Biden signed Executive Order 14019 in March 2021, directing all federal agencies to evaluate ways in which they can promote voter registration and voter participation. Since then, a number of federal agencies have used Biden’s order to direct federal funds toward boosting turnout among groups that have historically opposed Republicans including Native Americans, college students, newly naturalized immigrants and federal employees. Additionally, multiple agencies have partnered with left-of-center activist groups to implement their voter mobilization plans.

“Federal resources should not be used to help any political party or its candidates in the election arena,” Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky wrote in August. “That is an abuse of our governmental structure that is reminiscent of third-world dictatorships. The states should act to stop what amounts to unlawful, partisan interference by executive branch agencies in the administration of elections and the voting and registration process.”

In his executive order, Biden specifically emphasized that the administration would work to increase “voter outreach, education, registration and turnout” among Native American voters. Fifty-six percent of Native Americans said they planned to vote for Democratic candidates, compared to just 40% who supported Republicans, according to a poll conducted shortly before the 2022 midterm elections. Democratic political committees have poured considerable funds into turning out Native voters and some have attributed Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona to Natives.

Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland, for instance, used Biden’s executive order to establish voter registration centers at two Native American universities and then went on to write an essay about it urging Natives to vote, documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation via Freedom of Information (FOIA) request show.

“Your voice and your vote can make a difference,” Haaland’s essay reads. “There are places in this country where Native votes can turn the tables and drive our country toward progress.”

Strong turnout among Native Americans in Arizona contributed to Biden’s victory in the state during the 2020 presidential election, the Associated Press reported.

Other agencies, like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL), have also pushed to increase Native turnout in order to comply with Biden’s order.

HHS, through its Indian Health Service program serving about 2.8 million American Indians, has designated multiple of its facilities in Arizona and New Mexico as voter registration agencies, according to a press release. DOL, meanwhile, has authorized its partners serving Native American communities to engage in voter registration efforts.

College students are another demographic that both the Democratic Party and the federal government are intent on turning out ahead of Tuesday’s election. Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump by 38 points among college students, according to an Inside Higher Ed/Generation Lab poll released in October.

In February, the Department of Education (ED) announced that the federal work study program, which provides federal funds to fund employment for low-income students, would be expanded to include work for voter registration organizations. One such job posting at Pennsylvania State University with the League of Women Voters, a pro-abortion organization that typically supports Democrats, called for students to “support the registration and education of community voters” while engaging in “anti-racism practices.”

The website for federal college student aid also directs visitors to voter registration resources, an inclusion the agency notes was made in accordance with Executive Order 14019.

Federal employees, another constituency that strongly supports the Democratic Party, are also set to be major beneficiaries of Executive Order 14019. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced in March 2022 that, to comply with Biden’s executive order, federal workers would be entitled to paid time off to vote in elections.

Federal employees have donated $4.2 million this election cycle, with 84% of their presidential donations going to Harris, Government Executive reported. Not all federal employees are located in the nation’s capital, with many living in Maryland and Virginia, as well as near field offices in other states.

To develop voter mobilization plans, federal agencies collaborated with multiple left-of-center organizations. Among them was Demos, a group that has received millions from the Soros family’s philanthropic network and is aligned with the Democratic Party.

DOL, USDA and DOI all discussed voter mobilization plans with Demos, according to documents obtained via FOIA request by the Heritage Foundation. Demos opposed policies pushed by Trump during his first term, the then-president of the organization testified against the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in 2017 and the group has worked to build support for the Democratic Party’s agenda, according to Influence Watch.

Additional agencies that launched voter mobilization campaigns targeting left-leaning demographics included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeking to boost turnout among newly naturalized immigrants, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) publishing voter information material in languages other than English and HHS monitoring whether its voter mobilization campaigns were targeting racial minorities while working to register low-income people on Obamacare.

EEOC told the Daily Caller News Foundation that its work has been “in compliance with the [executive order].”

Not all the voter mobilization efforts advanced by the Biden administration target pro-Democratic demographics. The Department of Transportation (DOT), for instance, worked to analyze traffic patterns to figure out how to make getting to polling locations easier and encouraged local transit agencies to be proactive about managing work zones to ensure easy access to voting centers.

Some of the Biden administration’s voter mobilization efforts even targeted traditionally conservative voting demographics, like the Small Business Administration‘s (SBA) effort to turn out small business owners and the Department of Veterans Affairs‘ (VA) work to get veterans to the polls.

