Posts Tagged ‘Alex Triantaphyllis’

LinkSwarm For February 7, 2025

Friday, February 7th, 2025

I’m pretty much over my cold, except the occasional cough and continued draining of the Strategic Mucus Reserve.

The USAID revelation continues, with every left-wing, anti-American cause getting their snout into the trough of taxpayer money. Plus blows against the illegal alien and tranny pander brigades. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Second Amendment advocates have long know that “Everytown for Gun Safety” was, like all the other branches of the Brady Bunch hydra, pure Astrotruf, but thanks to database revelations, we now know that taxpayers were footing the bill.

    Have you ever heard of NEO Philanthropy? They’re a left-wing group that has been around for more than 40 years. NEO wants folks to believe it is a partnership between “changemakers and funders.” They claim to provide “resources to groups accelerating change.” Race, gender and DEI are huge for them, but guns are a problem.

    An incredible website database has outed NEO Philanthropy’s actual duties, and those of thousands of other similar groups. NEO, it turns out, is nothing more than a middleman. It receives money and funnels some of it to Everytown for Gun Safety as well as other leftwing, anti-gun groups.

    The website database is called DataRepublican.com, and it will forever change the way nonprofits handle their funding, especially those on the left.

    Snip.

    On Wednesday, pro-gun official Hannah Hill “exposed taxpayer money flowing to Bloomberg gun control orgs.”

    The next day, she used the website to link USAID funds that went to Everytown, Giffords and more gun-control organizations.

    (Hat tip: Blog commenter 10x25mm.)

  • George Soros got his nose in the trough as well. Who was bankrolling the campaign to appoint pro-crime Soros DAs? You were.

    Beginning about a decade ago, George Soros began funding campaigns for people who became known as the “Soros prosecutors.” Local prosecutorial races, which once had a few thousand spent on them, suddenly started seeing hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars pouring in, totaling about $50 million to elect 75 prosecutors nationwide.

    Every one of those prosecutors is a radical leftist who immediately set about remaking the local justice system in accordance with leftist values: Criminals are victims of the system and should not be prosecuted; Republicans are enemies of the people and should be prosecuted. Some of these prosecutors are wreaking havoc on a scale that doesn’t make the news; others have done such horrible things that their names hit the headlines:

    Kim Gardner, the woman who used false charges to destroy Eric Greitens, Missouri’s Republican governor, and whose tenure was distinguished by slandering the police, violating open records laws, persecuting the McCloskeys for defending their property against BLM rioters, discriminating against employees on racial grounds, and letting the most egregious criminals walk free.

    Lawrence Krasner, the Philadelphia DA who just promised to prosecute the pardoned January 6ers. He couldn’t name a crime, though. He seemed to be operating on the Lavrentiy Beria principle of “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

    Andrew Warren, the Florida prosecutor who announced that he would no longer prosecute entire categories of criminal activities because he didn’t like the Florida laws. Governor Ron DeSantis fired him.

    George Gascón, a District Attorney who managed to break both the San Francisco and Los Angeles criminal justice systems. He was finally voted out of office in L.A. this past November.

    Kimberly Foxx, the Cook County Chicago prosecutor who turned the criminal justice system into a revolving door, creating a staggering wave of violence in already beleaguered Chicago.

    And then there’s Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, who brought an utterly spurious and quite obviously political case against Donald Trump for allegedly criminal hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

    Without exception, the Soros prosecutors, most of whom received money from the Tides organizations, have been disastrous for their communities and, in Bragg’s case, for America as a whole. (Although one could argue that Bragg’s manifest political persecution of Donald Trump helped return Trump to the White House, which, to date, has been an incredibly good thing.)

    Thus, there’s a straight line from Soros to Tides to corrupt prosecutors.

    But what does this have to do with USAID? Well, back in October 2020, when no one was paying too much attention (COVID, BLM, the election), and USAID-funded mainstream media outlets were busy quashing stories that harmed Democrat interests, USAID was Funding the Tides Center:

    Nearly $170 million in government grants has passed through a liberal dark money behemoth that houses numerous left-wing groups, including the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, tax forms show.

