Soros, Wallace Help Bankroll Dark Money Fund Aimed at Midwestern Voters

Liberal billionaires push money to initiative as Dems ramp up 2020 efforts in region

The newly launched Heartland Fund is a collaborative effort focused on building "power across the divides of the American heartland"

"For a growing number of donors, the 2016 election was a wake-up call, clearly indicating that we need to re-engage with these communities and their concerns to achieve philanthropic priorities"

Liberal billionaires George Soros and Scott Wallace are helping bankroll a new fund hosted by an intricate dark money organization and focused on helping Democrats make inroads with midwestern voters for the 2020 elections. The deep-pocketed donors moved the money from the Open Society Foundations, Soros's foundation, and the Wallace Global Fund, Wallace's foundation, to the newly launched Heartland Fund, a collaborative effort focused on building "power across the divides of the American heartland" as overall Democratic efforts have veered towards the region.

The Heartland Fund recently disbursed $500,000 in its first round of grants to nine left-wing groups and will begin its efforts with organizing and issue advocacy. The initiative is housed at the Windward Fund, which falls under the auspices of Arabella Advisors, a major dark money "fiscal sponsor" network founded by Eric Kessler, a former Bill Clinton appointee. "For a growing number of donors, the 2016 election was a wake-up call, clearly indicating that we need to re-engage with these communities and their concerns to achieve philanthropic priorities related to health care, immigration, education, economic development, climate and environmental justice, civil and voting rights, and more," Arabella's website states. "Even among these donors, however, discussions about how best to engage often fall prey to assumptions and narratives that pit rural communities against urban ones, communities of color against the white working class, and progressive organizing and movement building against efforts to bridge a broader portion of the political and ideological spectrum."

The Heartland Fund is also aided by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and two anonymous backers, according to Inside Philanthropy. Soros's Open Society Foundations, however, is not mentioned in a Heartland Fund release on the collaborative, and the total amounts given by the groups are not known. "The Open Society Foundations contributed $200,000 to the Heartland Fund for a one-year grant in 2019 to elevate the concerns and issues in Midwestern states that are sometimes overlooked in the national political conversation," said Jonathan Kaplan, the communications officer for the Open Society Foundations. "Our support will allow several nonpartisan, community based organizations to add capacity as they work to support racial and economic justice efforts in Michigan and Missouri."

Arabella, which also contains the Sixteen Thirty Fund and New Venture Fund, acts as a "fiscal sponsor" for liberal groups and as a pass-through entity for donors. This arrangement makes it virtually impossible to trace donations to groups that are "sponsored" by Arabella. Individuals who contribute to a certain group or initiative at Arabella do not have to mark their donations as going to that group, but rather can make it out to the arm at Arabella that hosts the group, such as the Windward Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, or New Venture Fund. Those funds then disburse the donations to the intended groups. Arabella has facilitated more than $1.6 billion in stealth contributions from donors to liberal groups in recent years.

Soros and Wallace, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Pennsylvania's toss-up 1st district during the 2018 elections, are both members of the Democracy Alliance, the left's most powerful dark money donor network. Democracy Alliance members have pushed $1.83 billion into progressive infrastructure since its inception but have, at least temporarily, shifted their focus to state-based initiatives, including targeting rural areas. The alliance is planning to spend at least $275 million for the 2020 elections, confidential memos on its upcoming efforts show.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/soros-wallace-help-bankroll-dark-money-fund-aimed-at-midwestern-voters/

>>6639559

Looks more like "Dude Gordon"

Obama Tells Multiple Lies About Guns In The U.S. To A Crowd In Brazil

Former President Barack Obama told multiple lies on Thursday to a crowd in Brazil while discussing gun laws in the United States — something that he repeatedly did during his presidency. In a clip flagged by Grabien's Tom Elliott, Obama stated: "Some of you may be aware our gun laws in the United States don't make much sense. Anybody can buy any weapon, any time. Without much, if any, regulation, they can buy it over the Internet, they can buy machine guns."

Everything stated by Obama was a blatant lie. Stephen Gutowski, a Second Amendment reporter for The Washington Free Beacon, highlighted some of Obama's in a series of tweets on Friday. "Former President Obama just straight up lied about America's gun laws while at an event in Brazil–a country with strict gun laws and an unfathomably-high gun murder rate," Gutowski tweeted. "Former President Obama told the Brazilian crowd 'anybody can buy any weapon any time without much, if any, regulation' of our gun laws which is just plain false on its face. A complete lie." "It's especially stark given that he's talking about American gun laws in relation to the Sandy Hook shooting where the shooter did not legally purchase his firearms but instead murdered his own mother and stole hers," Gutowski continued.

In a series of tweets from 2017, after the Las Vegas shooting, Gutowski highlighted existing regulations on firearms. "First, the sale of new fully-automatic firearms was effectively banned in 1986 under the Hughes Amendment," Gutowski tweeted. "Fully-automatic firearms that were registered under the National Firearms Act before 1986 were grandfathered in & are still legal."

"However, in order to obtain a legal fully-automatic firearm you must apply to the ATF, pay a $200 tax, & register with the ATF," Gutowski continued. "The ATF has a registry of every legally-owned full-auto firearm & informs local law enforcement of all who own them in their jurisdiction. Fingerprints and photographs are required to be submitted along with your registration application." "Beyond the registration process, which can take up to 9 months to complete, the price of fully-automatic firearms is extremely high," Gutowski noted. "A fully-automatic rifle that might have only cost $500 to produce sells for $20,000-$30,000 on the civilian market now because of the 86 ban."

Making blatantly false statements about firearms is somewhat of a hobby for Obama, as he often lied about firearms during his presidency as he tried to push for far-left gun control measures. In 2016, Obama said: "We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book." A Washington Post fact-check rated the claim as false, writing: Federal law prohibits licensed firearms dealers from selling a handgun, such as a Glock, to people under 21 years old. It prohibits unlicensed people, like family, from selling or transferring handguns to anyone under 18. In most states, you need to be at least 18 to purchase and own a handgun. Public libraries, on the other hand, generally don’t have an age limit or a background check for children to get a library card and access books and computers for free.

In 2015, Obama said: "There are neighborhoods where it’s easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable." A Washington Post fact-check rated the claim as false, writing: This is just a very strange comment that appears to have no statistical basis. Perhaps one can just shrug it off as hyperbole, but is this really something the president of the United States should say to college students? As far as we know, there are no areas in the United States where background checks are needed to buy vegetables.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/47902/watch-obama-tells-multiple-lies-about-guns-us-ryan-saavedra

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1134468225268441088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Twitter Suspends Researcher Who Exposed Antifa-Journalist Connections

Twitter has suspended the account of Eoin Lenihan, a researcher who mapped out connections between mainstream journalists and the violent far-left Antifa movement on Twitter, following a mass-reporting campaign by left-wing activists. Lenihan published the results of his research at Quillette, where he explained the twofold objective of his project — first, to discover the journalists who were most closely linked to Antifa via social media. Second, to discover if those journalists covered the extremist movement favorably or negatively.

In October 2018, my research partner and I decided to investigate the truth of this impression by using a mix of network mapping and linguistic analysis to see which prominent journalists who covered Antifa also were closely connected to leading Antifa figures on social media. We then inspected the Antifa-related stories these journalists had written. We created a data set of 58,254 Antifa or Antifa-associated Twitter accounts based on the follows of 16 verified Antifa seed accounts. Using a software tool that analyzed the number and nature of connections associated with each individual account, we winnowed the 58,254 Antifa or Antifa-associated Twitter accounts down to 962 accounts. This represents a core group of Twitter users who are connected in overlapping ways to the most influential and widely followed Antifa figures. Of these 962 accounts, 22 were found to be verified—of which 15 were journalists who work regularly with national-level news outlets.

The journalists included contributors to The Guardian, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post. Unsurprisingly, Lenihan’s analysis of the journalists who mingle with Antifa on Twitter found that none of them covered the movement critically: That correlation turned out to be quite pronounced: Of all 15 verified national-level journalists in our subset, we couldn’t find a single article, by any of them, that was markedly critical of Antifa in any way. In all cases, their work in this area consisted primarily of downplaying Antifa violence while advancing Antifa talking points, and in some cases quoting Antifa extremists as if they were impartial experts.

Since he published his findings, Lenihan has had his account mass-reported on Twitter. Mass-reporting is when an account is swarmed by trolls who abuse the “report” button with the hopes of tricking a tech platform’s algorithms into automatically suspending them. Of course, with much of Silicon Valley now categorizing ordinary conservative speech as violations of their terms of service, this is an increasingly easy task. Lenihan’s account has now been suspended by Twitter for more than two days.

Breitbart News has previously covered the mainstream media’s sympathy for Antifa (see CNN: Antifa’s Violence Against ‘Bigots’ is ‘Right’ and New York Times Glorifies Antifa With Style Guide, Tactical Advice) as well as the violent movement’s allies in Silicon Valley (see Wikipedia Editors Seek To Downplay Antifa Violence and Far-left Ideology and Damore Lawsuit Highlights Google’s Links to ‘Antifa’ Domestic Terrorists). Breitbart News has reached out to Twitter for comment.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/31/twitter-suspends-researcher-who-exposed-antifa-journalist-connections/

Report: Obama Administration Alumni Advising Iranian Regime on Dealing with Trump

The Daily Beast reported Friday that former members of President Barack Obama’s administration are advising the Iranian regime.

Betsy Woodruff noted (original quotes): As the Trump administration sent warplanes and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, a small group of former Obama administration officials reached out to their contacts in the Iranian government, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Their message to Iran: Don’t take Trump’s bait. Stay calm. Conversations between former Obama officials and Iranian government officials have been ongoing since November 2016.

The Obama alumni are also reportedly passing messages from the Iranian regime to congressional Democrats: Three Obama officials who worked closely on the Iran nuclear deal, one of whom is still in touch with Iranian government officials, traveled to Capitol Hill to brief congressional Democrats about the situation. Those former officials said would not say if they passed information from Iranian government officials to members of Congress. Rather, they said they focused on educating members about their experience working with Iranian leaders and how Tehran reacts to economic pressure.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is already known to have met with Zarif, and was seen with his contact page open on her cell phone. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the negotiations that produced the Iran nuclear deal, is known to be meeting with Zarif as well — which President Donald Trump said earlier this month should have earned him prosecution under the Logan Act.

The Logan Act bars private citizens from conducting official diplomacy. It is rarely enforced, though it was used by former Obama administration officials to investigate former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for conversations he had with a Russian diplomat during the presidential transition. A Republican staffer told Woodruff that Democrats’ diplomatic strategy is to “divide and isolate the Trump administration just as the Trump administration was trying to re-establish deterrence with Iran.” Some Obama alumni are also thought to be encouraging Iran to stick with the nuclear deal and to wait out the Trump presidency.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/05/31/report-obama-administration-alumni-advising-iranian-regime-on-dealing-with-trump/

Team Obama Tells Iran: Don’t Escalate, Don’t Take Trump’s Bait

https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-obama-tells-iran-dont-escalate-dont-take-trumps-bait