Conservatives, however, have raised concerns about these initiatives as well.

The America First Policy Institute, for instance, demanded information about the SBA’s voter registration activities in Michigan in July after noticing that the distribution of federal resources for the campaign could benefit Democrats.

“There is evidence to suggest that the SBA’s largest presence is in the Michigan counties with the highest concentrations of registered Democrat voters, while at the same time it is least active in the Michigan counties with the highest concentrations of small businesses and registered Republican voters per capita,” AFPI executive director for litigation Mike Berry previously told the DCNF.

The VA, meanwhile, adopted an equity action plan in June 2023 in which it stressed its focus on increasing outreach to minority, LGBT and Native American veterans — all groups that tend to favor the Democratic Party.

“What they have done is weaponize all federal agencies on behalf of President Biden’s reelection campaign,” Republican Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil, chair of the House Administration Committee, said in May of Biden’s voter registration executive order. “As we see the actions taken by this administration to leverage taxpayer dollars for political purposes, that should be concerning to all citizens.”

OPM, HHS, USDA, DOL, SBA, ED, VA, DOT and DHS did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

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(DCNF)—One of Vice President Kamala Harris’ long-time pupils has spent her career working to weaken law enforcement.

Lateefah Simon, who is running for Congress in California, has known Harris for roughly two decades, with the now-vice president officiating her wedding, mentoring her, giving her a government job and campaigning on her behalf in 2016 when she ran to join the board of directors for the Bay Area’s public train system, according to multiple media reports. Simon ultimately succeeded in her 2016 run for office, providing a major boost to her long career working to weaken law enforcement.

Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Simon pushed to cut funding for law enforcement on public transit in the Bay Area by $2 million and shift the resources to “unarmed ambassadors,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Nearly half of people who ride public trains in the Bay Area said they had witnessed a crime, and roughly 85% of riders reported they would use the system more often if it were cleaner or safer, according to a 2023 poll.

“This call for defunding and abolishing — it really means defund and abolish the way we did things before,” Simon said about her push to reduce the number of transit police in the Bay Area, according to the Chronicle. Simon brags on her campaign website about implementing “progressive policing policies” during her time as a public transit official.

After Harris hired Simon in 2005 to oversee a program in the San Francisco Attorney General’s Office that expunged the criminal records of some first-time drug dealers, she joined the Rosenberg Foundation in 2011 as its program director, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The Rosenberg Foundation joined forces with the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations in 2014 to successfully advocate for a ballot initiative that sought to decriminalize drug dealing and retail theft.

In interviews, Simon has made it clear that Harris has been a very strong influence on her career.

She described the vice president as “a little bit mentor and a little bit family” in a July interview with a Bay Area NPR affiliate. Harris “is auntie status, she is mentor status,” Simons said.

Simons has most recently been employed by some of the anti-police megadonors supporting Harris’ presidential campaign.

Between 2016 and 2022, Simon was the president of the Akonadi Foundation, a nonprofit founded to fund activism aimed at diminishing the power of law enforcement and reducing the number of criminals in jail, public records show. The Akonadi Foundation was co-founded by Quinn Delaney, a major Democratic donor who endorsed Harris shortly after President Joe Biden announced he was suspending his reelection campaign.

Delaney was one of the primary donors working alongside George Soros to elect liberal prosecutors in California during 2020 and opposes a 2024 ballot that will increase the penalties for retail theft, according to Politico.

Simons’ most recent job has been as the president of MeadowFund, a donor-advised fund founded by Patty Quillin, the wife of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, according to her LinkedIn page. Quillin and Hastings donated $1.75 million to support George Gascon, the Soros-backed candidate for Los Angeles District Attorney in 2020, Deadline reported. The couple has also emerged as major financial backers of Harris’ White House bid.

While Harris reportedly invited Simon to speak at the Democratic National Convention and has praised her at private fundraisers, the vice president has stopped short of endorsing her protégé. Despite presenting herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, Harris has received extensive support from donors seeking to weaken law enforcement.

The Simon and Harris campaigns did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Police Leaders for Community Safety, which endorsed Harris on Sept. 23, only launched publicly on June 11, according to a press release from the group. A registration document filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicates that the organization is led by Gail Hoffman, a long-time Democratic staffer who worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign as director of surrogates and in the Clinton administration in various high-level roles, according to a biography on her website.