    The taxpayer-funded grants were disbursed to groups through the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based nonprofit incubator that wealthy liberal donors use to bankroll progressive causes. A number of radical left-wing groups have fallen under the auspices of the Tides Center, which acts as a “fiscal sponsor” to nonprofits by providing its 501(c)(3) tax and legal status. This arrangement lets the groups under its umbrella avoid registering with the IRS.

    [snip]

    [Scott] Walter [president of the Capitol Research Center] noted that the Tides Center’s recipient profile on USASpending.gov, which posts government grants, shows $34 million in federal funding since 2008. The grants were primarily from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Health and Human Services.

  • And Stephen Green discovered that USAID was also funding #BlackLivesMatter so they could help burn down your city.
  • More USAID revelations.

    The Daily Mail assembled a helpful list of examples of USAID’s hard-left blank check policy. This list includes:

    • $30 million to study HIV in Africa among sex workers and so-called “transgender” people.
    • $38 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other Chinese research labs.
    • $1.5 million to an LGBTQ+ group in Serbia.
    • $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam, with only one battery station built.
    • Money for a “trans” care clinic in Vietnam.
    • $25,000 for a “trans” opera in Colombia
    • $32,000 for “trans” comic books in Peru.
    • $500,000 to expand atheism in Nepal.

    The Clinton Foundation was also a huge USAID winner:

    Plus more about how Trump’s actions are legal and constitutional.

  • Biden Admin Filled Terrorist Coffers With Over $1,300,000,000 Before Trump Took Wrecking Ball To Foreign Aid.”

    More than $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds from the Biden administration ended up helping groups that sponsored or committed terrorism.

    Federal watchdog reports and other documents show former President Joe Biden’s aid programs funneled the money toward a network of terrorism in the Muslim world — largely by reversing Trump-era policies.

    Snip.

    The Biden administration gave $1,053,400,000 in taxpayer money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which claims to help war-afflicted Palestinian civilians but is tied to terrorists fighting Israel, according to U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Biden reversed a Trump-era ban on UNRWA funding in 2021 but brought back the ban last year after Israel accused UNWRA workers of participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

    Intelligence officials later revealed that more than 1,000 UNRWA employees, or around 10%, were linked to the groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to documents found on the bodies of dead terrorists and other evidence. A dozen took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including a Hamas commander who was teaching in elementary school for UNRWA and led a siege against an Israeli kibbutz that killed almost 100 people.

    UNWRA’s schools have long used curriculum for Palestinian children that glorifies terrorists and martyrdom, a March 2023 report from UN Watch found.

    The curriculum comes from the Palestinian Authority (PA), a governing body in the West Bank that the Biden administration considered more friendly to American interests than Hamas. The PA also made a profit from Biden’s presidency despite its program that pays Palestinians and their families as a reward for acts of terror against Jews.

    Trump and Congress passed a law in 2018 blocking economic support funds for the PA due to its program. Trump later paused all remaining funding for the PA before Biden took office and resumed it.

    The Biden administration in part revived the economic support fund that Trump’s law restricts. The State Department claimed in documents from 2021 that “most” of the money did not “directly benefit the PA” in violation of the law. However, officials sent $265 million straight to the PA for its “security forces and justice sector institutions” throughout Biden’s presidency, according to the Congressional Research Service.

    Under Biden, the PA agreed to pay more than $97 million to reward the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attacks, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

  • The terrorism funding corruption also extended to the Treasure Department.

    So Treasury official David A. Lebryk resigned rather than testifying. Sounds like he should be subpoenaed and/or indicted…

  • Another media beneficiary of USAID taxpayer subsidies: Christianity Today. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and also render unto Caesar what is God’s…as long as Caesar is paying you enough.
  • Radical Vegan Transgender Cult Implicated in Border Agent’s Death. UPDATE: Landlord ‘Impaled With a Sword’ by ‘Vegan Sith’ Cult Member.”

    You’ve never heard of the “Zizians,” and neither had I until this afternoon, but you’re probably going to be hearing a lot more about them now that this weirdo California cult has been connected to the shootout in Vermont last week that left a Border Patrol agent dead. Credit to Andy Ngo for putting together the pieces of this bizarre puzzle. When the shootout went down in Vermont on January 20, the initial reports were very thin, but piece by piece, we’ve learned more about the two suspects, Teresa Youngblut, a 21-year-old from Seattle, and Felix Bauckholt, a math genius from Germany who had worked in the financial industry on an H1B visa. About seven months ago, Youngblut’s parents had reported her missing, saying she had cut off contact with them and they were concerned she might be in a coercive relationship. The police didn’t do anything, saying that as an adult, she couldn’t be considered a runaway.

