deal with the Palestinians. Asked why UDP was attacking Lee, Dorton cited comments in the tweet thread and the interview — as well as Lee’s relationship with the “Squad” in Congress.

    UDP ads that ran during the primary claimed that Lee wasn’t really a Democrat and had attacked President Joe Biden. The group also endorsed more than 100 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Earlier this month, UDP spent just under $1 million on an ad boosting a moderate Democratic state assembly member in the race for California’s 15th District.

    “8 days from making history in PA—where Black women have never had federal representation—AIPAC is funding my extreme GOP opponent,” Lee wrote in a tweet on Monday, which her campaign pointed The Intercept to. “Since endorsing 100+ insurrectionists, AIPAC has repeatedly shown us that democracy has never been as important as keeping progressives out.”

    Lee put a finer point on it in an earlier interview with The Intercept. “This is a way to chill and to keep the progressive movement from growing as a whole,” she said. “This is a way to temper a movement that centers, particularly Black and brown women who are progressive, and stops them from building power right here.”

    Lee has drawn ire from the Democratic establishment by taking unabashedly progressive positions like backing Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and criminal justice reforms. Along with two other insurgent progressives backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Lee was first elected to the state House in 2018, when she ousted a moderate incumbent who had been in office for a decade. If elected, Lee would be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania.

    The post AIPAC’s First Attack Ad in Midterms Hits Would-Be Squad Member Summer Lee appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • Larry Krasner Impeachment Committee Relies on Widely Panned Journal Study

    Lawmakers in Pennsylvania seeking to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner released a new report Monday whose findings rely partially on a widely criticized study written by a former Republican district attorney. The interim report, which reads as a bill of particulars against Krasner, was handed down without a widely expected official recommendation to impeach the progressive district attorney.

    The study in question, which was peer-reviewed and published in August by the journal Criminology & Public Policy, claimed that Krasner’s policy of “de-prosecution” was associated with a statistically significant increase in murders in Philadelphia, compared to the rates recorded under his predecessors. The study, by Thomas Hogan, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute who served two terms as a tough-on-crime prosecutor in Chester County, Pennsylvania, engendered harsh criticisms among social scientists who said the quantitative methodology of the study was undermined by its flaws.

    “People who are serious about solving and preventing crime should look at serious and accurate research.”

    “People who are serious about solving and preventing crime should look at serious and accurate research, not politically motivated documents like Hogan’s,” said Jessica Brand, a spokesperson for Krasner’s office who also leads the Wren Collective, a firm that advises reform-minded prosecutors. “People’s lives, after all, are at stake.”

    Hogan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the specifics of allegations from Krasners office, but told The Intercept he had no contact with the state House committee. “Philadelphia cut felony and misdemeanor sentencings by 70% from 2015-19, so it should come as no surprise that this de-prosecution tactic had an effect on homicides. I encourage you to read the complete article and responses,” he said in an email, reiterating his study’s findings. “I will have no further comment.”

    A Pennsylvania House vote on whether to impeach Krasner will likely take place this week.

    Hogan’s study formed almost the entire basis of what the committee outlined as one of four negative effects of Krasner’s policies on Philadelphia. “DA Krasner’s philosophies, and those of other progressive prosecutors across the country, have been widely criticized,” the committee’s report said. “For example, Thomas Hogan, a former prosecutor at the state and federal level, conducted a study entitled ‘De-prosecution and death: A synthetic control analysis of the impact of de-prosecution on homicides,’ in which he specifically focused on the de-prosecution of crime in Philadelphia pursuant to the adoption of progressive policies between 2015 and 2019.” The report went on to quote extensively from Hogan in a page-long summary of his study.

    The study had come under attack almost as soon as it was released. “The broadscale de-prosecution policy of Philadelphia—particularly for firearm and drug trafficking offenses—appears to have a causal association with a large increase in homicides,” Hogan wrote in his study. “The public in Philadelphia will have to make a normative choice between a reduction in the number of prosecutions and an increase in homicides.” Hogan also suggested that the city of Philadelphia should consider whether to decrease the budget of the DA’s office in response to a decrease in prosecutions.

    Scholars in the fields of criminology, sociology, and economic policy were quick to criticize the study and claimed that it had methodological issues and factual errors, including Hogan’s decision to count individual homicides rather than per capita homicide rates. In September, a group of scholars submitted an article to the same journal outlining what they described as “fatal flaws” in Hogan’s study and warning against its use to inform criminal justice policy. The authors also requested that Hogan share the data he used to produce his study, to which he did not reply. The journal rejected the paper. In a response published to his Substack, Hogan said the critique itself was based on flawed methodology.

    “The flaws in the paper were apparent pretty quickly, to anyone with access to the data & familiarity with causal inference methods,” Jennifer Doleac, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University, wrote in a Twitter thread about Hogan’s paper. She also criticized the journal’s decision to reject the critique. “They discussed the main issues with the analysis (esp. flawed data cleaning & cherry-picking results) clearly & thoroughly. They show that correcting these issues produces a null effect on homicide.”

    Two months later, state lawmakers used Hogan’s analysis to undergird the section of their report on the link between Krasner’s policies and homicides in Philadelphia as part of ongoing investigations by the House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order. Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers who represent rural areas of the state spearheaded efforts to form the committee with the purpose of investigating Krasner’s office and determining what, if any, grounds exist to impeach him.

    Monday’s report is the latest step in a series of yearslong efforts to curb Krasner’s power or remove him from office entirely — despite the fact that the progressive DA was overwhelmingly reelected a year ago. Krasner’s attempts to implement criminal justice reforms and address the underlying causes of mass incarceration have made him a target of lawmakers from both parties since his election in 2017. As removal efforts built steam among Republicans, state House Democrats joined the opposing party last month in voting to hold Krasner in contempt for his refusal to comply with a subpoena in the impeachment efforts. If successful, it would be only the third impeachment of an elected official in the commonwealth’s history.

    Last week, the impeachment committee called on Krasner to testify in an appearance behind closed doors. But before his office had indicated whether he would appear, according to one source with knowledge of the process, the committee was drafting its recommendations to remove him. After Krasner’s office requested to testify publicly, the committee withdrew its offer.

    Attacks against Krasner gained momentum as Republicans around the country pursued a midterm strategy of driving fears around crime. The political attacks place the blame for gun violence that has plagued both rural and urban areas on reform-minded prosecutors elected in liberal cities.

    The report also included a quote from Krasner’s police-backed primary opponent in last year’s election, Carlos Vega. Vega was a homicide prosecutor in Philadelphia and among the 30 staffers whom Krasner fired in a house cleaning upon taking office. As part of its argument that a spike in homicides was due in part to Krasner having “purged the office of institutional knowledge,” the report quoted remarks Vega had made to Philadelphia Magazine in 2018 disparaging Krasner: “Carlos Vega, a former homicide prosecutor in Philadelphia, stated that ‘he felt bad for victims’ because ‘there aren’t many experienced prosecutors left in that unit, so this will be the blind leading the blind.’”

    The post Larry Krasner Impeachment Committee Relies on Widely Panned Journal Study appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • The Biggest, Dumbest Race for the Senate

    U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware introduces on stage PA Lt Gov. John Fetterman for a rally in front of a full capacity crowd of 600, in Wallingford, Pennsylvania on October 15, 2022. Fetterman runs as the Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via AP)

    Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., introduces on stage Pennsylvania Lt Gov. John Fetterman for a rally in Wallingford, Pa., on Oct. 15, 2022.

    Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via AP

    It started with something serious.

    “My recovery may be a joke to Dr. Oz and his team, but it’s real for me,” said John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic lieutenant governor, in late August. It had been roughly three months since he had, in quick succession, suffered a stroke that nearly killed him and clinched his party’s nomination to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate. Mehmet Oz, a TV doctor and Fetterman’s Republican opponent, invited him to a series of five debates while he recovered. Fetterman declined them all.

    In the two months since, the candidates in one of the hottest Senate races in the country have still never engaged face to face. They’ve instead battled on the internet, where a laid-up Fetterman put out content — much of which he crafted himself — fresh enough to break through the miasma on Twitter. Oz, meanwhile, seized on Fetterman’s fitness, emphasizing the reluctance to debate. They will finally do so on October 25, just two weeks before the election.

    The Oz campaign’s urging may seem mean-spirited, especially considering that the Republican is a retired cardiothoracic surgeon and experienced TV personality with teams of paid handlers to help him appear suave on screen. But the fact that the candidates have not confronted one another on substantive policy issues is significant. Pennsylvania is a crucial swing state, often looked to as a barometer for the rest of the country. It has grabbed headlines repeatedly for questions governing crime, labor, and industry. And yet, neither of its next potential senators has expressed much of a vision that wouldn’t fit in a meme.

    That a race which politicians and strategists have anticipated for years has become so vapid tells us more about modern American electoral politics than any of the nonstop horserace polling could. Substance is a liability, and the base is everything. Social media is an attractive battleground. The soundbite has been replaced by the meme war.

    While Fetterman has campaigned aggressively on weed legalization, commonsense gun control, and preserving the right to abortion, he has seldom engaged Oz on the issues. That’s partially because Oz himself is campaigning on little other than “putting Americans first,” a slogan whose strength lies in its lack of meaning, and attacking Fetterman as a socialist who wants to let convicted murderers run wild. But Fetterman has the opportunity to confront voters with what Pennsylvania could look like with Oz in the Senate — what “reversing Biden’s failed agenda,” as Oz promises, would mean for wages, health care, and unemployment rates, or why having another self-proclaimed “pro-life” senator could destroy the lives of countless people across the state, not to mention the country.

    Rather than try to reason with Oz’s attacks, Fetterman’s campaign has conjured a steady stream of its own hits. The strategy, which started out with simple jabs at Oz for living in New Jersey, has evolved into a series of viral tweets and videos that have made a mockery of his campaign and driven Fetterman’s fame and fundraising haul to new levels.

    The soundbite has been replaced by the meme war.

    Pennsylvania voters driving last week near Lincoln Financial Field, the home of the Philadelphia Eagles, would have seen a billboard telling them that Oz is a Cowboys fan. Earlier this month, Fetterman’s campaign blitzed its email lists with news that experiments overseen by Oz killed upwards of 300 dogs. There was the picture of Oz posing with fans at a PennState tailgate: The candidate sipped red wine under a tent while the young attendees stood drenched in rain holding red Solo cups. And the “crudité” debacle, which Fetterman’s campaign maneuvered into another example that Oz is an out-of-touch millionaire and capitalized on for a self-described $500,000 fundraising boon.