Hoffman has never worked for a police agency, per her biography.

Despite the organization’s recent founding and ties to the Democratic Party, Fox News Digital, which was given an advance copy of the endorsement, initially described the organization as a “leading law enforcement group,” language that the Harris campaign later used to tout the group’s backing. Days after publication, Fox changed its headline and removed the word “leading,” noting that “Police Leaders for Community Safety is comprised of former law enforcement leaders and not a leading group.”

The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law enforcement interest group, took issue with framing Police Leaders for Community Safety as a “leading” organization in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Prior to Police Leaders for Community Safety announcing their endorsement earlier this week, we were totally unfamiliar with the group,” a Fraternal Order of Police spokesperson told the DCNF. “We are very active, and aggressive in fact, in our interactions here in Washington [D.C.] and we’re present at basically every law enforcement-oriented meeting that happens here and we have never crossed paths with this organization nor are we familiar with its goals and objectives.”

The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed former President Donald Trump on Sept. 6, according to a press release. Police Leaders for Community Safety claimed to be “the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office” when announcing its support of Harris.

Police Leaders for Community Safety defended its status as a leading law enforcement organization, with a spokesperson telling the DCNF that it had been informally organizing since 2022 and filed registration paperwork with the IRS in 2023, with June 2024 representing the group’s public launch. The organization lists a few dozen law enforcement members, virtually all of whom are retired, on its “national advisory board.”

The Fraternal Order of Police, by contrast, had approximately 377,000 members as of this month, per a press release.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign would not say whether or not it was accurate to call the Police Leaders for Community Safety a “leading” organization, instead pointing out that they had used the same language as Fox. The campaign did not respond to a follow-up inquiry after Fox changed its headline.

pic.twitter.com/g6m4EztyDa

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 23, 2024

Police Leaders for Community Safety justified its nonpartisan bona fides in its statement to the DCNF, claiming that it is “comprised of Democrats, Republicans and independents” and that its endorsements are “based on issues of concern to law enforcement leaders, not on parties.”

All five of the people sitting on the organization’s board of directors, which includes Hoffman, are either Democrats or have a history of making liberal statements. Despite this, Police Leaders for Community Safety describes itself as a “nonpartisan national advocacy organization.”

David Mahoney, the organization’s treasurer, ran as a Democrat to serve as sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin in 2018, ultimately winning the office. Susan Riseling, the chair of the organization’s board, meanwhile, uses social media almost exclusively to support Democrats and oppose Republicans, sharing posts from left-wing fake news operations like the Palmer Report as well as other large Democratic-aligned accounts like Occupy Democrats and MeidasTouch.

“Now I am a Democrat [because] the Republicans have no ideas beyond hate,” Riseling wrote on Twitter in 2021. “I can not understand any veterans voting Republican,” she said a year later.

Police Leaders for Community Safety vice chair Rick Myers, meanwhile, has used his LinkedIn account to advocate for expanded gun control, calling AR-15s “weapons of mass destruction,” and describing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as an “insurrection.”

“Despite the fact that our Founding Fathers had black powder muskets that could only shoot one round without reloading, and fashioned our unique Constitution and its Amendments to ensure our freedoms such that freedom to bear arms was designed for ‘a well regulated militia,’ we continue to allow unfettered weapons of mass destruction among our own citizens,” Myers wrote in 2021, reacting to a mass shooting in his area. “AR-15[s] are killing machines.”

Cynthia Herriott, the organization’s fifth board member, was a registered Democrat as of at least 2021, according to public records.

Herriott, Riseling and Myers are all retired police chiefs.

“Police Leaders for Community Safety is the only national police leadership organization that endorses candidates for political office, and this is the group’s first endorsement,” the group’s endorsement of Harris reads. “This and future endorsements will be based on candidates’ alignment on issues vital to law enforcement.”

Harris praised the defund the police movement multiple times in 2020.

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Democracy PAC, the primary conduit through which the Soros family shuffles its wealth into electoral politics, spent roughly $40 million after the WSJ reported that George Soros had passed the reins on to his son, campaign finance records show. The PAC’s spending under Alex Soros signals somewhat of a departure from how his father operated it, with less focus on criminal justice and a greater emphasis on helping Democrats keep the White House.

“I’m more political,” the younger Soros told the WSJ in 2023, comparing himself to his father. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too.”

Outside groups aligned with the Democratic Party spent over $1.7 billion during the 2020 election, whereas conservative groups spent considerably less, totaling around $1.5 billion, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis of campaign finance records.

Democracy PAC has sent $10 million to Future Forward PAC since the WSJ reported that Alex Soros had taken over, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. President Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020 anointed Future Forward to serve as the primary super PAC to boost the Democratic presidential effort, and the operation has since pivoted to support Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out, according to multiple outlets.

George Soros appeared less interested in using Democracy PAC to play presidential politics than his son, having given Future Forward PAC just $1 million during the same period in the 2020 election, according to FEC filings. The Soros patriarch did, however, personally donate roughly $500,000 to boost Biden during 2020, which is still less than the $721,000 Alex donated that year, campaign finance records show.

Democracy PAC is not the only way the Soros family injects money into politics. Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic network founded by George Soros and now headed by his son, has poured tens of millions of dollars into left-of-center activist groups that have worked to prevent former President Donald Trump from winning elections.

The Soros heir also seems less interested in criminal justice than his father, having only distributed about $1.1 million to groups focused on the issue through Democracy PAC since June 2023, FEC records show. His father, meanwhile, had already sent out over $5.6 million in disbursements through Democracy PAC to criminal justice-focused groups during the same period in the 2020 election cycle.

Alex Soros even moved $60 million out of the Fund for Policy Reform, a criminal justice nonprofit within the Open Society Foundations network, and into Democracy PAC back in January, according to campaign finance records.

In addition to using Democracy PAC to bankroll the implementation of their criminal justice agenda, the Soros family has also contributed directly to some causes in the area. These payments appear to be drying up under Alex Soros as well, however, as no one in the Soros family has made direct payments to California Justice & Public Safety PAC, the committee tasked with electing what George Soros dubbed “reform prosecutors” in the state, this election cycle.

The younger Soros and his father show some similarities in how they have led Democracy PAC, disclosures show. In both 2020 and 2024, the PAC donated millions to the Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, committees tasked with electing Democratic candidates to the upper and lower chamber, respectively.

Alex Soros has directed $9.5 million to the pair of committees since June 2023 whereas Democracy PAC, under his father, gave $10 million to the PACs during the same period in 2020, per FEC records.

Under both the elder Soros and his son, Democracy PAC made considerable donations to pro-abortion committees, such as those affiliated with Planned Parenthood, as well as PACs aimed at increasing the presence of women in elected office, according to campaign finance records. The younger Soros explicitly told the WSJ he would continue his father’s legacy of pushing feminism and working to expand access to abortion.

Though Democracy PAC has already spent tens of millions of dollars under the Soros scion, a total of $125 million has been set aside for the committee, according to the WSJ.

The younger Soros, who is cementing his place as a Democratic megadonor, has enjoyed generous access to the White House under the Biden-Harris administration, visiting frequently, according to Fox News Digital’s analysis of visitor logs. Alex Soros has met with high-ranking White House officials like Amanda Sloat, the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe, and Jon Finer, who serves as the principal deputy national security adviser.

A Soros family spokesperson did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Featured Image: World Economic Forum, Valeriano Di Domenico/Flickr

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Walz has fallen under scrutiny from Republicans for referring to himself as a retired command sergeant major when, in reality, he was only conditionally promoted to the rank but failed to perform the training necessary to permanently obtain it before retiring as a master sergeant in 2005, according to a statement provided by the Minnesota National Guard to Just the News on Wednesday. Harris’ website referred to Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” until at least Thursday morning, according to an archived copy of the page, but has since clarified its description to note that he once served as command sergeant major without stating that he retired as one.

“[Walz] retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, a Minnesota National Guard’s State public affairs officer, told Just the News. “The Soldier must complete the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Course as a condition of this promotion. Failure to meet the condition will cause demotion per AR 600 – 8 – 19,” according to Army rules.

Walz’s original biography on Harris’ campaign website called him “the son of an Army veteran and a retired Command Sergeant Major in the Army National Guard himself,” according to an archived version of the page. The current version of the website, however, calls him “the son of an Army veteran who served as a command sergeant major.”

Walz is also facing allegations that he retired from the Minnesota National Guard early to avoid deployment to Iraq, claims Democratic operatives have denied. Walz, however, knew his battalion was likely to be deployed to Iraq when he retired as he mentioned the possibility in congressional campaign materials published before his retirement, the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday.

