Three of the 10 counties chosen as beneficiaries of a program from the nonprofit that helped fund the private takeover of government election offices in 2020 are refusing to accept those dollars leading up to the 2024 cycle.
Election officials from Brunswick and Forsyth Counties in North Carolina and Ottawa County in Michigan have chosen not to accept funds from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a program that plans to funnel $80 million in election grants to jurisdictions across the country over the next five years. The alliance is a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, one of two groups that funneled over $328 million of private money from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, known as “Zuckbucks,” to government election offices mostly in the blue counties of swing states, mobilizing Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and swinging the race in Joe Biden’s favor.
Many of the jurisdictions chosen as recipients for the 2024 cycle lean heavily Democrat and are located in swing states, indicating CTCL is hoping to replicate its successful scheme in the next presidential election in purple states Democrats need to win, such as Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. While CTCL might once again try to hide its efforts by claiming the alliance is also giving money to red counties, expect more than double or triple the funds to be spent on Democratic-leaning counties compared to Republican ones, just like in 2020.
Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck told RealClearInvestigations he will refuse the grant money offered to his county because of transparency concerns. When Roebuck asked the alliance about its criteria for the amount of money given to each county, those running the program refused to give a clear answer.
Tim Tsujii, director of elections for the Forsyth County Board of Elections, told RealClear that Forsyth will not take any grant money because the county has adequate funds to administer its elections. Forsyth and Brunswick Counties will still be part of the alliance, but Tsujii raised concerns about members having to pay a fee for being part of the program.
“There is all this talk about the money going to elections offices and the counties, but what about the money going from the counties to the alliance?” Tsujii said.
To be a part of the alliance, election offices must pay an annual fee, $1,600 for a basic membership or $4,800 for premium, which the CTCL-created program says gives officials access to “coaching,” tutorials, consulting, and any other as-needed handholding, such as revamping voter forms and websites. The alliance also obligates members “to make non-monetary (but highly significant) contributions to the broader activities of the Alliance,” such as participating in its events and sharing election data, documents, and forms.
While the program goes to great lengths to stress its “commitment to nonpartisanship” — “We will never attempt to influence the outcome of any election. Period” — its own founding organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, has demonstrated the catastrophic and deeply partisan consequences of welcoming outside groups to infiltrate government election offices.
These three jurisdictions are not the only beneficiaries raising concerns about the integrity of the alliance and the problems associated with accepting its funds. The town of Greenwich, Connecticut, narrowly approved a $500,000 grant from the program after town representatives and concerned residents wrote a letter to their local newspaper signaling their opposition to accepting the grant. The letter cited outside influence by the partisan groups in Greenwich’s election process as one reason to reject the funds.
As RealClearInvestigations noted:
When [Greenwich] residents heard that its elections office was tapped to receive $500,000 in grant money from the CTCL, a member of the town’s legislative council sent an email to the center seeking more information, including audits of the group’s books, a copy of the group’s annual report, and its conflict-of-interest policy.
The CTCL declined to provide the documents, insisting that its audited financials and conflict policies “are not publicly filed documents.”
The alliance has also failed to disclose how exactly the grant money will be used, instead keeping things vague and saying it will vary depending on each office. But if CTCL’s past is prologue, that could mean working with left-wing third-party groups to create absentee ballot forms, targeting likely-Democratic voters by harvesting and curing their ballots, and crafting automatic voter registration systems. The Center for Tech and Civic Life is already hoping to do this on a much broader scale than in 2020. As The Federalist previously reported, CTCL has an elaborate plan to infiltrate more than 8,000 local election departments across the country by 2026.
That county election officials and town leaders are suspicious of the alliance and are starting to opt out of its grant money should set off alarm bells for other jurisdictions committed to conducting free and fair elections. Unless more localities reject these private funds and memberships, CTCL — under the guise of its new U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence program — will once again undermine election integrity in 2024 and beyond.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
After several executive agencies in the Biden administration were sued for refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests from conservative advocacy group Citizens United over the White House’s attempt to federalize elections, the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs finally turned over its first batch of requested documents. There’s one problem: More than half of the 54-page document is completely redacted.