    Fetterman’s adoption of some of the low-balling tactics that might seem more fitting for a vacuous TV personality like Oz has not, however, definitively proved to be successful. Even as his aggressive social media strategy nets national supporters and donors, new polling in recent weeks has shown Fetterman’s lead over Oz cut in half since August. If he fails, Republicans will gain one more seat in the Senate, one more likely vote in favor of draconian crackdowns on rights from abortion to education to voter access. And if he wins, where will he stand among the Democrats?

    Supporters react as Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate John Fetterman speaks during a rally at Nether Providence Elementary School on October 15, 2022 in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Election Day will be held nationwide on November 8, 2022. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

    Supporters react as Democratic candidate for Senate John Fetterman speaks during a rally at Nether Providence Elementary School on Oct. 15, 2022 in Wallingford, Pa.

    Photo: Mark Makela/Getty Images

    The page that Democrats are encouraged to take from Fetterman covers tone: He seems accessible, relatable; the press loves to point out his blocky tattoos and hulking height. As he goes gleefully for the kill in widespread and well-liked tweets, once-fashionable concerns about “populism” seem to fade. He has been pitched as the antidote to help Democrats speak to the “white working class” they’ve long sought after.

    Pennsylvania ultimately decided the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, and voters in Philadelphia played a significant role in that win. Many of them were driven by issues of police brutality, racial justice, economic inequality, and criminal justice reform.

    Likely appealing to those voters in the primary, Fetterman has long embraced the populist style taken up by politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who he endorsed for president in 2016 but not in 2020. The attitude is typically associated with a suite of left-leaning priorities that have come to define the progressive movement: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, sweeping reforms to the criminal justice system, and a rethinking of U.S. foreign policy. These days, his campaign seems light on those topics.

    With Medicare for All falling out of fashion, Fetterman’s campaign website advocates “any legislation that gets us closer to the goal of universal healthcare coverage.” He has said that, while pushing a transition to clean energy, he supports fracking and preserving jobs in the natural gas industry — a contradiction to the core tenets of a Green New Deal. While Fetterman has been vocal on his commitment to criminal justice reform — the Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed in May that “John Fetterman ran the Board of Pardons like an activist” — his platform shies away from any specific proposals outside of sentencing reform and diversion programs. And on foreign policy, he appears firmly within the mainstream: One of the specific stances he’s articulated is his “unwavering” support for Israel.

    In his home state, Fetterman has so far stayed away from one of the most influential political fights of the moment. As Republican lawmakers in rural parts of Pennsylvania fast-track efforts to impeach reform-minded Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Fetterman, in his capacity as lieutenant governor, has refused to weigh in. In an interview Tuesday with Semafor, Fetterman said he agreed with Krasner on some issues but disagreed on others. “I think we need to be having a better relationship with the police,” he said, “and making sure that the police feel they feel supported by the DA.”

    Fetterman’s campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

    At least to a point, Fetterman’s strategy seems to be working, if fundraising and social media metrics are to be believed. Pennsylvania voters outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are notably conservative, and engaging in wonky policy debates with Oz may risk tarnishing the man-of-the-people image Fetterman has pushed. So maybe the Pennsylvania Senate race is just not about policy. And maybe that’s OK.

    Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, visits the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 91 in West Homestead, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

    Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, visits the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 91 in West Homestead, Pa., on Oct. 18, 2022.

    Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP

    Once the shit-posting and media tours are over, of course, someone will actually be tasked with representing the state of Pennsylvania in the Senate. And regardless of all the theorizing about messaging tools and toxic topics, the future senator’s constituents will have real challenges they expect to be addressed. Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, Pennsylvania voters ranked the economy, abortion rights, and climate change among their top concerns. One candidate will arguably do a better job representing their interests on those issues than the other. But that’s not the case that’s being made.

    Oz, for his part, has resorted to running lurid attacks on multiple fronts. For weeks, he and his Republican allies have been painting Fetterman as “soft on crime,” dropping an ad in August that claimed “John Fetterman wants to free murderers.” And while none of that is true, it appears to be having an impact. As Fetterman’s lead in polls has dipped, some strategists, Democratic officials, and media outlets have credited the attack ads.

    If the millions spent on the race in Pennsylvania reflect its importance as a bellwether, where are we left when the lessons learned primarily have to do with tone and not with policy? No matter the winner in November, immediate takeaways will likely run along these lines: If it’s Oz, voters wanted someone tough on crime, and if it’s Fetterman, voters wanted someone who could connect with “regular” people. But any analysis that overlooks the banality of recent months will be at best, an overstatement, and at worst, the kind of revisionist history that keeps real substance out of politics.

    “Politicians spend so much time arguing about things that don’t matter,” Fetterman says in a campaign ad released Friday. “I’ll always be focused on what does.” It’s a reminder of what’s at stake — but one absent a definition.

    Perhaps an alternate strategy would fare worse, and Fetterman’s vague approach is the safe one. Perhaps his campaign finds it too risky to distinguish his vision of criminal justice reform from the one Oz is trying to paint or to give voters a clear picture of what life might look like Oz in the Senate. Some might call it cutting through the “poll-tested bullshit.” Others might call it dumbing voters down.

    The post The Biggest, Dumbest Race for the Senate appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Pennsylvania Lawmakers Prepare to Impeach Larry Krasner

    Jeffrey Thomas, the Republican district attorney of southwestern Pennsylvania’s Somerset County, spent the night of April 25, 2022, in jail. After another person reported that they had seen him punching his wife in the head on FaceTime the previous May — an allegation the DA and his wife both deny — Thomas was charged with simple assault in a case pending trial. Two months later and 200 miles east, Republicans in the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a resolution to convene a Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order and used its authority to subpoena a Pennsylvania district attorney: Philadelphia-based reformer Larry Krasner.

    Krasner’s crime — according to Republicans, conservative Democrats, and police, who worked together to try to oust him last year — is an increase in the crimes of others: When homicides spiked in 2020, impacting Philadelphia, rural parts of the state, and many communities across the country, they blamed Krasner’s reform policies. As DA, Krasner has focused on prosecuting violent offenses and diverting people from incarceration. Less than a year ago, Philadelphia voters overwhelmingly reelected him.

    On Friday, Pennsylvania lawmakers proceeded with the second day of impeachment hearings for Krasner, who, in August, refused to comply with a subpoena requesting that he turn over information on how he prosecutes certain crimes. The subpoena, Krasner argued, “repudiate[d] the law of this Commonwealth,” served “no valid legislative purpose,” violated the separation of powers, and requested that his office produce privileged documents. Earlier this month, a bipartisan consensus in Pennsylvania’s state legislature voted overwhelmingly to hold him in contempt.

    Leading the impeachment charge are state lawmakers who represent districts hundreds of miles away from Philadelphia. The champions of the cause are Republicans, who have taken aim at the Democratic DA for implementing progressive reform policies since day one. Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have taken no such action against the Republican Somerset County DA — who, in addition the simple assault charge, is also under house arrest awaiting trial for allegedly raping and strangling a woman last year, and is now temporarily suspended from his job and from practicing law, but retains his seat — and instead have fallen in line with their Republican colleagues. When the vote came up on September 13, in a body with 89 Democrats and 113 Republicans, members voted 162 to 38 to hold Krasner in contempt.

    The focus on Krasner has continued to sharpen as Republicans solidify a national strategy to attack Democrats on crime, with an emphasis on targeting democratically elected reformist prosecutors. But in an assembly where almost 90 Democrats could have taken a stand — albeit a symbolic one — for progressive reform, why did the right-wing push pass so handily?

    Republican state Rep. Josh Kail, who represents a southwestern district outside of Pittsburgh and is leading midterm campaign efforts for the state House Republicans, is widely seen as the leader of the impeachment charge. But according to seven sources — including several Democratic state lawmakers and political operatives with knowledge of the process — who spoke to The Intercept and requested anonymity for fear of professional reprisal, Kail had help from Democratic state Rep. Jordan Harris, who was elected Democratic whip in 2018. The sources say that Harris whipped Democratic members who hold seats seen as vulnerable in the upcoming November midterm elections, when Pennsylvania Democrats seek to win the governorship, control of both legislative chambers, and a seat in the U.S. Senate.

    Along with four of the five other members of House Democratic leadership, Harris voted against the contempt measure, putting his own vote at odds with the position he is said to have pushed, according to the seven sources.

    “Part of my job as the Whip is having conversations with members about their votes, and as I do with every vote, I made myself and my staff available to members who had concerns about the resolution,” Harris told The Intercept. He said he would not comment on internal caucus deliberations.

    The committee currently searching for legal grounds to impeach Krasner held hearings on Thursday and Friday in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, a location that some critics have described as purposely inaccessible to most of the city’s residents.

    “It is especially troubling that this committee, which is trying to undo the results of an election in Philly, picked a location that is extremely hard to get to for ordinary Philadelphians and a time where most people are at work,” said Krasner spokesperson Jessica Brand, who also leads the Wren Collective, a firm that advised reform-minded prosecutors. “One might speculate that this was an intentional attempt to keep people away as the committee tries to undercut democracy.” Krasner himself has not been invited to attend the hearings.

    “There’s been other DAs that have been brought up [on charges] for things and we’ve heard about them,” said Democratic state Rep. Stephen Kinsey, who represents a part of north Philadelphia with high instances of gun violence. But, he said of Pennsylvania Republicans, “this majority party has turned a blind eye.”

    The same Republicans in far-flung parts of the state have repeatedly decried gun violence in Philadelphia while voting to gut gun control bills in the General Assembly.

    GOP ire toward Krasner’s reform efforts — like implementing diversion programs for certain first-time nonviolent gun possession cases — has consumed a significant amount of state legislative time and threatens to take more, as the Republicans who control the General Assembly try to fast-track impeachment efforts before November. The same Republicans in far-flung parts of the state have repeatedly decried gun violence in Philadelphia while voting to gut gun control bills in the General Assembly. State lawmakers have similarly sought to undermine Krasner’s prosecutorial authority since he took office in 2018.