“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” retired command sergeant major Thomas Behrends, who took Walz’s place after his retirement and was deployed to Iraq, told the New York Post on Tuesday. “He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Harris’ close advisers have settled on a strategy of highlighting the vice president’s career as a district attorney and attorney general in California, according to CNN. Despite the Harris campaign’s plans, many of the donors backing her have opposed efforts to empower law enforcement and supported organizations that advocate for defunding the police.

“Not only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “A vote for Kamala is a vote to allow illegal immigrants from all over the world to invade our country, a vote to defund the police, abolish ICE and bail violent criminals out of jail.”

The Soros Connection

George Soros, the self-admitted architect of a plan to overhaul America’s criminal justice system by installing prosecutors with a more lenient view on crime, and his son Alex both endorsed Harris for president shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, The Wall Street Journal reported. In addition to electing so-called reform prosecutors, the Soros philanthropic network has also pumped millions into anti-police groups, including some that have called for reduced spending on law enforcement.

Open Society Foundations, which George Soros founded and Alex Soros took over in 2023, donated tens of millions to anti-police groups in 2021, including Black Lives Matter-aligned organizations that call for defunding the police and the New Venture Fund for the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability, which publishes materials on both defunding and abolishing the police, Fox News Digital reported. Soros also supported campaigns in Minneapolis to abolish its police department following the death of George Floyd.

Democracy PAC and Democracy PAC II, political action committees funded and controlled by the Soros family, have spent tens of millions this election cycle to help get Democrats elected and gave millions to Democratic super PACs that worked to get Biden elected in 2020, Federal Election Commission records show.

Many of the prosecutors supported by Soros have come under fire from people living in their jurisdiction for their approaches to criminal justice.

Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who received support from Soros-aligned groups, was recalled in 2022 after city residents accused him of not prosecuting crimes like burglary, car thefts and murder, as well as for releasing repeat offenders who went on to commit additional crimes. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who Soros spent millions supporting through his California Justice & Public Safety PAC, faces a tough reelection bid amid criticisms of his handling of crime, which included opting not to prosecute crimes like trespassing, resisting arrest, making criminal threats, drug possession or loitering to commit prostitution.

Netflix, Nonprofits And Criminal Justice Reform

Nonprofit head Quinn Delaney and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, major Democratic donors who announced their support for Harris shortly after President Joe Biden ended his reelection effort, joined Soros in working to elect Gascon and Boudin.

Delaney, alongside three other California-based donors, poured millions into electing the two prosecutors in 2020, Politico reported. Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $1.75 million to support Gascon, according to Deadline.

Hastings donated $7 million to a pro-Harris PAC, the largest donation he has ever given a candidate, Business Insider reported. Delaney, meanwhile, pumped $1 million into a pro-Harris super PAC that she ran in 2020 and has been identified as a “key backer” of Harris post-dropout by the New York Times.

Delaney and Hastings have also thrown their wealth behind opposing ballot measures in California that would have empowered law enforcement.

Hastings and his wife in 2020 spent $2 million opposing California Proposition 20, which would have increased penalties for property crimes, as well as $1 million in support of a ballot measure that would have abolished cash bail, according to Forbes. Delaney, on the other hand, in 2024, donated to a committee opposing a California ballot measure that would have increased penalties for retail theft, Politico reported.

Delaney heads the Akonadi Foundation, an Oakland-based nonprofit that focuses on “ending the criminalization of people of color,” according to its website. Akonadi runs a program called “All In For Oakland” which works to remove police officers from schools and close juvenile prisons and donates funds to Black Lives Matter-affiliated organizations.

While Harris’ campaign is reportedly prepared to present her as the law and order candidate, the vice president presented as a reformist during her time in the Senate. Harris told The View in 2020 that the defund the police movement was about “reimagining how we do public safety in America” adding that “we have confused the idea that to achieve safety you put more cops on the street instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities, you put more resources into the public education system of those communities, into affordable housing, into home ownership, into access to capital for small businesses, access to health care regardless of how much money people have,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

Harris, in a 2020 radio interview, praised the defund the police movement, saying that the “whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” according to CNN. She also praised Los Angeles’ move to cut their police department’s budget by $150 million during an interview a day prior.

Golden State Cash

Karla Jurvetson, another wealthy Californian whom the NYT reported is throwing her support behind Harris, was labeled by a Republican operative as a “major funder of the squad and just about every politician on Capitol Hill who wants to defund the police” due to her political contributions to left-wing members of Congress, according to the New York Post. She is also a donor to Color of Change PAC, a committee that works to defund police departments, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Jurvetson was the twenty-fourth largest individual Democratic donor during the 2020 election cycle, giving a considerable sum to Harris at the time, according to Influence Watch.

Andrea Dew-Steele, yet another Californian Democratic donor, has been hard at work laying the foundation for Harris’ campaign since before Biden even dropped out, the NYT reported. Dew-Steele, who is a personal friend of Harris and served on her national finance committee in 2020, has spent the past few weeks funneling donors to Democrat-aligned groups in preparation for a possible Harris campaign.

“We were trying to make sure that we were ready for this moment,” she told the NYT. “I was just trying to prepare the ground.”

Dew-Steele is the founder of Emerge America, an organization dedicated to electing women to office at all levels of government. The group has backed several liberal prosecutors, including Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton and former Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins, both of whom received backing from Soros’ network, as well as San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott, who declined to prosecute many of those who were arrested in her city during the 2020 George Floyd riots, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

“The prosecutor exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system. It is so important,” Dew-Steele told Politico in 2016, speaking about Soros’ strategy of funding left-wing prosecutors. “There’s been a confluence of events in the past couple years and all of the sudden, the progressive community is waking up to this.”

Many of the prosecutors funded by Soros decline to prosecute what they deem to be low-level crimes like drug possession, vandalism or trespassing.

“I applaud Emerge America for working to get more women in law enforcement positions,” then-California Attorney General Harris said in 2015, when the group first launched, according to MSNBC. “Having served for eight years as San Francisco’s District Attorney and now as the Attorney General of California, I can tell you that women’s voices are desperately needed in the criminal justice system.”

Susie Tompkins Buell, another prominent donor whom the NYT reported has come out in support of Harris, and Delaney both serve on Emerge America’s advisory board.

The vice president’s proximity to the defund the police movement persists in her staffing decisions with Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s spokesperson, having tweeted “defund the police” on June 3, 2020.

Harris has spent much of her career threading the needle between appeasing leftists and not making an enemy of law enforcement, according to The Wall Street Journal. In 2020, for instance, Harris distanced herself from her past as a prosecutor at the urging of her sister, CNN reported.

The Harris campaign did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Jurvetson could not be reached for comment. None of the other donors named above responded to requests for comment.

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Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as “Commander Butcher,” allegedly solicited an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent to carry out a mass casualty attack that involved an individual dressing up as Santa Claus and giving out poisoned candy to children attending Jewish school in Brooklyn as well as racial minorities during New Year’s Eve 2023, according to a court document. Chkhikvishvili, a Georgian national, was one leader of the “Maniac Murder Cult,” a Russian and Ukrainian-based violent neo-Nazi group and is alleged to have planned several other crimes, including bombings and arson.

“I’m Commander Butcher National-Socialist since birth and curator of MMC also known as Maniacs Murder Cult,” a copy of text called the “Hater’s Handbook” obtained by the FBI reads. “I can proudly say I’ve murdered for white race and willing to bring more of chaos in this rotten world. This book is for readers who are cruel warriors or are willing to become one and are ready to step on massive actions . . . . Our main goal is to spread flames of Lucifer and continue his mission of ethnic cleansing, great drive of purification.”

Chkhikvishvili provided the undercover FBI agent with detailed plans on how to carry out the Santa Claus-themed attack, instructing them to purchase poison materials and to potentially enlist others to help carry out the attack, according to a court filing. The alleged extremist leader also sent the undercover agent a document titled “The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook” that details how to manufacture different kinds of poisons to advance “Islamic jihad.”

An FBI agent claims the handbook is associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), per a court document. A copy of the document was found on an ISIS laptop recovered in 2014, Foreign Policy reported.

Chkhikvishvili also would “make repeated complimentary references to Islamic jihad,” according to the court document.

The attack was not carried out on New Year’s Eve, according to court documents. The undercover agent warned that the attack would “bring a lot of heat” to the Maniacs Murder Cult, which Chkhikvishvili said is “exactly what we want” and bragged that his group would be “bigger than Al Qaeda” following the attack.

Chkhikvishvili was arrested on July 6 in Moldova under an Interpol order, The Washington Post reported.

If convicted, Chkhikvishvili faces up to 20 years in prison for soliciting violent felonies, a maximum penalty of five years for conspiring to commit violent penalties, as much as 20 years for distributing materials related to the manufacturing of explosive devices and another five years for sending threats, according to the DOJ.

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California Justice & Public Safety PAC spent well over $5 million between 2018 and 2020 to elect Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, campaign finance records show. With these prosecutors now facing tough elections that could boot them from office, however, Soros’ PAC has ceased its spending with $0 in expenditures recorded from 2023 to the present.

Soros provided the majority of California Justice & Public Safety PAC’s funding, pouring over $6 million into the committee between 2018 and 2021, according to campaign finance records. Gascon was the most recent beneficiary of the Soros-backed PAC, receiving over $4.5 million in support for his 2020 campaign.

Gascon, who won his election with 53.7% of the vote, announced shortly after that his office would no longer be prosecuting select crimes, including trespassing, disturbing the peace, driving without a license or a suspended license, making criminal threats, drug possession, drinking in public, loitering to commit prostitution and resisting arrest, according to a ABC 7, a local affiliate. Crime soared during Gascon’s first year in office, with homicide increasing by 11.8% in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department between 2020 and 2021, according to CBS News.

Gascon faced two recall attempts during his first term. Both the 2021 and 2022 efforts failed after falling short in terms of valid signatures.

The DA survived an open primary in May, during which he was up against 11 challengers, and garnered 25.2% of the vote, The New York Times reported.

Gascon is set to run against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman in the November general election.

Gascon initially ran on a platform of reducing the number of people in jail by eliminating cash bail, increasing oversight on police officers and protecting people from immigration authorities, according to an archived copy of Gascon’s website.

Price, who received roughly $700,000 in support from the California Justice & Public Safety PAC for her unsuccessful 2018 campaign, is also traversing rough waters as she faces a strong recall effort and mounting controversies.

She ultimately won her 2022 election and took office on January 2, 2023. Violent crime increased by 21% in Oakland, the largest city in Alameda County, during Price’s first ten months in office, according to police data.

Local activists seeking to remove Price from office collected enough signatures to hold a recall election, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Organizers claim Price’s policies contributed to rising crime in the county by prioritizing the interests of offenders over victims.

Alameda County Prosecutors’ Association, a union representing some of her employees, voted “overwhelmingly” to support the recall effort. The association claimed that Price had created “hostile work conditions” for employees of the district attorney’s office.

Patti Lee, formerly a spokesperson for the Alameda County district attorney’s office, sued Price in June, alleging that she had made racist remarks towards Asians and that she had chosen “to hide, delete and change” public records to avoid complying with lawful requests.

Price ran for office on a platform of reducing the number of people in prison, bringing down sentences for offenders under the age of 25 and cracking down on purported police abuses, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gascon and Price collectively preside over more than 11 million people across their jurisdictions, according to Census Bureau estimates.

Whitney Tymas, the director of California Justice & Public Safety PAC, did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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A sense of “acute exhaustion and acute anxiety” pervaded interviews conducted with over 30 left-of-center activists and officials as they realized “with great dread” that they may need to challenge Trump’s agenda once again, which many of them view as a threat to democracy itself, according to the NYT. This trepidation has spurred a network of nonprofits and Democratic officials to take preemptive action aimed at kneecapping a potential second Trump administration’s approach to abortion, immigration and civil service reform.

“What Trump and his acolytes are running on is an authoritarian playbook,” said Patrick Gaspard, the head of CAP Action Fund, the political arm of the liberal Center for American Progress, according to the NYT. “So now we have to democracy-proof our actual institutions and the values that we share,” he continued.

CAP Action Fund and its allied groups plan to stop Trump from implementing key parts of his agenda should the American people elect him to the presidency.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), for instance, are preparing litigation and direct action aimed at bolstering future resistance to immigration enforcement under a potential second Trump administration, the NYT reported.

NILC, a left-of-center Soros-funded immigration group, has been preparing for a possible second Trump term since last fall by plotting how to deploy a network of volunteers across the United States aimed at recording immigration raids on video and intervening if they believe a legal violation is occurring, the NYT reported.

The ACLU, for its part, has released a memo outlining its plans to obstruct Trump’s immigration plans, going into detail about the combination of legal challenges, lobbying and coordination with liberal officials it plans to employ in service of its goals. Lawyers at the ACLU plan to argue in court that any attempt from Trump to pursue mass deportations would violate the Fourth Amendment by requiring racial profiling and that detaining illegal immigrants for large-scale deportations would violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees against arbitrary or punitive civil detention.