“The Biden administration is the least transparent in history, and these absurd redactions are just the latest example. What are they trying to hide from the American people?” Citizens United President David Bossie told The Federalist.
As The Federalist previously reported, in March 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing hundreds of federal agencies to engage in a federal takeover of election administration. It also permitted federal agencies to work with “nonpartisan” third-party entities to get voters registered, yet left-wing dark money group Demos publicly admitted it’s worked with federal agencies, “in close partnership with the ACLU and other allies,” to advance the aims of Biden’s directive.
Such an order set off alarm bells among Republicans and good government groups, reminiscent of the widespread takeover of government election offices by Democratic activists and donors in the blue counties of key swing states during the 2020 presidential election. Through their infiltration of state and local offices, Democrats were able to conduct partisan get-out-the-vote operations and swing the election in then-candidate Biden’s favor. This order is a taxpayer-funded version of that effort, turning federal agencies — including those that dole out federal benefits — into voter registration hubs and partisan get-out-the-vote centers.
Citizens United wanted to find out more about it, which is why last June, it filed FOIA requests with the DOI and State Department seeking email and text messages that mentioned both the executive order and the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in election activities. When the agencies failed to comply, Citizens United sued. On Jan. 31, DOI sent its first round of documents per Citizens United’s request.
But the 54-page PDF sent to Citizens United is mostly redacted, save for logistical emails between White House staff and agency department heads. The plan and implementation scheme for the “Promoting Access to Voting” executive order itself are completely redacted.
In a cover letter sent with the documents, the Biden administration defended the redactions under U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), which allows agencies to withhold information under the “Presidential Communications Privilege” (exists to ensure “the President’s ability to obtain candid and informed opinions from his advisors and to make decisions confidentially”) and the “Deliberative Process Privilege” (“protects the decision-making process of government agencies and encourages the frank exchange of ideas on legal or policy matters”).
But according to Jason Foster, president and founder of Empower Oversight, a transparency and government accountability group that frequently files FOIA requests, these redactions are a prime example of the federal government’s blatant over-redacting and censorship.
“Federal bureaucrats do everything in their power to conceal information from the public,” Foster told The Federalist. “Whether it’s over-classification or improper redactions and stonewalling Freedom of Information Act requests, they instinctively err on the side of hiding information to avoid embarrassment, conceal misconduct, or cover up corruption. It’s up to Congress to reform the FOIA process, and in the meantime, it’s up to independent organizations to sue aggressively to force the federal government to comply with transparency laws.”
While good government groups can sue over improper redactions, this process can usually take about a year to uncover just one document from a series of files, those familiar with the matter said. Now that Republicans control the House of Representatives, however, they have the power to compel the federal government to produce non-redacted versions of requested documents, a Citizens United official told The Federalist.
During the 117th Congress, nine House Republicans wrote a letter to the White House raising concerns about the executive order, specifically regarding the fact that the order supplants the authority of the states to set election law and administer elections under the Constitution. When asked about the Biden administration’s secrecy over its election’s directive, Freshman Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., who chairs the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, echoed her colleague’s sentiments.
“Everyone should have concerns about this executive order and the involvement of any federal agency in our election process,” Hageman told The Federalist. “First and foremost, elections are the constitutional responsibility of the states, not our federal bureaucracy. This is yet another example of the federal government overstepping its authority and infringing upon states’ rights. Even if this order was well intended — and I have serious doubts that it was — it is unconstitutional.”
Hageman emphasized that the White House cannot get away with such extensive redactions of election-related processes.
“Large-scale redactions are not in the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act,” Hageman added. “This is one of the few tools we have to hold our government accountable. Are we to accept that the information is classified to such an extent that the document is unable to be coherently interpreted? Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and the federal government cannot be allowed to continue to obscure and obstruct.”
