Homeland Security beefs up communications team

The Department of Homeland Security media team is filling up with notable conservative communicators as it readies for the next phase in President Trump’s bid to protect the borders and reform U.S. immigration policy. Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Heather Swift tells us that the department has filled several key jobs at the agency, especially for strategic communications, in recent weeks, including two Spanish speaking spokeswomen.

Added to the team she and Michael Bars, deputy assistant secretary for strategic communications, rely on are Sofia Boza-Holman as press secretary, Brandy Brown as director of strategic communications, Elizabeth Ray as senior adviser, and speechwriter Russ Read. Diana Banister, the senior adviser to acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, came on late last year, as did Colton Overcash, director of strategic outreach and communications. They joined Harry Fones and Matthew Boggs as assistant press secretaries, and speechwriter Brooke Stroke.

Boza-Holman is the former director of strategic media for Vice President Mike Pence and former regional communications director at the White House.

Brown has worked on Capitol Hill for Republican Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Tom Reed of New York.

Ray has worked with CRC Strategies and long ago was the spokeswoman for Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation against President Bill Clinton.

Banister has more than 20 years of executive-level experience leading and providing strategic direction to high-profile conservative campaigns. She led Shirley and Banister, a leading conservative public affairs firm in Alexandria, Virginia.

Overcash previously worked for the Federation for American Immigration Reform as a legislative and government relations adviser and worked on Capitol Hill for North Carolina Republican lawmakers Sen. Thom Tillis and Reps. Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, and Mark Meadows.

Read has been a defense and national security reporter and policy analyst and most recently was a Pentagon reporter for the Washington Examiner.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/homeland-security-beefs-up-communications-team

Angry Bernie Sanders supporters storm out of caucus calling it a 'joke' and a 'waste of time'

DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Bernie Sanders's supporters angrily stormed out of a caucus here on Monday night, calling the process a "joke" and a "waste of time" after they started out with more than twice as much support as any other candidate, ending up in a five-way tie, with all viable candidates sharing one delegate apiece. Under the complicated caucus system, there are multiple stages of voting. First, there is a vote to determine initial support. After that point, only candidates with 15% of the vote are considered viable. However, those voters who did not initially choose a viable candidate can migrate to another candidate. After the final numbers are counted, they are translated to delegate equivalents. After the initial vote at the First Presbyterian Church, just Sanders, with 32 votes, and Pete Buttigieg, with 15 votes, met the viability threshold of 13. But then, in the second vote, Biden's support started to grow to as high as 16. Because he had votes to spare, his representatives siphoned them off to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. As a result, all three just met the viability threshold. After the shift, Sanders ended up with 37% support in the room, Buttigieg had 17%, and the three other campaigns each had just cleared 15%.

Since there were only five delegates to be awarded in this caucus location, and under rules no viable candidate can lose their single delegate if they only have one, each of the five campaigns ended up with one delegate apiece. This even though Sanders won by 20 points. Once the results were announced, anger erupted, with one man in a beard standing up and declaring: "This is a joke. Basically, a waste of time. This makes no sense, absolutely no sense." The man stormed out of the room, along with other Sanders supporters, and said, "This is the first one I've ever been to, and I'll never come to another one." He declined to be quoted by name.

However, other Sanders supporters were less shy about going on the record by name. Lindsey Buthler complained, "I'm super unimpressed with this process. We had 32 people out of 86, and everybody split up purposely to take our delegates away from us. … This process is not a viable process because my voice did not get heard." She added, "We should go to a primary." Another Sanders supporter, Vicki Bennett, said "This is the reason people don't come to caucus. They feel like it's a wash. Rather than go vote in a primary so your vote counts, one vote for one person or one winner." She said, "These people finagled it, because nobody wanted Bernie to get more than one delegate. So now it's a wash. Now it's a tie. So, we might as well have all stayed home." The episode opened up raw wounds among Sanders supporters, many of whom are still steaming over the feeling that the 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton was rigged against them.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/angry-sanders-supporters-storm-out-of-caucus-calling-it-a-joke-and-waste-of-time

Iowa caucuses results delays revive concerns and conspiracy theories of Bernie Sanders supporters

Des Moines, Iowa — Staffers for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign already had suspicions about the logistics and fairness of the Iowa caucuses. Counting delays by the Iowa Democratic Party are stirring those concerns anew. While the political world waited late Monday to get results due more than an hour before, the Washington Examiner overheard several field organizers for the Vermont senator complaining that supporters of rival candidates were conspiring to block them from winning delegates. One individual also complained about the campaign’s strategy of telling supporters to leave the caucus locations after the first round of voting, known as first alignment. “I guess I shouldn’t have left after all,” one male organizer said to another woman. “I don’t understand what was going on; all the other supporters seemed to be against us,” she responded. Both individuals were wearing staff passes.

In the lead-up to the caucuses, the Sanders campaign were instructing voters to leave after the first round. Supporters of Sanders began flocking in immediately after caucus locations closed, all with the same complaint: that precinct leaders and other campaigns were conspiring against their candidate. It caps a series of complaints going back to the 2016 campaign, when Sanders, 78, lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. Sanders backers also raised questions about the counting procedures of the Iowa caucuses that led to Clinton's razor-thin win, 49.84% to 49.59%.

The Des Moines Register after that election called for a review of the caucus process. "Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms, and other problems," the paper wrote. "Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night's chaos."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/iowa-caucuses-results-reporting-delays-revive-bernie-sanders-supporters-concerns-and-conspiracy-theories

>>8018123

I believe that is what the line up will be

DJT vs Bern.