    Harris said the timing is “convenient … for Republicans weeks before an election. This is the path the majority has taken to try and solve gun violence in Philadelphia while widely supported gun safety measures don’t receive a vote. We could’ve debated them in Harrisburg but the Republican majorities are more interested in this than doing the real work required to assist in restoring peace and safety to our communities.”

    The overwhelmingly successful contempt vote, for which members had only a few hours’ notice, was held on the same day as the city’s first murder trial of an on-duty cop, whom Krasner had charged in October 2020 for the 2017 killing of a young Black man, 25-year-old Dennis Plowden. Krasner’s office has pursued police accountability and drawn fire from police and their union throughout his time in office.

    Only two officials have ever been impeached in Pennsylvania, where the bar for impeaching a DA has historically been high.

    “I don’t think that there’s any such comparison,” said state Rep. Summer Lee, the Democratic congressional nominee for Pennsylvania’s 12th District. “But these political times are so incendiary in that false equivalencies are so prevalent when it comes to the media putting out information,” Lee said, referencing the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

    Three Democrats who voted for the contempt measure said they did so because they wanted to show consistency in their treatment of legislative subpoena power following the impeachment inquiry against Trump, not because they believe there is evidence of an impeachable offense by Krasner. Four other Democratic lawmakers, who showed mixed support for the contempt measure, said they were confident that not all Democrats who voted in its favor would automatically vote to remove him from office, should the impeachment committee produce official articles.

    “This is a very slippery slope to impeach.”

    “This is a very slippery slope to impeach,” said Democratic state Rep. Ed Neilson, who voted for the contempt measure and in favor of forming the impeachment committee. Neilson, who represents part of Far Northeast Philadelphia, said he voted for the measure because state lawmakers have the right to subpoena Krasner, not because he thinks there are necessarily grounds for impeachment.

    Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, also the state’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, has not commented publicly on the attacks against Krasner. The two officials’ offices have worked closely on some issues, like prosecution of gun crimes, and have butted heads on others. In 2019, employees in Shapiro’s office emailed the Philadelphia Inquirer asking for them to pursue more critical coverage of Krasner.

    That year, state lawmakers voted to strip Krasner’s prosecutorial authority by giving Shapiro’s office the power to prosecute gun crimes in Philadelphia, and Shapiro came out against the law in response to pressure from protesters. His office declined to comment on the impeachment effort and referred questions to his campaign, which did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

    Leading up to the midterm elections, Pennsylvania Democrats at the national and local level are facing concerted Republican attacks against the same criminal justice reform efforts that first buoyed the popularity of officials like Krasner and Lt. Gov. and Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman. While Fetterman’s campaign dominated the Democratic primary and has launched viral attacks on his Republican opponent, the former talk-show doctor and prominent millionaire Mehmet Oz, Fetterman has slipped in some recent polls. Oz and his Republican operatives have run ads attacking Fetterman’s work on clemency as head of the state board of pardons.

    In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, Democrats forced to respond to the very real gun violence in their districts have ceded ideological ground and political power by embracing tough-on-crime narratives without leverage to legislate a solution. The Krasner impeachment attempt follows the successful recall of DA Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s suspension of a state attorney who refused to prosecute women for seeking abortions in Tampa, and two failed attempts to recall DA George Gascón in Los Angeles.

    While he’s not a fan of Krasner, Neilson said, “I’m also not a big fan of impeaching everybody that does something you don’t like. … Better be careful where we go because it could be one of them next.”

    The post Pennsylvania Lawmakers Prepare to Impeach Larry Krasner appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Florida Contracts Go to Companies That Flooded Ron DeSantis Campaign Fund

    Under the leadership of Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron Desantis, a Missouri-based railroad and transport company that contributed generously in support of his campaign saw an astonishing 280-fold increase in its Florida state government contract awards. A construction aggregates firm that contributed $82,500 was awarded $30 million in new contracts. And a highway and civil site contracting firm that gave $22,500 saw its contracts grow 15-fold. They are just a few of the companies — mostly small and mid-sized construction firms — identified by The Intercept that saw a bonanza of lucrative contracts under the Republican governor, who has styled himself as a successor to Donald Trump and a foe to corporate America’s household names.

    The railroad company, Herzog Contracting, only received $115,000 in contracts under former Republican Gov. Rick Scott and did not donate to his campaign. Since the 2018 gubernatorial race, by contrast, the firm has given $350,000 to DeSantis or his state committee and has so far received $32.7 million in contracts from the Florida Department of Transportation, including work on a commuter rail project.

    At a moment when many large, image-conscious corporations have purportedly distanced themselves from Trump and his style of politics, another tier of companies is leaning in.

    It’s not unusual for corporate campaign donors to be awarded government contracts when their favored politician attains their desired office. But in Florida, where the governor’s record-setting $177 million war chest has fueled talk about his possible plans to run for president in 2024, the sharp increase in contracts to certain DeSantis donors raises concerns about the limits of campaign finance regulation. It also shows how at a moment when many large, image-conscious corporations have purportedly distanced themselves from Trump and his brand of politics, another tier of companies is leaning in.

    Herzog’s national political interests, for instance, appear in some cases to align with those of DeSantis: Earlier this year, the company’s address appeared on an LLC’s disclosure of a $300,000 contribution to a super PAC backing Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Schmitt, and the firm has also funded a Missouri committee called “Let’s Go Brandon PAC.”

    And while DeSantis this spring cracked down on one corporation over its opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay Bill” — yanking the special tax status that had long allowed Disney, in an astounding case of corporate reverence, to operate as if under its own government and avoid Florida state taxes — for the stunt he pulled earlier this month, the governor hired an aviation company that had previously donated to his fellow Florida Republicans to fly and abandon immigrants in Martha’s Vineyard.

    Boosting DeSantis’s campaign are contributions from 18 companies, including construction, consulting, and utility firms, that received a total of more than $1.68 billion in contracts from state agencies during his time in office. A handful of these firms were relatively dormant for political contributions in other cycles; three have not given to statewide Republican candidates since 2002.


    contracts-contribution-govs-rickscott-rondesantis

    Of the 18 major contractor-donors The Intercept has identified, at least 13 secured most of their contracts through invitations to bid, a process meant to ensure competition and insulate contract awards from potential political influence. State agencies, rather than the governor’s office, administer most contracts, and in some cases, like highway construction bids, which are governed by a different statute, local and district level agencies determine bidding eligibility. Reached for comment, one contractor said it would be “impossible” to be awarded a contract linked to a political contribution because of the Department of Transportation’s “very very stringent bidding process.”

    But as Florida’s economy has grown, and the state has moved to assign more contracts at a faster rate, the procurement process has evolved to make it easier for the state to contract for necessary services. Two attorneys who have worked closely on Florida state contract procurements, and spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal, said that the evolution has made the procurement process more flexible for the state by funneling larger contracts through a process that includes negotiation. The contracts reviewed here were mostly awarded through another process whereby awards are designed to go to the responsive bid that costs the least.

    There is no evidence that DeSantis himself exerted influence over the contracts referenced in this story. There have been few challenges to contracts during his time in office, although his Department of Education was criticized earlier this year for discussing contractual work with a firm owned by a former lawmaker before the start of the official bidding process.

    Beyond Herzog Contracting, at least 17 other firms gave contributions ranging from $1,000 to $350,000 to DeSantis’s PAC or his gubernatorial campaigns and received contracts, ranging from $211,000 to just under $700 million, during his first term in office. At least six of the companies received no contracts under DeSantis’s predecessor, now-Sen. Rick Scott, and gave nothing or minimally to his campaign or state PAC. (Some made contributions for electioneering communications under Scott or DeSantis, which are not considered campaign funds and are excluded from this analysis.)

    Donors and Contract Recipients Under Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis

    Company Donations to Scott Donations to DeSantis Contracts under Scott Contracts under DeSantis

    AE Engineering

    		 $0 $10,000 $18,300,000 $43,400,000

    Ajax Building Company

    		 $0 $3,000 $61,400,000 $161,400,000

    AUM Construction, Inc.

    		 $0 $10,000 $5,700,000 $30,500,000

    Certified Thermographic Service

    		 $0 $3,000 $0 $500,000

    Chinchor Electric, Inc.

    		 $500 $1,000 $35,700,000 $64,400,000

    DNA Comprehensive Therapy Services

    		 $0 $30,000 $1,500,000 $4,300,000

    Earthscapes Unlimited

    		 $500 $3,000 $0 $6,300,000

    Emerald Coast Striping

    		 $0 $5,000 $355,400 $17,500,000

    Hale Contracting

    		 $0 $10,000 $1,000,000 $12,400,000

    Halley Engineering

    		 $500 $18,500 $261,500,000 $481,700,000

    Herzog Contracting

    		 $0 $350,000 $115,000 $32,700,000

    Johnson Bros. Corporation

    		 $0 $10,000 $195,600,000 $696,900,000

    Kane Financial Services, LLC

    		 $2,000 $200,000 $0 $211,000

    M of Tallahassee

    		 $0 $22,500 $5,000,000 $74,000,000

    Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough

    		 $0 $31,000 $0 $1,200,000

    Palm Beach Aggregates, LLC

    		 $0 $82,500 $0 $30,000,000

    Ryan Inc., Southern

    		 $0 $10,000 $0 $8,300,000

    Visualscape

    		 $100 $4,000 $11,500,000 $19,400,000

    Total

    		 $3,600 $803,500 $597,670,400 $1,685,111,000

     

    Scott also counted on corporate support as governor — and in some cases, received contributions from the same companies — but he and DeSantis have distanced themselves from one another as they pursue growing political ambition. While DeSantis has turned up his Trump-inspired persona, Scott has maintained a more measured tone. When DeSantis cracked down on Disney, Scott declined to take his side. Saying that his “experience with Disney had been positive,” the former governor hesitated to endorse a change to the corporate-friendly rule.

    Still, the two governors serve similar political interests: Scott did support the state’s anti-gay legislation, and within weeks, he was telling the press that he had canceled his Disney+ subscription and was “not planning on going back” to Disney World. His GOP midterm agenda included a declaration that “there are two genders,” the elimination of race and ethnicity questions from government forms, and a goal to complete the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and name it for former President Trump.

    It’s not unusual for the state to extend existing contracts it deems successful, and some of the firms were also awarded contracts during Scott’s tenure. Johnson Bros. Corporation, of Southland Holdings, for example, received just over $195 million in contracts under Scott and saw it more than triple to over $696 million under DeSantis. The firm did not donate to Scott’s campaign and gave $10,000 in support of his successor. Hale Contracting and Ajax Building Company likewise donated in favor of DeSantis and subsequently saw their contracts increase.

    Several others, however, gave nothing to Scott and received no contracts under his tenure, then saw their fortunes shift under DeSantis. The construction and aggregate source firm Palm Beach Aggregates, LLC, for example, gave $82,500 to DeSantis and has so far has been awarded $30 million in contracts from the Department of Environmental Protection. The firm did not donate to or receive contracts from Scott during his time in office, nor did three others that gave contributions ranging from $3,000 to $31,000 to DeSantis and his PAC and were awarded contracts ranging from $500,000 to $8.3 million from various state agencies.

    A company called DNA Comprehensive Therapy Services contributed $30,000 to DeSantis and has been awarded $4.3 million in contracts, which were exempt from the typical bidding process because the firm provides services for children with autism. The company did not contribute to Scott and was awarded $1.5 million in contracts during his time in office. A spokesperson said the company’s funding was a result of a state grant application process that enabled it to serve children “who otherwise would be unable to access care.”

    The other companies referenced in this story did not respond to requests for comment.

    “We’re just talking about a whole lot more money here,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former enforcement attorney at the Federal Election Commission’s Office of General Counsel. Pointing to the combination of DeSantis’s record fundraising haul and similarities to a case that came before the FEC this spring, Ghosh told The Intercept that in his view, “DeSantis’s state PAC is a de facto war chest for a presidential campaign.”

    “DeSantis’s state PAC is a de facto war chest for a presidential campaign.”

    To make his point, Ghosh drew a comparison to an FEC complaint that the Campaign Legal Center, where he is now director of federal campaign finance reform, filed in August 2020 against Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., then a state legislator, for continuing to operate a state committee after he resigned to run for U.S. Congress. FEC rules prohibit federal candidates from using funds generated at the state level for their federal campaigns, in part because most states permit corporations to fund candidates directly, which is banned at the federal level. Donalds had formed a state committee — which in Florida functions like a super PAC, with virtually no limits on contributions — called Friends of Byron Donalds, and it had just under $100,000 on hand when his state campaign ended. The state committee later transferred its surplus directly to the federal PAC, which Donalds was able to tap for his successful U.S. House campaign.

    This past April, the FEC finally deadlocked: In a 3-to-3 vote, the commission found itself unable to determine whether Donalds had or had not violated campaign finance law. They voted to close the complaint file.

    In July, CNN reported that DeSantis’s political team had determined possible ways to convert money from his gubernatorial campaign to a potential federal one, citing the Donalds case as an example.

    The logic of the decision in that matter “opens a huge loophole for folks like DeSantis, who are tremendously successful in raising funds in a state vehicle,” Ghosh said. “Someone running DeSantis’s PAC could point to the Donalds decision and say they’re working in line with the commissioners.”


    THE VILLAGES, FLORIDA - OCTOBER 23: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives two thumbs up towards U.S. President Donald Trump after he asked him how it was going in the state as he speaks during his campaign event at The Villages Polo Club on October 23, 2020 in The Villages, Florida. President Trump continues to campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading up to the November 3rd Election Day. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives two thumbs up toward U.S. President Donald Trump during his campaign event in The Villages, Fla., on Oct. 23, 2020.

    Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

    If Friends of Ron DeSantis, the state PAC, were to transfer the funds directly to a federal committee, or indirectly via another committee, it would fall on the FEC to determine whether it violated the law. But with the current makeup and disposition of the commission, Ghosh is not hopeful of the prospect.

    “The FEC has been a dysfunctional agency for many years at this point,” said Ghosh, who left the FEC and joined the Campaign Legal Center in March. “And I think its recent decisions don’t inspire much confidence that that’s going to change anytime soon.”

    FEC spokesperson Christian Hilland declined to comment beyond outlining the laws governing committee finance for state and federal campaigns.

    DeSantis has not announced any plans to run for president, but reportedly, his potential adversary and icon has clocked him as a threat. Last month, after DeSantis had been observed reproducing Trump’s hand gestures and vocal inflections, Rolling Stone reported that Trump had accused DeSantis of “stealing” his style. Last week, the same outlet said Trump fumed that DeSantis had copied his migrant-moving scheme.

    Whether DeSantis runs or not, the possibility that he would be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination was on the table as early as 2018, when he beat Democrat Andrew Gillum by less than half a percentage point. He soon solidified his image as an aggressive, hardcore conservative in a state that twice turned out for Trump, who won Florida by less than 2 points in 2016 and 3 in 2020 after going for Barack Obama in 2012.

    Trump has not stopped campaigning, and the prospect of a Trump-DeSantis showdown would surely test both candidates. While Trump has raised millions off of a federal investigation at his Mar-a-Lago estate, DeSantis has brought in his own millions with help from state contractors who may view him as more than just a governor. (And, of course, with the support of hard-right big business. His campaign has been bolstered by donations from 42 billionaires across 15 states, including David H. Koch Foundation President Julia Koch in Kansas, private equity magnate John W. Childs in Massachusetts, and the DeVos family in Michigan.)

    As Floridian celebrities Johnny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Donnie Van Zant, his brother, put it in a campaign song for DeSantis, “The press don’t like him / but he sure does get my business.”

    The post Florida Contracts Go to Companies That Flooded Ron DeSantis Campaign Fund appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Democratic National Committee Edited Bylaws to Let It Overrule Convention

    During its summer meeting over the weekend, the Democratic National Committee quietly amended its bylaws, giving the narrower body power to override decisions made by its members at its quadrennial convention.

    The national committee approved language requiring that it must ratify any bylaw amendments that the convention, a broader body, wants to adopt. “No such Bylaw or amendment shall be effective unless and until it is subsequently ratified by a vote of the majority of the entire membership of the Democratic National Committee,” the amended measure from the Rules and Bylaws Committee states.

    “These decisions are made to move ultimate power from the members of the convention into the hands of the committee, and that can become a dangerous precedent,” Nevada Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer told The Intercept. “These seem to us as increasingly anti-democratic decisions. And it brought a lot of outrage from progressives and moderates alike.”

    The amendment removes the authority over DNC decisions from the national convention, which includes thousands of members, and places it instead with the smaller national committee of just under 500. According to three people present, several DNC members were frustrated with the change.

    “We’re hearing that a very small group may try to disrupt the General Session,” read a text a DNC staffer sent to members on Friday. “We cannot afford this disruption less than 60 days before the election (also, it could prevent the VP from being able to speak tomorrow). We recommend you enthusiastically vote to support the reports as written and adopted overwhelmingly by your colleagues on standing committees. Wondering if we can’t count on you to support the chair and reports?”

    The following day, when the general session took place, Democratic National Committee Member Jessica Chambers of Wyoming — who received the text and is among the leaders who will now have the power to approve bylaws — read the message aloud on the floor. Chambers said the text went to at least 100 individual members.

    “There is not a disruptor among us,” Chambers said to a round of applause. “Our staff should not be telling us how to think or vote.” The Intercept reviewed an audio recording of her remarks during the session.

    “Our staff should not be telling us how to think or vote.”

    Chambers called the DNC “the least democratic organization that I’m involved with,” in part because paid staff whip votes against members. The recent attempt to suppress dissent is an example of how committee staff undermine elected members “for someone else’s agenda,” she added. “And I don’t know whose agenda it really is.”

    Whitmer, who did not receive the text herself but had it shared with her by a fellow member, called the message an “intimidation tactic” that created division within DNC membership.

    Two press representatives for the DNC did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, nor did Rules and Bylaws Committee co-chairs Minyon Moore and James Roosevelt Jr. Moore is the former chief executive officer of the DNC and was the director of White House political affairs under President Bill Clinton; Roosevelt has provided volunteer legal counsel to the Massachusetts Democratic Party and is a former associate commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration.

    “The DNC members are at a very clear disadvantage to the staff and the interests of the establishment,” Chambers said. “I hate that word, but I don’t know how to describe it. There are people who are running the DNC that are not the DNC members.”

    The post Democratic National Committee Edited Bylaws to Let It Overrule Convention appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Cops Spend $400,000 to Save House Democrats’ Campaign Chair

    “Alessandra Biaggi voted to release criminals without bail,” read an ad on the back of a truck with a New Jersey license plate driving through New York’s 17th Congressional District, which covers the counties of Westchester and Rockland. The ad is one of several — including digital, text, and mail ads — attacking state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi as “a radical anti-police extremist,” paid for by the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York.

    Biaggi is challenging Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair, in the upcoming August 23 Democratic primary. The police union’s PAC dropped more than $410,000 in the last two weeks on ads against Biaggi, its first federal expenditure since it funded ads against former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2019 during his short-lived bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

    “Biaggi is a privileged New York City radical who has spent months trying to trick voters from Long Island to the Hudson Valley into giving her a ticket to Washington,” NYC PBA President Patrick Lynch said in a statement to The Intercept. “She doesn’t care about these communities. She just wants a national platform from which to spread her extreme ideology. She has a history of demonizing cops and supporting policies that have made our neighborhoods less safe. Voters in the 17th Congressional District deserve to know who she really is.”

    The PBA PAC is one of three that have come to Maloney’s aid in the final weeks of the race despite his advantage in fundraising, institutional support, and recent polling. The three political action committees, including a new group called Our Hudson PAC and the National Association of Realtors PAC, have spent just over $585,000 so far on ads attacking Biaggi or backing Maloney. The National Association of Realtors PAC spent $45,000 on ads backing Maloney last week. Our Hudson PAC dropped $130,000 on ads attacking Biaggi since August 2. Maloney is also endorsed by Team Blue PAC, a committee backed by House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., which has led efforts to protect several incumbent Democrats in safe blue seats facing primary challenges from their left.

    On Tuesday, the PAC for the Working Families Party, which is backing Biaggi, spent $100,000 on ads supporting her. Her campaign website includes a section often referred to as a “red box” and used by candidates to package messaging that can be used by PACs and outside spenders to boost the candidate or attack their opponents. Yet Biaggi’s campaign is not taking corporate PAC money, and no other PACs are backing her campaign.