Of particular interest in the 54-page document is a draft letter on page 32 from Indian Affairs Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland to White House Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice, formerly President Obama’s national security advisor and “right-hand woman” who is known for her involvement in spying on the Trump campaign in 2015 and lying about it. In that role, she also spread lies about the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, helped Obama staffers target Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and turned a blind eye to the Biden family’s foreign business affairs.
One line in the draft letter reads: “The plan promotes voter registration and voter participation (REDACTED) and the Department’s agency action to achieve these objectives.” The redacted portion might point to a Hatch Act violation, a Citizens United official told The Federalist.
“These documents relating to the Biden White House’s efforts to turn the federal workforce into a partisan voter registration committee must be released to the public in their entirety,” Bossie said. “Congress must investigate this executive order to see if the Biden Administration is violating the Hatch Act on a massive scale.”
When asked why the Interior Department isn’t being transparent with the public about Biden’s federal takeover of elections, the Bureau of Indian Affairs referred The Federalist to the U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) exemptions in the cover letter sent to Citizens United.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
Hollywood is in desperate need of new ideas. Take Sunday’s Grammy Awards, for example. If there were ever a spectacle that could simultaneously be described as demonic and trite, it would be Sam Smith’s performance of “Unholy,” which rang the final death knell for the satanic-ritual-as-art trope.
As Federalist contributor Isabelle Rosini wrote, it was as boring as it was unoriginal. Stiletto-clad devils? Latex pants? Whips? Women in cages? Bursts of flame to signify — in case it wasn’t clear enough — that Smith was singing from the pit of hell? “Been there, done that,” artists ranging from Lil Nas X to Lady Gaga would say.
And it all fell flat. Despite the media’s attempts at running interference — with all the typicalRepublicans–pounce framing — the awards show was decidedly uninteresting, and this points to a broader crisis within the arts world itself. There is nothing it can produce that will shock the American public, quasi-satanic orgies and all.
Modern American culture has become a willing collaborator to the arts world — from Hollywood to the Oval Office, from TikTok to the public school classroom — thanks to the ascendancy of leftist orthodoxy in cultural and political institutions. Art can no longer be subversive once the political and broader media establishments espouse its values, whether those be sexual perversion or anti-religious bigotry.
Thus art has ceased to be interesting or subversive. Instead, the arts world and the establishment have merged — First Lady Jill Biden presented at the award show after all — producing mediocre content according to its tastes. If art wants to become subversive again, it must reject the values most prized by our modern culture. It must discard the idols of the left, from sexual deviancy to bitter racism. It must trash wokeness. Until it comes up with a fresh message, expect a continued mass exodus.
Reactionaries who really want to buck establishment tastes are congregating not in an art museum or mosh pit — but, ironically, at church. As Julia Yost described last summer in an op-ed for The New York Times titled “New York’s Hottest Club Is the Catholic Church,” pandemic-weary Manhattanites have rebelled against leftist orthodoxy by embracing traditional morality and the Catholic Church:
By 2020, the year of lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests, progressivism had come to feel hegemonic in the social spaces occupied by young urban intellectuals. Traditional morality acquired a transgressive glamour. Disaffection with the progressive moral majority — combined with Catholicism’s historic ability to accommodate cultural subversion — has produced an in-your-face style of traditionalism. This is not your grandmother’s church — and whether the new faithful are performing an act of theater or not, they have the chance to revitalize the church for young, educated Americans.
Comedian Tim Dillon has noticed the same phenomenon. “All the cool kids now are unwoke and some of them are going back to Christianity because it’s the only way to be rebellious — because everybody’s blue-haired, non-binary, talking about piss orgies,” Dillon said in a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
That to be “transgressive” in this day and age means attending church and rediscovering religious orthodoxy is quite the plot twist, but it’s encouraging for the West’s prospects. Let’s hope this trend continues, and that so-called artists like Sam Smith and his tired satanism shtick get the red, latex boot.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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