Additionally, the organization plans to lobby Congress to limit the jurisdiction of Customs and Border Protection agents and to encourage governors to pardon criminal illegal aliens to prevent them from being deported.

The legal group has hired a financial auditing firm to ensure it is in total legal compliance, anticipating that Trump may use the Internal Revenue Service, which oversees nonprofit organizations like the ACLU, to target it, according to the NYT.

Trump’s immigration plans are popular, with 62% of registered voters, including 53% of Hispanics, saying they support the United States government creating a new program to deport all illegal immigrants, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted in early June. Voters see Trump as preferable to Biden when it comes to handling the border more broadly, with 46% of voters saying they prefer Trump on the issue compared to just 26% saying Biden in a May poll from Decision Desk HQ/News Nation.

“It’s not surprising Biden and his cronies are working overtime to stymie the will of the American people after they vote to elect President Trump and his America First agenda,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told the NYT. “Their devious actions are a direct threat to democracy,” he continued.

On abortion, a group called the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, a coalition of 23 Democratic governors that supports legal access to abortion, is working to secure stockpiles of abortion pills in case a future Trump administration bans or restricts them, the NYT reported. Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says he has secured a large enough supply of abortion pills to last five or six years.

“The Reproductive Freedom Alliance has pioneered a model of coordination across states to defend, and expand, access to reproductive health care—enabling governors and key staff to develop relationships and a structure for collaboration that could be replicated on other issues, like immigration and gun safety,” said Julia Spiegel, a lawyer who helped launch the group from the office of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, told the NYT.

Democracy Forward, a group founded after Trump’s 2016 victory that flooded his first administration with legal challenges, released a “threat matrix” that covers how Trump might approach abortion, health care, climate, civil rights, environmental protections and immigration in his second term, the NYT reported. The organization is, accordingly, drafting litigation to oppose actions it expects a second Trump administration to take and recruiting potential plaintiffs who may have standing to contest Trump’s policies.

Polls paint a somewhat optimistic picture for Trump, with FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polling putting Trump roughly a point ahead of Biden as of June 17. Decision Desk HQ’s presidential forecast model currently gives Trump a 56% chance of winning the presidency.

“We are doing scenario planning for a Biden victory and for a Trump victory,” Brennan Center for Justice president Michael Waldman told the NYT. “For Biden, we are preparing for the chance to pass significant legislation strengthening the freedom to vote, and for Trump we are mapping out how to limit the damage from an epic era of abuse of power.”

Principles First, a self-described conservative anti-Trump group, plans to hold a conference titled “Autocracy in America–A Warning and Response” at New York University in July where scholars will discuss how to combat authoritarian leaders.

“He is no normal candidate, this is no normal election, and these are no normal preparations for merely coming out on the wrong side of a national referendum on policy choices,” Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassin told the NYT.

CAP Action Fund, Protect Democracy, Principles First, NILC, the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Reproductive Freedom Alliance did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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Among likely voters living in six key swing states, 51% say there’s “not really any chance” they’d vote for Biden, compared to just 46% saying the same thing about former President Donald Trump, according to a May poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. The trend of more voters vowing never to vote for Biden than Trump extends beyond just one poll, with three polls stretching between November 2023 and April all finding more never-Biden voters than never-Trump voters, The Washington Post reported.

The American voter’s refusal to even consider voting for Biden is a reversal of the situation during the 2020 election. when voters consistently reported that they would never vote for Trump at higher rates than they did for Biden, according to the Post.

Both candidates have seen considerable protest votes despite running in virtually uncontested primaries.

Options other than Biden have gotten significant support in a number of Democratic primaries, including in the swing states of Nevada, Michigan and North Carolina. Similarly, Nikki Haley continues to attract double-digit support in Republican presidential primaries despite having dropped out of the race months ago, CNN reported.

With the election only four months out, polling paints a dire picture for the president’s reelection prospects.

Biden had an approval rating of just 38.7% as of May 17, making him less popular at this point in his presidency than every president since Harry Truman, according to FiveThirtyEight’s running average of polls. Trump has also repeatedly polled ahead of Biden in the key battleground states that are likely to decide the election.

The New York Times poll surveyed 4,097 registered voters across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points for likely voters.

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].