    In a statement to The Intercept, Maloney spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg called Biaggi hypocritical and said that the new spending from the Working Families Party PAC amounted to money from a dark-money super PAC. “Senator Biaggi’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. The day after a dark money super pac drops one hundred thousand dollars in negative attack ads, funded by the one group that has endorsed her campaign, she had the gall to bemoan dark money super pacs. Senator Biaggi has been encouraging this outside spending, calling for it on her website and providing footage to the group to use in the ads. This is why Senator Biaggi has not been endorsed by a single Democratic Committee or current elected official from the district, she has no interest in holding this seat for Democrats, she is only interested in her selfish personal ambitions.”

    In June, the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to Maloney in his capacity as head of the DCCC, along with the heads of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and asked them to condemn super PAC spending in primaries. And last month, a group of progressive organizations in the Hudson Valley sent another letter to Maloney asking him to do the same. Maloney did not respond publicly to either letter. His campaign declined to comment.


    IMG_5780

    A truck with a New Jersey license plate is seen driving through New York’s 17th Congressional District attacking state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi as “a radical anti-police extremist,” paid for by the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York.

    Photo: Obtained by The Intercept

    Maloney made the controversial decision in May to run in the 17th District instead of in his current district, the 18th, after newly drawn lines offered a potentially smoother path to victory. Maloney’s current district, which he won by 13 points in 2020, is now rated as a toss-up, and could have posed an embarrassing outcome for the head of the party’s House campaign arm.

    Maloney’s decision came as a surprise to some New York Democrats, including the incumbent in the 17th, Rep. Mondaire Jones. Maloney’s move pushed Jones to run in a crowded field of a dozen candidates in the 10th District, which covers parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, rather than challenge progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the 16th. The shuffling of district lines set off a frenzy as some candidates, like Jones and Biaggi, planned to relocate to new districts, or in the case of Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, prepared to battle it out in a member-on-member primary.

    The new spending comes at a vulnerable point in Maloney’s campaign, which has faced several scandals in recent months — some stemming from Biaggi’s camp. A former local Democratic county party chair and supporter of Biaggi’s campaign filed the ethics complaint after the New York Post reported that Maloney had employed a “body man” who performed personal duties. Maloney’s campaign told the Post that the allegations of misuse in the complaint were baseless and that the staffer was never directed to do personal work. Ehrenberg, Maloney’s spokesperson, also said that the person who filed the complaint was “a vocal Biaggi supporter who has a longstanding, personal vendetta against” the representative.

    Maloney has also had to answer in recent weeks for criticisms of tactics this cycle by national Democratic groups including the DCCC, which have come under fire for boosting extreme conservative candidates, including supporters of former President Donald Trump and election deniers, in Republican primaries hopes of improving Democrats’ chances in what is expected to be a brutal midterm cycle. In a scathing op-ed last week, the New York Times Editorial board called the strategy “profoundly irresponsible.” Maloney has said a DCCC-funded ad highlighting ties between Trump and an extreme conservative candidate in Michigan was to attack, not help, the candidate.

    Ads from the National Association of Realtors PAC backing Maloney applaud him as “a longtime supporter of issues important to the real estate industry” and say he “has proven to be a REALTOR champion. Join us in supporting him in the Congressional Primary.” An ad from Our Hudson PAC attacking Biaggi reads “This is no time for Alessandra Biaggi’s divisive politics” and features two Biaggi tweets that said “Defund the police,” and “The police in this country are soulless.”

    Biaggi launched her congressional campaign in February in the district of conservative Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., in Long Island. At the time, Suozzi was running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary against Gov. Kathy Hochul. But after Maloney announced his plans to run in the 17th, Biaggi publicly criticized him for pushing Jones out, and less than a week later, announced that she planned to run against the DCCC chair instead. Since then, she’s hammered his record on the Affordable Care Act and tried to make the argument that the party doesn’t have room for a leader who chose to push a popular first-term lawmaker out of his district in order to save his own seat. Maloney’s campaign has the advantage in fundraising and institutional support, with more than $3.5 million dollars to Biaggi’s $700,000, and support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and endorsements from former Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.; the New York AFL-CIO; and End Citizens United. Both candidates have endorsements from Moms Demand Action.

    Biaggi’s rise to the state legislature has been compared to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s historic toppling of former Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., in 2018, and she has styled her campaign in a similar way. Biaggi described Maloney as “a selfish corporate Democrat” to the New York Times and attacked him in a July forum held by the Yorktown Democratic Committee during which she claimed that he “not only voted with Republicans on but voted repeatedly to water down” the Affordable Care Act. On Tuesday, her campaign released an ad showing an interview during Maloney’s first congressional campaign with the editorial board of the Poughkeepsie Journal in which Maloney declined to say whether he would have voted for the ACA.

    The race in the 17th now pits Maloney, the face of House Democratic efforts to stave off major losses in November and hang onto a thinning margin in the chamber, against Biaggi, backed by progressives including Ocasio-Cortez, Cynthia Nixon, Empire State Indivisible, and Sunrise NYC. Biaggi was elected in 2018 after she ousted the former leader of New York’s Independent Democratic Conference in a primary. Members of the IDC had long caucused with Republicans, and the scheme gave the GOP a constructive majority in the state, but the group disbanded in 2018 after several incumbents lost to progressive challengers. Once in office, those progressive lawmakers passed legislation to strengthen rights for voters and tighten campaign finance laws, measures that had stalled as Democrats ceded control to the IDC.

    The post Cops Spend $400,000 to Save House Democrats’ Campaign Chair appeared first on The Intercept.

  • “Intentionally Diverse” Democratic Firm Was Behind Mailers That Seemed to Darken Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Face

    A Democratic firm run by former President Barack Obama’s onetime press secretary designed the ads attacking Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., that featured an apparently darkened image of his face. The firm, Bryson Gillette, advertises itself as a “minority-owned, intentionally diverse” firm.

    Bowman, who is Black, is running for reelection this cycle and will face candidate Vedat Gashi in the upcoming August 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 16th District. The race is Bowman’s first primary challenge since he was elected in 2020 after ousting longtime Rep. Eliot Engel, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in that year’s Democratic primary. On August 4, Engel endorsed Gashi, a Westchester County legislator, citing his strong support for Israel.

    The ad, paid for by Gashi’s campaign, featured the image of Bowman under the headline “Jamaal Bowman: The Wrong Priorities” and listed his support for defunding the police. Gashi’s campaign denies that the image was altered.



    The tactic of darkening or altering images of candidates in electoral ads has long been controversially deployed against candidates of color and Jewish candidates, either darkening the candidate’s skin or enlarging their nose. While this sounds like a relic of the past, Republicans ran ads as recently as 2020 against then-Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats from Georgia, using these tactics. Warnock and Ossoff were elected that year, giving Democrats a slim majority in the chamber.

    Bryson Gillette, a Democratic political consulting firm based in California, has worked with major Democratic candidates like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker, and Pennsylvania state Rep. Summer Lee, who won her congressional primary in May to advance to the November general election. Founder and President Bill Burton served as national press secretary for Obama’s 2007 campaign and later as deputy White House press secretary and special assistant to the president. “And while we are sons and daughters of immigrants and slaves who worked like hell to create a place in the world for us — we are doing our best to make it more perfect, every day,” reads a message from Burton about Bryson Gillette’s history on its website. The firm describes itself as having an “intentionally diverse team that includes veteran political operatives, public affairs experts and communications strategists.”

    Bryson Gillette did not respond to a request for comment.

    Gashi’s campaign has paid Bryson Gillette $67,640 since April for services including digital advertising, mail and printing services, palm card printing and design, video production and digital ads, and campaign website design and production. Those payments include just under $47,000 in June for printing, production, mail, postage, and digital ads. Bryson Gillette is the only firm Gashi’s campaign has paid for mail or digital ads.

    Gashi, who has campaigned to Bowman’s right, appears in a photo alongside his family on the other side of the mailer with a list of his priorities, which include funding police, addressing inflation, and standing “with our allies, like Israel and Ukraine.”

    Yuridia Peña, a communications consultant for Gashi’s campaign, told The Intercept that the photo was not darkened, that it was a low-resolution image pulled from Bowman’s own social media page, and that the campaign was not going to use the photo again. Peña said that the image on the mailer appears darker because it was put on a white background. In a statement to The Intercept, Gashi campaign manager Daniel Johnson said, “Of course, we did not alter the photo. This is just another example of how the incumbent refuses to be held accountable for his failed record. Our campaign is focused on protecting our democratic values and helping families in the Bronx and Westchester thrive.”

    Bowman joined the progressive “Squad” after his 2020 election, when his campaign prevailed against outside spending by pro-Israel groups and Republican donors who tried to save Engel’s campaign and preserve his prized role in Congress as an ally to corporations and foreign policy hawks. Bowman ran on Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and racial and economic justice. His campaign was backed by Justice Democrats and marked the group’s fourth successful campaign against an incumbent since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defeated former Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018.

    Groups like Democratic Majority for Israel funneled money from a Republican super PAC to run ads attacking Bowman and boosting Engel in the 2020 primary. DMFI and its counterpart, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have not spent on Bowman’s primary this cycle.

    In a statement to City & State that his campaign shared with The Intercept, Bowman said the ad was part of a long history of racist tactics used against candidates of color. “To be Black in America is to deal with multiple forms of racism on a consistent basis. This is one of them,” Bowman said. “There is an ugly history behind facial distortion to spread hate and disdain for political purposes. This is why voters were angered.” A spokesperson for Bowman’s campaign said voters angered by the mailers reached out to the campaign about the ads.

    Bowman has raised more than $1.3 million this cycle to Gashi’s $807,000. Bowman will also face Mark Jaffe, president and CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, and Catherine Parker, a former small business owner and Westchester native. Parker has raised just under $300,000, $139,000 of which she loaned to herself. Jaffe has raised $100,000, all of which he loaned to his campaign.

    The post “Intentionally Diverse” Democratic Firm Was Behind Mailers That Seemed to Darken Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Face appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Criminal Justice Reformer Trounces Police-Backed Candidate in Race to Replace Top Prosecutor in Floyd Murder

    A Tuesday race for top prosecutor in Hennepin County, Minnesota, gave some clarity in the ongoing debate over how Minneapolis residents really feel about police reform two years after George Floyd’s murder. The killing, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparked a nationwide movement to reform the criminal justice system and local efforts by the City Council to dismantle and defund the police department. But since then, the city has sent mixed messages about how to move forward.

    In May 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was caught on video as he kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Last month, Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison for violating Floyd’s civil rights during the arrest that led to his murder. But at the time, the officer’s fate seemed anything but certain.

