TYSON HAS LONG BEEN IDENTIFED WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Tyson Foods Faces Boycott After Firing 1,200 Americans, ‘Would Like to Employ’ 42,000 Migrants - AND BIDEN - MAYORKAS - SCHUMER HAVE USHERED OVER THE BORDER 15 MILLION TO PICK FROM.
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Two of the leading Republican firebrands in Congress touted big fundraising hauls as a show of grassroots support for their high-profile stands against accepting the 2020 election results.
But new financial disclosures show that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., relied on an email marketing vendor that takes as much as 80 cents on the dollar. That means their headline-grabbing numbers were more the product of expensively soliciting hardcore Republicans than an organic groundswell of far-reaching support.
Hawley and Greene each reported raising more than $3 million in the first three months of the year, an unusually large sum for freshman lawmakers, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission. That’s more than the average House member raises in an entire two-year cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The tallies generated favorable press coverage for Hawley and Greene, and they both seized on the numbers to claim a popular mandate.
“I am humbled, overjoyed and so excited to announce what happened over the past few months as I have been the most attacked freshman member of Congress in history,” Greene said in an emailed statement on April 7. “Accumulating $3.2 million with small dollar donations is the absolute BEST support I could possibly ask for!”
As for Hawley, who was the first senator to say he’d object to certifying the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, Politico proclaimed that his massive increase showed “how anti-establishment Republicans are parlaying controversy into small-dollar fundraising success.” Hawley’s pollster, Wes Anderson with the political consulting firm OnMessage, said in a memo distributed to supporters that the “fundraising surge” made “crystal clear that a strong majority of Missouri voters and donors stand firmly with Senator Hawley, in spite of the continued false attacks coming from the radical left.”
It wasn’t until later, when the campaigns disclosed their spending details in last week’s FEC reports, that it became clearer how they raised so much money: by paying to borrow another organization’s mailing list.
“List rental” was the No. 1 expense for both campaigns, totaling almost $600,000 for each of them. It’s common for campaigns to rent lists from outside groups or other candidates to broaden their reach. But for Hawley and Greene, the cost was unusually high, amounting to almost 20% of all the money they raised in January, February and March.
The actual return on renting the lists was likely even lower, since it’s probable that not all their donations came from emailing those lists. It’s not possible to tell from the FEC filings which contributions resulted from which solicitations. Firms that sell lists sometimes demand huge cuts: The top vendor for Hawley and Greene, LGM Consulting Group, charges as much as 80%, according to a contract disclosed in Florida court records as part of a dispute involving Lacy Johnson’s long-shot bid to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
The Hawley and Greene campaigns did not respond to requests for comment. LGM Consulting Group’s principal, Bryan G. Rudnick, also did not respond to phone messages or an email.
Far beyond these two campaigns or this one company, small-dollar fundraising has exploded thanks to easy online payments, which are rewriting the playbook for campaign finance in both parties. At the same time, the rise of email fundraising has spawned some aggressive or even deceptive marketing tactics and made plenty of room for consultants and vendors to profit. A move by then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign to sign up supporters for recurring payments by default led to as much as 3% of all credit card fraud claims filed with major banks, according to The New York Times. In some long-shot congressional races, consultants could walk away with almost half of all the money raised, The Washington Post reported.
Hawley’s and Greene’s list rentals show how politicians can pad their fundraising figures — if they’re willing to pay for it. There’s scant evidence that fundraising success represents broad popular support for a politician outside the narrow slice of Americans who make political contributions, and many of the people on the rented mailing lists may not have been constituents of Hawley’s or Greene’s. Still, the money is real, and the perception of fundraising star power is its own kind of success in Washington.
“They’re juicing their numbers, but their return on investment is still a net gain,” said Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, a professor at Fordham University who researches how political campaigns use digital communications. “The money matters, the articles about the money matter and convey power, and it adds to their clout.”
The cost to rent a list can be a flat fee, a percentage cut of money raised, or even all money raised after a campaign clears a certain threshold. Donors have limited visibility into where their money goes and may not realize how much is being diverted from the candidate they mean to support.
Renting lists can pay dividends for campaigns because people who respond by donating then enter the candidates’ own databases of supporters, and past contributors are much more likely to give again. Candidates with big donor bases can tap them for more money later or turn around and rent their own list to others.