    Youngblut and Bauckholt showed up in Vermont a couple of weeks ago and attracted suspicion because they were wearing black “tactical” gear and Youngblut had a pistol in a visible holster. Eventually, this led to an attempted traffic stop on I-91 in which both Youngblut and Bauckholt pulled pistols. Bauckholt was killed in the resulting shootout, but Younglut survived and will face charges.

    Then it gets weird…

  • Pam Bondi was confirmed as Trump’s attorney general.
  • And Bondi wasted no time in freezing all funding for sanctuary cities.

    The Department of Justice will ensure that, consistent with law, ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ do not receive access to Federal funds from the Department,’ Bondi’s first-day memo says.

    ‘Consistent with applicable statutes, regulations, court orders, and terms, the Department of Justice shall pause the distribution of all funds until a review has been completed, terminate any agreements that are in violation of law or are the source of waste, fraud, or abuse, and initiate clawback or recoupment procedures, where appropriate.’

  • In fact, the DOJ has already sued Chicago, Illinois, and various officials over their sanctuary city laws.

    It’s no secret that Chicago has forsaken its own low-income residents to virtue signal as a so-called ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal immigrants – to the point where local residents have been excoriating city officials during official meetings, and major businesses such as Ken Griffin’s Citadel moved to Miami due to the city devolving into “Afghanistan.”

    Now, the Trump DOJ is suing Chicago, the state of Illinois, local officials over laws creating said ‘sanctuary,’ and have accused the defendants of impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts. In their complaint, the DOJ has asked a judge to declare the state and local measures unconstitutional due to the federal government’s supremacy.

    One of the laws challenged by the Wednesday lawsuit prohibits officials from complying with federal immigration detainers and providing certain information about noncitizens.

    “The challenged provisions of Illinois, Chicago, and Cook County law reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,” reads the lawsuit.

    Named in the case are Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), as well as the city’s police superintendent and other city officials.

    The case, filed in federal court in Chicago, marks one of the first major cases brought by the Trump administration in such a case, and comes after the Wednesday confirmation of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who issued a same-day memo restricting sanctuary cities from accessing DOJ funds.

  • I have to admit I have no clue what Trump is thinking when he announced we’ll be taking over the Gaza strip.

    The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it, and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangers, unexploded bombs, and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.

    Trump’s affinity for beachfront property aside, I don’t see how rebuilding Gaza is a proper use of American tax dollars.

  • “Trump Withdraws From UN Human Rights Council, Ends Funding To UNRWA.”
  • Ukraine launches new Kursk counteroffensive. More.
  • Remember Saturday Night Live‘s Walker Brigade? Well, evidently the Russian army is sending wounded soldiers with canes back to the front lines.
  • Ukraine hit yet another Russian oil refinery, this one in Volgograd.
  • Sudden Putin Death Syndrome strike again. “Russian singer who donated to Ukraine and called Putin an ‘idiot’ mysteriously falls to his death from a window.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Kamala Harris team lied about Joe Rogan’s attempt to get her on his show. Of course they did. The whole campaign was built on lies and an attempt to install Harris in the White House without enduring any scrutiny from voters.
  • Speaking of which, remember when CBS swore up and down they didn’t deceptively edit the Kamala Harris video They lied.
  • Winning. “President Trump Signs Executive Order Barring Men from Women’s Sports.”

    On Wednesday, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring men from women’s sports through Title IX, withholding funding from universities that insist on allowing male athletes to encroach on women’s competition.

    The order will also empower women who are forced to compete against men to sue their schools and directs the Department of Homeland Security to deny visa applications from foreign athletes who identify themselves as the opposite sex in order to compete in the U.S.

    At the signing ceremony, Trump specifically cited the importance of protecting female athletes at the upcoming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the World Cup.

    “My administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes. We’re just not going to let it happen,” Trump said.