    Floyd’s murder, and a spate of other police officers getting off scot-free after killing Black men, led to worldwide protests against police brutality. The county’s top prosecutor, Mike Freeman, sided with Chauvin shortly after the incident, saying that there was “other evidence that does not support a criminal charge” in Floyd’s murder.

    Initially, there was momentum behind a plan to defund the Minneapolis Police Department entirely. But amid pushback from local law enforcement, some city council members softened their stance and proposed another plan to overhaul, but keep, the department. And after a ballot measure to replace the city’s police department with a department of public safety failed last November 56 percent to 44 percent, mainstream media and politicians were quick to claim that Minneapolis residents didn’t want major police reform. “Voters in Minneapolis have resoundingly rejected a proposal to reinvent policing in their city,” NPR wrote of the vote.

    A jury ultimately decided differently, convicting Chauvin earlier this year, to the relief of Floyd’s supporters. And on Tuesday, Hennepin County voters dealt another rebuke to Freeman’s tough-on-crime approach and what his critics said was a reluctance to hold police accountable in killings and other instances of brutality. Voters sent former Chief Public Defender Mary Moriarty to the top spot for county attorney with 36 percent of the vote in the seven-way nonpartisan primary. Moriarty came in far ahead of the police-backed candidate, retired Judge Martha Holton Dimick, who received just under 18 percent of the vote and will face Moriarty in the November general election.

    Dimick is backed by Freeman and local unions for police and sheriffs, along with centrist Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the Star Tribune editorial board. She served as a county district court judge for a decade before she retired in January to run for Hennepin County attorney. In a Star Tribune op-ed last month, Dimick said that she was depressed after watching the video of Floyd’s murder but that since the murder, “many criminals have heard the message that we don’t care about their actions, and they have acted accordingly.” Her campaign focused on cracking down on repeat offenders and violent crime, and she told the Star Tribune last month that while she supported some efforts to reform the criminal justice system, “we have to send the message that there are going to be consequences if you commit a crime.”

    But Dimick’s approach fared poorly among Hennepin County residents Tuesday, who overwhelmingly chose Moriarty’s reformist approach — focused on restorative justice, alternatives to incarceration, ending racial disparities in the legal system, holding police accountable, and removing cash bail for nonviolent offenders.

    “The community members, elected leaders, and organizations that support our campaign do not always agree with each other on every issue – but we all agree on one thing – that the status quo isn’t working,” Moriarty said in a tweet celebrating her victory Tuesday night.

    The Hennepin County attorney’s race was one of at least two in Minnesota in which police-backed candidates fared poorly amid an ongoing debate over how to balance criminal justice reform with public safety. Also in Minneapolis, candidate Don Samuels, who was backed by Frey and local law enforcement, lost by 2 points in his Democratic primary challenge against incumbent U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar despite institutional support, outside spending, and support from local law enforcement figures.

    The county attorney’s office, once held by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is responsible for criminal prosecutions in the state’s biggest county and rose to national importance after Freeman announced in September that he would not seek reelection amid scrutiny over his handling of the Floyd case. Freeman has held the office for more than two decades over nonconsecutive terms — he was first elected in 1990 and served from 1991 to 1999, when Klobuchar took the seat. He was elected again in 2006 and has held the office since then.

    Minnesota House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, whom the Star Tribune endorsed alongside Dimick for the top two spots, received 16 percent of the vote and came in third place. Winkler ran on a reform platform that highlighted police accountability and reforming cash bail.

    The post Criminal Justice Reformer Trounces Police-Backed Candidate in Race to Replace Top Prosecutor in Floyd Murder appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Federal Prison Officials Knew of Misconduct, Corruption, and Abuse, Senate Investigation Finds

    When a detainee at a federal prison facility in Atlanta, Georgia, was found hanging from a ligature in his cell in November 2018, prison staff had to borrow a razor blade from another detainee in order to cut them down.

    The scene was one of several alarming accounts of conditions at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta detailed Tuesday during a Senate subcommittee hearing. Public reporting has described several years’ worth of security and health issues at the facility, including deaths, escapes, corruption, and a smuggling ring. According to congressional investigators who spoke at the hearing, senior officials at the federal prison complex and at the federal Bureau of Prisons were aware of the issues for years and failed to adequately address them, amounting to gross misconduct.

    The findings are part of an ongoing 10-month bipartisan congressional investigation into allegations of corruption and abuse at the Atlanta facility. Started last September by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the investigation has focused on the Atlanta complex to highlight broader issues in the federal prison system — in part because of its location in Georgia, the home state of the subcommittee chair, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who was previously an investigative journalist. The facility has the highest number of suicides by detainees at any federal prison over the last five years, according to internal documents and security assessments obtained as part of the investigation. Previous reporting has documented at least 13 suicides at the facility between 2012 and 2021, including five between October 2019 and June 2021.

    Ossoff, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, subpoenaed Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal to testify at Tuesday’s hearing after the Department of Justice refused to make him available voluntarily. The hearing, which represents the first instance of a Democrat subpoenaing an official of President Joe Biden’s administration, painted a damning picture of a bloated federal prison system run by well-informed and willfully inactive leaders. Ossoff hammered pointed questions at the BOP director, who often avoided giving direct answers and claimed ignorance, and at other times put the blame on his subordinates.

    Carvajal, a 30-year BOP veteran who has led the bureau since February 2020, announced in January that he would resign amid reports of corruption and abuse at BOP facilities around the country, in addition to complaints over the bureau’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. On July 12, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Colette Peters, director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, would take over as BOP director. Peters will be sworn in on August 2.

    “The investigation has revealed that gross misconduct persisted at this prison for at least nine years, and that much of the damning information revealing misconduct, abuse, and corruption was known to BOP and accessible to BOP leadership during that period,” Ossoff said during Tuesday’s hearing. The committee detailed internal reports written by BOP staff repeatedly warning about misconduct and other potential civil rights violations at the facility, which went unaddressed by senior officials.

    Carvajal said Tuesday that he had not been aware of issues at the facility until the summer of 2021 and immediately took “appropriate actions” beginning that July, including temporarily closing housing units and removing the warden, associate warden, and the entire management team. He called for additional funding to BOP for approximately $2 billion in necessary repairs throughout the bureau. (BOP receives an average of $95 million annually for modernization and repair projects.)

    “Respectfully, Director Carvajal, you’re continuing to drive responsibility down the chain of command,” Ossoff said. “You spend two years as the assistant director of correctional services, in your words, responsible for implementing policies and procedures at the national level. You’re then the director of the Bureau of Prisons. And you haven’t familiarized yourself with any of these issues. You were unaware of any issues at USP Atlanta. It’s clearly your most troubled facility. You were ignorant of these problems until the middle of 2021. That’s your testimony today?”

    “Senator, things like that, because of the delineation of authority, wouldn’t normally rise to my level. We have a chain of command and procedures that were followed,” Carvajal replied. Ossoff interrupted: “So yes, you were ignorant of this until [the] middle of 2021?”

    “It was obvious that there was a breakdown that did not reach my level,” Carvajal said. “And that is why we took the action that we took. There is a delineation of authority, and we trust people — these are senior executive service people at the highest level who have that responsibility. We have very good policies, senator, when they’re followed. The breakdown here is that people consciously chose not to follow the policy.”


    UNITED STATES - APRIL 15: Michael Carvajal, Director Federal Bureau of Prisons, testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday, April 15, 2021. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

    Michael Carvajal, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, testifies on April 15, 2021.

    Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

    The findings presented at Tuesday’s hearing came from thousands of pages of internal BOP documents and dozens of interviews with current and former BOP staff, whistleblowers, federal judges and defenders, and former senior BOP leaders.

    An August 2020 security assessment by the BOP Central Office, obtained by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and referenced in reporting in late 2021, found pervasive and extensive security failures — including inside the facility — and identified USP Atlanta as a security threat to Atlanta and the southeast region of the U.S. Carvajal testified that he had not seen the security assessment and said that “normally would not rise to my level.”

    Federal prisons and detention facilities have a long and documented history of abuse, neglect, and violation of constitutional rights reported by detainees, staff, and current and former officials. The Covid-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to deteriorating conditions inside jails and prisons across the U.S. that have persisted for decades, but received more media coverage as the number of infections and deaths from the virus spiked in 2020. But federal officials have known about ongoing patterns of gross misconduct since well before the pandemic, according to the subcommittee investigation.

    At least six people detained at USP Atlanta died by suicide during the tenure of the facility’s former chief psychologist, Erika Ramirez, who is now BOP chief psychologist at FCI Seagoville in Texas. Ramirez worked at the Atlanta facility from 2018 to 2021, when she was involuntarily transferred to the Texas facility as part of what she described as illegal retaliation for reporting “ongoing and uncorrected gross mismanagement of suicide prevention practices which I believe were allowing needless inmate suicides to happen,” she testified Tuesday.

    “To put this into perspective, federal prisons typically see between one and three suicides over a five-year period,” Ramirez said. “Any loss of life is tragic and unacceptable, which is why it is particularly devastating to see such disregard for human life at USP Atlanta.”

    Testimony from Ramirez and another retired BOP official, Terri Whitehead, former jail administrator at USP Atlanta, detailed unsanitary and inhumane conditions, neglect of suicide prevention efforts, and retaliation for their efforts to report them. Carvajal said he visited the facility in April and observed that staff were addressing issues. He said that as a result of corrective actions taken by BOP, the facility had “increased staff training; enhanced security measures, internal controls; improved internal auditing, and strengthened inmate and staff accountability.”

    Whitehead started working at the Atlanta facility in August 2020 and retired in December, earlier than she had planned. She testified that during her time at USP Atlanta, “there were so many rats inside the facility, dining hall, and food preparation areas, that staff intentionally left doors open so that the many stray cats that hung around the prison could catch the rats. It is never a good idea to leave prison doors open.” The facility had no professional pest control service in place, Whitehead said, “because management officials could not work together and determine which departmental budget was responsible for the cost.”

