(DCNF)—Several federal agencies have used an executive order signed by President Joe Biden to mobilize demographics who typically favor the Democratic Party ahead of election day, spending taxpayer dollars in the process.
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.
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].
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(DCNF)—Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign bragged on Monday that a “leading” law enforcement group had endorsed Harris, however, the organization is only a few months old and is run by a veteran Democratic political operative.
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.
— 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.