    J.K. Rowling had something to say about it as well:

  • Moreover, the NCAA has quickly fallen in line.
  • However, Arlington Public Schools in Virginia are still committed to letting men use 6he little girl’s room.
  • Our vile media: “Newsweek runs puff piece on gender transition of man who held family hostage, raped them, and killed their kids.
  • More dictates from the Texas House Cabal: “Speaker Burrows Confirms House Rules Were Written by Democrat Lawyer. The new rules mandate that all House committee vice-chairs be Democrats and expand their authority.”
  • Follow-up: Charges against Aaron Dunn and Wallis Nader, two of the Lina Hidalgo’s aides indicted for vote rigging, have been been dismissed by the Texas Office of the Attorney General, and a third against Alex Triantaphyllis is expected to be dismissed as well, though it’s unclear why.
  • Annals of doomed business decisions: Two women in Austin plan to open an all women’s sports bar in March. A place in Australia tried to do that and closed in five months.
  • Crappy made in China parts kill your Toyota.”
  • Has the CROATOAN mystery been solved?
  • “Trump Becomes First Fascist In History To Reduce Size Of Government.”
  • “Democrats Warn Trump’s Unelected Shadow Government Is Dismantling Their Unelected Shadow Government.”
  • “Illegal Immigrants Helpfully Wave Flags So ICE Knows Where To Send Them.”
  • “World Health Organization Warns Trump Funding Cuts May Delay Release Of New Pandemic.”
  • “Hungover Mark Cuban Wakes Up Hoping He Didn’t Make Any Dumb Basketball Trades Last Night.”
  • Acute hearing:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m between jobs again. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Breaking: Lina Hidalgo Aides Indicted On Corruption Charges

    Monday, April 11th, 2022

    Several previous LinkSwarms have reported on the burgeoning Harris County corruption scandals (many reported by Holly Hansen) involving corrupt no-bid contracts and FBI raids. Now the scandal has finally resulted in indictments.

    Three employees of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have been indicted by a grand jury on charges related to how they helped award a contract for COVID-19 vaccine outreach last year.

    The Harris County district clerk lists two felony counts each for chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis, policy director Wallis Nader and policy aide Aaron Dunn. The charges are misuse of official information and tampering with a government record.

    The charges add weight to a scandal Hidalgo has attempted to dismiss as politically motivated, and they threaten to tarnish her image as an ethically minded public servant as she seeks reelection this year. Hidalgo is widely seen as a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party and a future statewide candidate.

    The three employees were part of a selection committee to choose a vendor for a COVID-19 vaccine outreach campaign Hidalgo wanted. The committee, which also included members of the county health department, unanimously awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, a small political consulting firm owned by Felicity Pereyra, who has previously worked on Democratic campaigns.

    Republicans have seized on this as evidence of corruption, alleging without evidence [Ahem – LP] that Hidalgo was funneling money to help the Democratic Party build relationships with voters. Hidalgo accused Republican county commissioners of spreading conspiracy theories, though she agreed to cancel the contract in September because she said it had become too politicized.

    Court records filed by the Texas Rangers, who are assisting prosecutors, suggest the inquiry focuses on whether Hidalgo’s office inappropriately involved Pereyra in designing the bid proposal she would later win.

    My working assumption is that any time you see smoke like this, the fire is almost invariably channeling taxpayer money to the pockets hard-left Democratic Party cronies.

    When Holly has a piece up on the story I’ll link it here.

    Edited to Add: Holly’s piece is now up, and provides important context left out of other stories.

    The affidavits also allege that in April 2021, after the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center earned a higher score at a lower cost than Elevate Strategies, Triantaphyllis texted Nader that they needed to “slam the door shut on UT.” The selection committee later instructed purchasing agent Dwight Dosplauf to disqualify UT for underperforming on another project.

    In August of 2021, The Texan first reported that Harris County had awarded an $11 million vaccine outreach contract to Pereyra’s Elevate Strategies. Prior to founding the company in 2019, Pereyra had previously served as the deputy campaign manager for county Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2). Pereyra had also been with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked with the Democratic National Committee.

    During the August 26, 2021 meeting of the commissioners court, Hidalgo accused Commissioner Jack Cagle (R-Pct. 4) of telling a “bold-faced lie” after he posed questions about the “one-woman firm” handling the contract.

    Following Monday’s indictments, Cagle said on social media that he “took no pleasure in being right about this.”

    “This is a major black eye for Harris County. Now it’s time for the courts to sort it out.”