    Ossoff entered into the record a January letter obtained by the committee written from federal Judge Timothy C. Batten, chief judge at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, to the warden at USP Atlanta. In it, the judge asked for answers regarding conditions at the facility’s jail, which holds people pretrial, “with respect to reports of rats in the building; roaches in the food; poor nutrition and emaciation of inmates; lack of access to hygiene products; lack of access to medication; lack of access to mail, limited access to tooth brush and toothpaste; no change of clothes for several weeks; a month of 24-hour solitary confinement with only a bible for entertainment or reading; a week, as you mentioned, with only a paper jumpsuit and paper blankets for an inmate on suicide watch without mental health treatment; only being permitted 15 minutes out of a cell every day to bathe, make phone calls, and use the library; blockage of written and other communications between attorney and client; difficulty arranging interview between inmate and psychologist.”

    Carvajal told Ossoff he had not been aware of Batten’s letter until Tuesday’s hearing.

    Carvajal testified that the bureau “continually strive[s]” to improve suicide prevention efforts, and that the rate of suicide by people detained by BOP “historically run lower than those of the general public.” He was BOP’s assistant director for correctional programs from August 2018 to February 2020, when he was named director. During that time, he received reports investigating each suicide at the facility. Ossoff repeatedly asked if Carvajal was aware of the issues at the facility prior to 2021 — including reports he received directly via email.

    Carvajal said he wasn’t “aware specifically” of each individual issue, but he claimed he had reviewed the reports on investigations into the suicides and took appropriate action. He repeatedly blamed his ignorance of issues at USP Atlanta on the sprawling bureaucracy at BOP, siloing of top officials, and a failure of other staff and senior officials to follow policies for documenting and reporting misconduct and neglect.

    Later in the hearing, Carvajal acknowledged that he had not taken appropriate action to address known issues at the facility.

    “You took no action, and the buck stops with you, correct?” Ossoff asked. Carvajal responded: “Correct.”

    The post Federal Prison Officials Knew of Misconduct, Corruption, and Abuse, Senate Investigation Finds appeared first on The Intercept.

  • Firm Funding William Lacy Clay-Backed PAC Is Tied to Cori Bush Opponent’s Father

    A company linked to the father of a Missouri Democratic congressional contender is funding a political action committee attacking his opponent, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

    YACHAD PAC, a new committee spending against Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., in her upcoming primary challenge, is run by Republican operative Paul Zemitzsch, local news outlet KSDK reported Wednesday. The group has received contributions from former Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay, whom Bush ousted in 2020; Clay’s sister; and his former director of communications. But the PAC’s recent FEC filings reveal that its primary funder is a company linked to the father of Bush’s opponent, state Sen. Steven Roberts Jr.

    SCD Investments LLC, an investment group where Roberts’s father, Steven C. Roberts Sr., has held multiple titles, gave the PAC $16,000 in May. Roberts Sr. was previously listed in 2013 as the company’s member in Missouri public records and as its manager in a State of Florida filing. He was also the company’s registered agent until 2013. In the record of its donation to YACHAD PAC, the company lists an address shared by several Roberts family companies. Roberts Sr. did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

    “Cori Bush has been a disaster, for not just the Jewish community, but all of Missouri,” Zemitzsch said in an interview (he clarified that he is not Jewish). “It hurts my soul when I flip on CNN and there’s some stupid-ass thing about what she said about defund the police, she’s against Boeing, and she’s antisemitic. There is no question. She’s antisemitic.”

    Like other progressive members of Congress, Bush has been accused of antisemitism by right-wing and pro-Israel groups over her willingness to criticize Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians, as well as for her vote against increased funding for Israel’s Iron Dome in September. “Palestinians deserve freedom from militarized violence too,” Bush wrote in a tweet after the vote. “We shouldn’t be sending an additional $1B to an apartheid state’s military.”

    In a statement to The Intercept, Bush campaign spokesperson Bill Neidhardt called Zemitzsch’s comment “a baseless smear from a Republican donor” to support an “accused rapist,” referring to accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two women against Roberts Jr. and previously reported on by The Intercept. Roberts Jr. has denied both accusations, settled lawsuits in both cases, and was ultimately not charged with rape by a special prosecutor.

    Two weeks before YACHAD launched, the younger Roberts was a guest speaker at the annual national summit of the nonprofit Israeli American Council, the country’s largest Israeli American group. The recent spending comes as pro-Israel groups have poured millions of dollars into ad campaigns targeting progressive officials and candidates in safe blue seats this cycle, including a Democrat with full support of party leadership.

    YACHAD PAC has so far sent at least one mailer attacking Bush and purchased thousands of dollars in radio ads set to run in the weeks leading up to the August 2 primary, according to records of the purchases shared with The Intercept.

    Beyond the funding linked to the elder Roberts, YACHAD PAC is also getting a boost from the local Democratic establishment that Bush took out when she was elected in 2020. Her opponent that cycle, Lacy Clay, gave $2,000 to the group in May, and his sister, Michelle, gave $250 the same day. Lacy Clay’s former communications director, Steve Engelhardt, gave the PAC its first contribution of $500 when it launched in December and another $2,000 in May. The PAC lists a disbursement of $2,000 to Engelhardt on the same day, as well as a $1,000 contribution from Zemitzsch and a disbursement for the same amount.

    While Paul Zemitzsch said in an April interview that he was the group’s treasurer, the PAC’s original filing documents instead list someone named Steve Zemitzsh, who Paul has said he does not know. Emails to the address listed on the PAC website, “steve@yachadpac.org,” were returned as undeliverable. Its most recent filing lists its treasurer as Scott Martinez, an attorney based in Colorado who is listed as its designated agent on its statement of organization. Martinez did not respond to a request for comment.

    Zemitzsch, who runs a company with former Republican state lawmaker David J. Klarich, said that the PAC is raising money from Democrats and Republicans, but that some Republicans actually want Bush to win the primary so they can have someone to blame in the general election.

    “The PAC which I represent is raising money regardless of political party. I don’t care Democrat, Republican, whatever,” Zemitzsch said. “But some of the Republican leadership like Cori Bush on the ballot after the primary, because they can then say, see what you get when you vote for a Democrat? Here’s what you get. So some of them aren’t going to participate in getting rid of her in the primary because they see her as a whipping person — you can’t say whipping boy anymore — whipping person, for the party to go on to their other races.”

    Major pro-Israel groups spending against progressives this cycle have also raised money from Republicans while painting their opponents as fake Democrats. The new PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee endorsed GOP officials who voted to overturn the 2020 election results. Another pro-Israel group called To Protect Our Heritage PAC gave Roberts Jr.’s campaign $5,000 in May.

    In 2017, SCD Investments gave $1,500 to Roberts Sr.’s unsuccessful campaign for St. Louis alderman, a position he previously held alongside his brother, Michael. Another company under the name SCD Investments III gave Roberts Sr.’s campaign an additional $11,500. Between 2019 and 2020, SCD Investments III gave $2,600 to Roberts Jr.’s successful bid for the Missouri State Senate; in 2020, he received another $2,000 from a third company, SCD Investments VI.

    Roberts Jr. has worked for several of his family’s companies, and his LinkedIn currently lists him as vice president, strategic initiatives and general counsel at the Roberts Companies. His campaign treasurer and business partner at Roberts Law LLC, where he is managing partner, is James Hill, who is also the registered agent for a GOP-linked dark money group launched in September that has been sending mailers attacking Bush.

    The group, Progressives for Missouri, has sent mailers claiming that Bush votes with Republicans and attacking her for having private security. “Cori Bush has spent $300,000 on her own private security,” reads one such mailer. “She wants to defund your police … but not her own!”

    In April, The Intercept reported that Roberts Jr. agreed to settle for $100,000 in a lawsuit alleging that he groped a woman in 2015. Roberts Jr. has also been accused of rape by Cora Faith Walker, who served with him in the Missouri state House and died in March of a heart condition. “It’s a ‘he said-she said.’ One of them’s dead already,” Zemitzsch told KSDK. “He’s a 34-year-old good-looking young man. I don’t think he forced himself on anyone.”

    Roberts Jr.’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

    Isaac Scher contributed reporting.

    The post Firm Funding William Lacy Clay-Backed PAC Is Tied to Cori Bush Opponent’s Father appeared first on The Intercept.

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  • Missouri Republican Senate Candidates Fundraised at Democratic Contender’s Estate

    This spring, a historic St. Louis farm built by former President Ulysses S. Grant was the site of major fundraisers for two front-runners in Missouri’s Republican Senate primary. The estate is jointly owned and operated by five members of the Anheuser-Busch family, including Trudy Busch Valentine, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Missouri. The fundraisers were hosted by two other co-owners — Busch Valentine’s siblings.

    In 2017, Busch Valentine, an heir to the Anheuser-Busch fortune, and four other relatives purchased the farm from their family trust for $51 million. In March, her brother Peter Busch, a co-owner of the estate, hosted a high-dollar fundraiser there for former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, whose ex-wife accused him of physically abusing her and one of their children in an affidavit reported publicly the day before the event. (He resigned as governor in 2018 amid several criminal investigations, including one that involved sexual misconduct.) An event flyer advertised tickets starting at $1,000, an upper “co-host” rate of $10,800, and a “special appearance from the Budweiser Clydesdale.” Busch Valentine entered the race the following week.

    In May, Andy Busch, another brother and co-owner, held a high-dollar fundraiser for Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt at the farm. The Schmitt campaign reportedly raised more than $100,000 from 100 supporters at the event. According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the campaign paid $11,000 to the farm in June for “event food and beverage.”

    Both Schmitt and Greitens are in the state’s upcoming Republican Senate primary, which means that they could both potentially face Busch Valentine in the November general election. A third brother, August Busch III, who is not part of the group that owns the farm, is a major Republican donor who gave $250,000 to a political action committee backing Schmitt last June. Though some of her siblings appear to support her opponents, FEC filings indicate that several relatives have also contributed to her campaign.

    In May, Busch Valentine used her influence as a partial owner of the farm to stop another controversial event from taking place on its grounds. In the weeks after a mass shooter killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the farm was set to host a fundraiser for the National Rifle Association. After The Intercept reported on the planned event, Busch Valentine wrote in a tweet that once she learned of the plans, she “persuaded the Board to cancel the event.”

    In response to questions about the Schmitt and Greitens fundraisers, Busch Valentine’s campaign manager, Alex Witt, said in a statement to The Intercept that the candidate “cannot make unilateral decisions about events at Grant’s Farm.” The farm’s board is composed of its five co-owners, and Busch Valentine does not have veto power over events.