Political professionals have gotten more sophisticated about efficiently converting online outrage into campaign cash. At the same time, candidates who court controversy may increasingly rely on rage-fueled online fundraising as more traditional donors freeze them out. In the aftermath of Jan. 6, Hawley lost the support of some big donors, and major companies such as AT&T and Honeywell pledged to withhold donations from lawmakers who objected to the Electoral College vote.
“The news cycle that emerges out of controversial behavior by a candidate is like a strong gust of wind, and these mechanisms like list-building are the equivalent of sails,” said Eric Wilson, a digital strategist who has advised Sen. Marco Rubio and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “For candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Josh Hawley, who have largely been shunned by traditional corporate donors who are frequently the mainstays for elected officials, especially in off years, they have no choice but to pursue grassroots fundraising. And in order for that to work, they have to continue to make more noise. It is a feedback loop in that regard.”
It’s not clear how Rudnick compiled his list (or lists). But one clue to the audience that Rudnick may help unlock is who else has hired him. Besides Hawley and Greene, FEC records show that last quarter LGM Consulting also rented a list or provided online fundraising solicitations to:
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander said helped come up with the plan to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, which Biggs has denied.
Tom Norton, who is challenging Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
And Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., the NRSC chairman who voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
In the 2020 campaign cycle, the firm’s clients included then-Rep. Doug Collins, a Trump ally who lost the Georgia Senate primary; Madison Cawthorn, the 25-year-old congressman from North Carolina who spoke at the Jan. 6 rally; and Laura Loomer, a far-right internet personality who calls herself a “proud Islamophobe” and lost a run for a Florida congressional seat.
Rudnick has his own history of controversy. He was fired by the Pennsylvania Republican Party in 2008 after sending emails to Jewish voters likening a vote for Barack Obama to the leadup to the Holocaust. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake,” the email said. “Let’s not make a similar one this year!” Rudnick told the Associated Press at the time that party officials authorized the message, but he declined to name them.
Campaigns don’t have to disclose whose list an email is being sent to, and fundraising emails aren’t comprehensively made public, so it’s not possible to tell exactly how Hawley and Greene used the lists they rented. But several of Hawley’s fundraising emails contained digital fingerprints tying them to Rudnick: They were sent from a web domain that shares an address with one of Rudnick’s companies, and the links to donate include “ASG,” short for Rudnick’s Alliance Strategies Group.
In one email, sent on March 6, Hawley touted his interview on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, in which Hawley said Democrats would use the Jan. 6 insurrection “as an excuse to seize power, to control more power, to step on people’s Second Amendment rights, to take away their First Amendment rights.” Following up on a major media appearance with a fundraising email is an effective technique, Wilson said.
In a second email using the Rudnick-linked domain, Hawley explicitly laid out his goal of posting an impressive fundraising number.
“I will be filing the first FEC financial report I have filed since I stood up for the integrity of our nation’s election and the left began their attempts to cancel me,” Hawley said in the email. “With your donation of $25, $50, $100 or more before the critical deadline on March 31, we will shock the left — they won’t be able to ignore us any longer.”
Mexican federal immigration agents turned a group of migrants over to one of the most violent cartels as part of a kidnapping and ransom scheme, a Honduran woman shared with Breitbart Texas.
The ordeal took place in early March in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo after “Teresa” and a dozen other Central Americans were deported by U.S. authorities to agents with Mexico’s National Immigration Institute. In a matter of hours, Teresa found herself turned over to the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas. The cartel has absolute control over Nuevo Laredo. CDN-Los Zetas even has convoys of gunmen in armored SUVs patrolling the city streets.
Teresa agreed to be interviewed by Breitbart Texas in an undisclosed location before she took a bus back to Honduras, fearing another encounter with Mexican INM officials.
“A friend had warned me that if I was taken to [Nuevo] Laredo, that I would end up with those people,” Teresa said in Spanish, refusing to refer to the Zetas by name. As a precaution, she hid her cell phone in her clothing so she could call for help if needed during the abduction.
One night, cartel members arrived at the INM facility so officials could turn them over for transit to a large warehouse. There, gunmen threatened Teresa and told her to call her relatives in the U.S. for a ransom. Much to her surprise, the CDN gunmen already had all the information she provided Mexican immigration authorities. Unbeknownst to the CDN, Teresa was able to record the events with her hidden phone.
The gunmen threatened they would subject her to severe abuse and claimed she was lucky to not already be killed. The woman’s relatives were able to wire $2,800 USD in small payments that night. Once the gunmen confirmed the payments, they took the woman to downtown Nuevo Laredo, where they released her.
Teresa approached Mexican federal and state authorities to report the incident and share her recording. While officials claimed they would investigate the matter, Teresa did not file a criminal complaint because she could not be placed in a witness protection program.
“I never thought it would be this bad,” Teresa said in Spanish. “As bad as things are at home, with what I went through here and how they won’t do anything about it … it’s much worse here.”
Breitbart Texas went to the location near downtown Nuevo Laredo where the gunmen released Teresa and asked the owner of a nearby business for access to the security footage, however, the owner claimed to fear for his life and refused. The owner said the CDN-Los Zetas have absolute control of the city and questions about their activities put everyone at risk.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Gerald “Tony” Aranda is an international journalist with more than 20 years of experience working in high risk areas for print and broadcast news outlets investigating organized crime, corruption and drug trafficking in U.S. and Mexico. In 2016, Gerald took up the pseudonym of “Tony” when he joined Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project Since then he has come out of the shadows and become a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.
Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mike Braun (R-IN) introduced the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2021 on Thursday to require President Joe Biden’s administration to declassify information relating to the origins of the coronavirus.
In specific, it will require the administration to declassify intelligence on the connections between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origins of the Covid pandemic.
Hawley said in a statement:
For over a year, anyone asking questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been branded as a conspiracy theorist. The world needs to know if this pandemic was the product of negligence at the Wuhan lab but the CCP has done everything it can to block a credible investigation.
“The Biden administration must declassify what it knows about the Wuhan lab and Beijing’s attempts to cover up the origin of the pandemic,” Hawley added. Braun said regarding the matter:
Identifying the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is vital for preventing future pandemics, and as investigations and research into the origins of the virus continue, the Biden administration should declassify intelligence related to any potential links between biological research laboratories in Wuhan, China and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, investigations into the origins of the coronavirus have ensued, leading many researchers to believe that it all can be traced back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
During an interview with CNN, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield stated he believes COVID-19 “escaped” from the WIV.
Last month, following the release of the World Health Organization’s findings of COVID-19 origins, the United States, the European Union, and 13 other countries called on the U.N. health body to conduct a second probe, citing China’s lack of cooperation.
DEL RIO, Texas — A law enforcement source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, reported the illegal entry of more than 200 Venezuelan nationals south of town early Wednesday morning. The large group, consisting mostly of family units, was quickly apprehended by the Border Patrol and is in transit to nearby stations for processing.
Since Friday, at least 600 Venezuelan nationals have entered through the small West Texas town. Most will be summarily released into the community to travel to their intended final destinations in the United States.
On Friday, Border Patrol apprehended 167 Venezuelans in the same area. On Sunday, 112 made entry. On Monday, 106 arrived in the same area.
Del Rio, like other cities across the southern border, has seen its share of the increase in migrant traffic. A soft-sided facility was recently opened within the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector to deal with the influx. Del Rio has dealt with large groups of illegal migrants from outside the usual Central American countries normally encountered throughout other border areas.
Because of the relative safety of Ciudad Acuna, directly across from Del Rio, the area is a draw for large groups of Haitians, Cubans, and Central Africans. Cartel violence has slowed in recent years when compared to other cities in Mexico along the border.
Last month, the Biden Administration granted Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals for 18 months. The designation applies to those residing in the United States since March 8, 2021. The designation suspends any attempts at removal for the period. Generally, these deadlines are extended–sometimes for years on end. Some critics argue this is a pull factor, encouraging illegal immigration from designated countries.
According to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, “The living conditions in Venezuela reveal a country in turmoil, unable to protect its own citizens, it is in times of extraordinary and temporary circumstances like these that the United States steps forward to support eligible Venezuelan nationals already present here, while their home country seeks to right itself out of the current crises.”
This group will more than likely be released into the United States to pursue asylum claims even though they would not qualify for the TPS designation. The source reports many of the Venezuelans interviewed during the week directly attributed the suspension of deportations by the Biden Administration as the impetus for their entry into the United States.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Bloomberg: ‘On Immigration, George W. Bush Is a Portrait of Failure’
Former President George W. Bush is pointlessly trying to revive the establishment’s amnesty and migration-boosting deals that repeatedly have failed to overcome public opposition, says an op-ed published Tuesday in Bloomberg news.
Bush’s proposed combination of amnesty, increased migration, more visa workers, and this-time-we-really-really-mean-it border security will not work because voters “do not have confidence that the government will enforce the laws any more avidly or effectively in the future than they have done in the past,” writes Ramesh Ponnuru, a pro-migration conservative at National Review.
The article is headlined, “On Immigration, George W. Bush Is a Portrait of Failure.”
Ponnuru wrote Bush’s proposal is:
Essentially the same policy mix [that] failed to become law under a Republican president working with a Republican Congress (in 2006); a Republican president working with a Democratic Congress (in 2007); a Democratic president working with a Democratic Congress (in 2009-10, when such legislation wasn’t even taken up); and a Democratic president working with a divided Congress (in 2013).
On each occasion, legislation of the kind Bush likes had the support of many high-ranking politicians from both parties, business groups, religious leaders and editorial boards …
But Bush ignores the public’s reasonable concerns, Ponnuru added:
Why shouldn’t people on the bottom rungs of the economy, native-born Americans and immigrants alike, worry that an influx of newcomers will undermine their position? It’s not a question he feels compelled to address.
Nor does Bush explain why, if we need more high-skilled immigrants, we have to raise the total level of immigration instead of changing its composition. What’s in it for the people who are already here? The standard answer is that it makes us richer overall, although there is very little evidence it has more than a negligible effect.
Bush’s effort to shape the immigration debate is meeting with indifference or laughter from GOP staffers who saw Bush’s popularity crash to 33 percent in 2008 and saw Jeb Bush swept away by the felt tide of support for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Breitbart News reported April 19:
Former President George W. Bush’s media tour promoting mass immigration to the United States is “laughably out of touch” with GOP voters and Americans at large, Republican insiders tell Breitbart News.
[…]
“Any Republican still taking their cues from George W. Bush or the neocons is laughably out of touch,” a Senate GOP aide said. “Calling for mass amnesty while lockdowns have forced millions of Americans out of work is unhinged. This kind of ‘compassionate conservatism’ and pro-corporate globalism decimated the working class … people have had enough.”
The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly university-credentialled progressives — embrace the many skewed polls and articles pushing the 1950’s “Nation of Immigrants” corporate claim.
The deep public opposition to labor migration is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money away from most Americans’ pocketbooks and families. It moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, from red states to blue states, and from the centralstates to the coastal states such as New York.
Bush has strongly supported the workplace replacement of Americans by “Any Willing [foreign] Worker” or by migrants who are tough enough to survive the Hunger Games migration through the desert. “Hell, if they’ll walk across Big Bend [of Texas], we want ‘em,” he told advisors while serving as governor of Texas, according to author Jan Reid.
George W. Bush tried to abolish Americans' right to their own national labor market – yet he is painted as a moderate by powerless estb. journos. His 'Any Willing Worker' plan is still being pushed step-by-step by Mark Zuckerberg's FWDus & the Fortune 500https://t.co/OnaVmdRTw1
Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan signed a local disaster declaration on Wednesday amid the recent migrant surge and its impact on the small community of Brackettville, Texas. In the declaration, Judge Shahan requests outside law enforcement assistance. It also asks Governor Greg Abbott to activate Texas National Guard.
Sheriff Brad Coe recently expressed his concern with the burden the migrant surge has placed on his small office. In addition to the countless hours patrolling local highways to reduce human trafficking, Coe also contends with property owner complaints of damages from migrants.
Sheriff Coe spoke to Breitbart Texas on the issue of the declaration and believes nearly 25 more counties will similarly act. The impetus for the signing of the declaration is the concern for public safety and health, partly due to the numerous high-speed pursuits and the accidents caused as a result.
In part, the declaration reads:
WHEREAS, the health, life, and property of the residents of Kinney County is under imminent threat of disaster from the human trafficking occurring on our border with Mexico. The ongoing border crisis has resulted in thousands of illegal aliens invading Kinney County and overwhelming our local, state, and federal law enforcement. This continual violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity has resulted in residents of Kinney County being assaulted, threatened with violence, and robbed, while also sustaining vast amounts of property damage.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.