    Last September, emails obtained by The Texan showed that Dunn, Nader, and Triantaphyllis had instructed Dopslauf to revise vendor experience requirements for the vaccine outreach project. Documents obtained by FOX 26 Houston also showed that UT had earned a score of 240 and bid $7.5 million compared to Elevate Strategies’ score of 204 with a cost estimate of $19 million. Some time before the project award, Elevate Strategies lowered the cost to $10.9 million.

    Even before the scoring of proposals, however, on January 14, 2021, Hidalgo had texted about the scope of a project mentioning “Felicity,” and Triantaphyllis later clarified to Nader, saying, “She was trying to add to Felicity’s scope relating to engaging community groups and stuff.”

    Inter-Blue Fratricide for Texas 7th U.S. Congressional District

    Saturday, February 24th, 2018

    I haven’t done a roundup on the Texas 7th U.S. Congressional District race because Republican incumbent John Culberson is not retiring, and he won his two most recent races by 56.2% to 43.8% in 2016, and 63.3% to 34.5% in 2014. That’s not exactly swing district territory, but Clinton carried the district in 2016.

    Because of that, Democrats seem to be taking a real run at the seat with four different Democrats pulling in between half a million and a million in fundraising for the race. That’s some pretty serious cheese.

    Even more surprising: One of the Democratic candidates is Laura Moser, a pro-abortion woman and part of #TheResistance, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY’s list have both come out hard in the race.

    Against Moser:

    EMILY’s List is dumping big money into an upcoming Democratic primary in Texas’s 7th Congressional District, pitting the women’s group against a pro-choice woman who was, in the months after the election of Donald Trump, a face of the resistance.

    Laura Moser, as creator of the popular text-messaging program Daily Action, gave hundreds of thousands of despondent progressives a single political action to take each day. Her project was emblematic of the new energy forming around the movement against Trump, led primarily by women and often by moms. (Moser is both.)

    It was those types of activists EMILY’s List spent 2017 encouraging to make first-time bids for office. But that doesn’t mean EMILY’s List will get behind them. Also running is Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a corporate lawyer who is backed by Houston mega-donor Sherry Merfish. EMILY’s List endorsed her in November.

    The 7th District includes parts of Houston and its wealthy western suburbs, and Merfish and her husband, Gerald Merfish, are among the city’s leading philanthropists. Gerald Merfish owns and runs a steel pipe company in the oil-rich region and Sherry Merfish, who worked for decades for EMILY’s List, is a major donor to the Democratic Party and to EMILY’s List.

    Actor Alyssa Milano, another face of the Trump resistance, is backing Moser, and plans to drive voters to the polls as a campaign volunteer. “I like EMILY’s List a lot but I feel like they missed the boat on this one,” Milano told The Intercept. “Laura is a proud progressive Democrat and her values are the values of the majority of the country, which is evident by the success of her grassroots campaign and her broad base of support.”

    The Houston district is one of scores where crosscurrents of the Democratic Party are colliding. Democrats, who in the past have had difficulty fielding a single credible candidate even in winnable districts, have at least four serious contenders in the race to replace Republican John Culberson. Moser, who has more than 10,000 donors — more than 90 percent of whom are small givers — and cancer researcher Jason Westin make up the progressive flank, while Fletcher and Alex Triantaphyllis are running more moderate campaigns. Triantaphyllis, a former Goldman Sachs analyst who doesn’t live in the district, has the backing of some establishment elements of the party.

    “Alex T has been open about being the chosen candidate of the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee],” said Daniel Cohen, president of Indivisible Houston, who is not endorsing any particular candidate.

    For “more moderate” and “establishment” read “Clinton-approved.”

    Indeed, until 2017, Moser was living in Washington, where she worked as a writer, and only recently relocated back home to Houston. Her husband, Arun Chaudhary, a partner at Revolution Messaging, which did media and email work for the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, hasn’t gotten around to updating his bio, which still suggests that he “lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, son and daughter.”

    And that seems to be the real reason the Democratic establishment has come down on her in the primary like a ton of bricks:

    Indeed, the Democratic Party seems more than willing to block and purge candidates that don’t toe the line.

    It seems it doesn’t matter how pure your progressive credentials or positions are, if you’re the wrong kind of people. Those not already approved by mega-donors and the Clinton machine need not apply…