    In this photo taken in 2012, vistoros attend The Busch family mansion at Grant's Farm in Grantwood Lake, Mo. for a special event. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the more than 200-acre wildlife park in south St. Louis County has been a constant in the lives of the residents of Grantwood Village. But it is now poised for change, although of what form is the subject of a lawsuit between the sibling heirs of the Busch beer dynasty. (Tom Borgman/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) EDWARDSVILLE INTELLIGENCER OUT; THE ALTON TELEGRAPH OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

    Visitors attend an event at Grant’s Farm, the estate owned by members of the Anheuser-Busch family, in Missouri in 2012.

    Photo: Tom Borgman/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP

    Seeking the Democratic nomination, Busch Valentine has emphasized her support for efforts to codify access to abortion into federal law and was endorsed earlier this month by Pro-Choice Missouri, a grassroots advocacy group based in St. Louis. The candidates who campaigned at her family’s estate in the months leading up to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, however, have made none of the same assurances: In 2017, Greitens called Missouri legislators into a special session to consider protections for anti-abortion organizations. Last year, Schmitt joined an amicus brief calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the right to abortion in Dobbs v. Mississippi Department of Health.


    The political action committee for Anheuser-Busch, Busch Valentine’s family company, has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates who oppose the right to abortion, including the late Rep. Todd Akin, who claimed that in cases of “legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” The PAC has also contributed to at least 35 Republican senators who voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Representatives of Anheuser-Busch were also on a list of attendees for a private retreat the Republican Attorneys General Association hosted for corporate donors in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this week.

    Witt said that Busch Valentine has “never held a management or policy role with Anheuser-Busch, and therefore, has no control over their corporate PAC contributions.”

    According to her most recent financial disclosure, filed July 3, Busch Valentine is also invested in several corporations that have helped fund lawmakers who passed anti-abortion laws in the wake of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. As of the filing, Busch Valentine owned between $3.1 million and $6.5 million in stock in companies including General Motors, Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Altria Group, Pfizer, UnitedHealth Group, and Walmart — all of which were recently named in a Business Insider report as top contributors to lawmakers who supported so-called trigger abortion bans.

    “The authority to make investments in Trudy’s current portfolio has been delegated to a third-party advisor,” Witt told The Intercept. “If elected to the U.S. Senate Trudy and her husband, John Fries, will place their assets in a blind trust. As noted in other coverage, Trudy has also pledged to push for a ban on Members of Congress and their families trading stock while in office.”

    The post Missouri Republican Senate Candidates Fundraised at Democratic Contender’s Estate appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Pennsylvania Legislators Push Looser Gun Laws While Decrying Gun Violence

    On Monday, President Joe Biden commemorated the passage of a bill designed to reduce national gun violence by incentivizing states to pass stricter gun laws, making it harder for people convicted of domestic violence to purchase a gun, and tightening the review process for gun purchasers under the age of 21. “What we’re doing here today is real, it’s vivid, it’s relevant,” Biden said. “It’s proof that despite the naysayers, we can make meaningful progress on dealing with gun violence.”

    “You have to do more,” interrupted attendee Manuel Oliver, whose son was killed in the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Oliver later told the press that he was frustrated with the fanfare over limited legislation that would fail to eradicate the epidemic of gun violence, a deadly problem felt nationwide.

    And sure enough, gun violence is everywhere: In Philadelphia, where a shooter opened fire on the Fourth of July, the hail of bullets hardly made the news — overshadowed by a deadly mass shooting the same day in Highland Park, Illinois. (No one died in the Philadelphia shooting, although two police officers said they sustained minor injuries.) For Pennsylvania lawmakers, it was one of many opportunities to lament gun crimes in Philadelphia, which saw a record number of homicides last year, with 562 people killed. But despite their rhetoric, Pennsylvania legislators have gone out of their way to avoid addressing the issue. Instead, they’re considering legislation that would weaken gun laws, despite Biden’s state-directed incentives.

    Republicans in control of both chambers of the Pennsylvania General Assembly have gutted a gun control bill, inserting language that would allow people without permits to carry concealed weapons. (Last year, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a bill with similar language.) At the same time, they have advanced legislation to restrict the ability of Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, to prosecute certain gun crimes and crimes on public transit. In June, just seven months after Krasner was reelected with 70 percent of the vote, they launched an effort to impeach him. If that fails, another bill would limit him to two terms in office.

    On Friday, more than 25 legal advocacy and criminal justice reform groups wrote an open letter to Pennsylvania House leadership stating their opposition to the efforts to undermine Krasner. “At this moment, it is imperative that we do not waste time on a disingenuous endeavor to impeach a democratically-elected district attorney. The legislature has an opportunity to declare gun violence a public health crisis and move to enact legislation that addresses the structural and systemic inequities at the heart of that crisis,” the letter reads. “In fact, at the very moment intentions to impeach were being announced, the legislature voted down a slate of bills that sought to address gun violence.”

    “The impeachment is a circus. It’s just an election-year ploy.”

    The focus in Harrisburg on Krasner’s office is an attack on democracy and the rights of Black and brown voters in Philadelphia, said Robert Saleem Holbrook, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a public interest law firm that was one of the signatories on Friday’s letter.

    “The impeachment is a circus. It’s just an election-year ploy,” Holbrook said. “It’s a way for Republicans to try to galvanize their base to create an issue to bring their people out for the gubernatorial election. I normally wouldn’t give much stock to such a circus, except for the fact that it’s also about democracy and agency of Black and brown Philadelphians and Philadelphians in general, who in 2021 elected Krasner overwhelmingly to a second term.”

    Philadelphia is the only county in the state where a person risks catching a felony on an otherwise clean record for carrying a firearm without a license; in other counties, such an offense would generally be prosecuted as a misdemeanor. Krasner’s office has dismissed some gun cases to avoid saddling people with felonies, Holbrook said.

    “They don’t care about Black and brown Philadelphians,” Holbrook said of the legislators fighting Krasner. “If that was the case, they would do more to stop straw purchases. … What they care about is turning Philadelphia back into the mass incarceration machine of the state.”

    WASHINGTON - JULY 11: President Joe Biden speaks during an event to celebrate the passage of the "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act," aimed to reduce national gun violence, from the South Lawn of the White House, on Monday, July 11, 2022. (Photo by Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    President Joe Biden speaks following the passage of legislation aimed to reduce national gun violence on July 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    Just days after three Republican state representatives announced that they were seeking support for articles of impeachment against Krasner, two of those same Republicans, Reps. Joshua Kail and Torren Ecker, voted in the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee to gut a gun control bill and allow for the carrying of permitless and concealed handguns. State Rep. Todd Stephens was the only Republican to vote against gutting the measure. A week later, Kail was the primary sponsor of a resolution to establish a committee to investigate Krasner. Kail, Ecker, and Stephens were part of a bipartisan group of state representatives who voted to pass the resolution.

    Some Republicans, particularly in rural areas, don’t realize the impact of gun violence in their communities, Stephens told The Intercept. “For a lot of my colleagues, they don’t see gun violence affecting their communities on a daily basis the way many others do,” he said. “I wish that there were a greater awareness about the gun deaths that are occurring in rural Pennsylvania so that it might become a greater priority for those representatives representing those communities.” Stephens added that he supports red-flag laws as well as comprehensive and universal background checks.

    “I think there’s a general misunderstanding about how gun violence impacts rural Pennsylvania,” Stephens said, pointing out that suicides make up a majority of all gun deaths in the state, and particularly in rural Pennsylvania. “Suicide is not something that’s carried in the mainstream media, it’s not something that’s readily discussed throughout our community.”

    While mass media and politicians focus on violence in urban centers, murder rates have soared in rural America. A study last summer showed that suicides in rural parts of Pennsylvania were on the rise and that there were more handgun sales per every 1,000 residents in rural areas than in urban areas.

    Kail said that Pennsylvania already has strict gun laws, and “you could pass all the laws you want,” but challenged, with respect to Philadelphia, “What good does a law do if you don’t have district attorneys who are willing to enforce them?” Asked about gun deaths in rural areas, Kail said that if there was a specific instance of a DA in a rural area “not enforcing laws on the books,” he’d be happy to look into it, but “the lives that are being lost, the situations have come out of Philadelphia.”

    The recent moves are just the latest in a yearslong attempt by Pennsylvania lawmakers to chip away at Krasner’s power. In 2019, the General Assembly quietly passed a bill to take away Krasner’s authority to prosecute certain firearms violations in the city and instead gave that ability to the state’s attorney general. Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is currently running for governor, said he would support a repeal of the controversial law after pressure from advocates at that year’s Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia. The law was set to expire at the end of Krasner’s first term, but the General Assembly quickly took up an extension.

    The trend isn’t unique to Pennsylvania. Federal lawmakers have also turned away from the gun crisis plaguing the country in favor of piecemeal legislation whose impacts amount to little more than posturing and pushing more funding toward police, who have repeatedly failed to stop mass shootings — and in some cases, even made them worse.

    National Democrats need to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in November in order to have any chance to pass meaningful legislation before the end of Biden’s first term in office. But lawmakers in the party aren’t treating the remaining four months until the 2022 midterm elections with a commensurate sense of urgency, said state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, who represents South Philadelphia. Fiedler is one of several progressive lawmakers elected in recent years who has come under attacks similar to those levied against Krasner for her support for popular criminal justice reforms.

    Disappointment with Biden at the national level is also prevalent at the state and local level, Fiedler said. Philadelphians were critical to helping Biden win the state in 2020, four years after former President Donald Trump flipped Pennsylvania red for the first time in three decades. Since then, Democrats across the state have lost control of the narrative and instead let it be dictated by Republicans, who in turn have used their control of the state legislature to target Krasner and pass little else.

    Things that Biden promised to those voters — taxing the wealthy, eliminating student loan debt, and passing a robust agenda to combat the climate crisis — have slid “so far off the radar,” according to Fiedler. Democrats in the state just voted to cut Pennsylvania’s corporate tax rate significantly over the next decade, a policy that voters in the state overwhelmingly oppose. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by progressive officials, just passed a major home repair assistance bill, but party leaders continue to blame progressives for thinning margins in both chambers.

    “It does not feel like the path to building a stronger party,” Fiedler said. “There is a path to victory for Democrats locally and nationally, but it has to include an emphasis on taxing the super rich to invest in things a majority care about including care and climate.” But the legislature’s current focus is elsewhere.

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    This post was originally published on The Intercept.