>>5172355 2/3 oops
It targeted Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pennsylvania, for instance, for her vote for the Affordable Care Act, which the foundation labeled a "pro-abortion health-care bill." Dahlkemper had previously publicly defended federal restrictions on the use of taxpayer funds for abortion.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a legal group that has carried the fight for the U.S. bishops and the Little Sisters of the Poor against the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, received $300,000 in one 2014 donation and an additional $25,000 from the Knights of Columbus as "a sponsor of the Canterbury Medal." Supreme Knight Anderson received the award in 2007, and Chaput in 2009. The Little Sisters of the Poor had received $100,000 in 2013 and another $20,000 in 2015 to "support facility improvements." The Becket Fund received another $25,000 in 2015.
To me, if you "target" a candidate, you lose your tax-exempt status by that afternoon, but that's just me. However, and most significantly for our immediate purposes, there's this.
The Knights gave $50,000 each year, in 2014 and 2015, to the Federalist Society, described in a recent New Yorker article as "a nationwide organization of conservative lawyers" whose executive vice president, Leonard Leo, "served, in effect, as Trump's subcontractor on the selection of [Neil] Gorsuch" as nominee, eventually confirmed, for justice to the Supreme Court. Aside from Leo's reputation as a devout Catholic, the society is thoroughly secular and largely an operation benefiting the Republican Party.
Which brings us to Gabbard's most recent trip to wonderland.
At issue is the nomination of one Brian Buescher to be a judge on the federal district court in Nebraska. Buescher is a bog-standard Trump judicial nominee—a career activist, hip-deep in the wingnut side of the culture wars, as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was quick to point out when his name was placed in nomination.
Mr. Buescher is a political operative and partisan warrior. His ideological views were most prominently on display in 2014 when he ran unsuccessfully to be the Nebraska Attorney General, but he has worked behind the scenes for years on behalf of Republican candidates and causes. According to his Senate questionnaire, he has worked as a campaign volunteer on 14 different Republican campaigns, and he has contributed thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.
In addition, he has served as a Nebraska Republican Party State Central Committee member, Nebraska Republican Party Convention Delegate, Nebraska Republican Party Finance Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Rules Committee Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Resolutions Committee Chair, Nebraska Republican Party Volunteer Legal Counsel, Douglas County, Nebraska Republican Party Chair, Omaha Young Republicans Chair, and treasurer of the University of Nebraska College Republicans. Such deep political connections would, at a minimum, cast significant doubt on whether Mr. Buescher would be able to check his politics at the courthouse door if he became a judge.
Beyond that. Buescher is a muckety-muck in the K of C, as we used to call the Knights. Given the fact that the Knights seem to have politicized themselves in a big way, and that one of the ways they did it was to give money to the Federalist Society, to which the president* has subcontracted the job of staffing the federal courts, Senator Hirono has been grilling Buescher about his membership in the K of C and whether or not he can be trusted to leave the beads in chambers when he takes the bench.
This has given Gabbard another opportunity to dive into the spotlight, this time at the expense of a colleague in the Hawaiian congressional delegation. From The Hill: