Friday, March 29, 2024
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Friday, March 29, 2024

Milwaukee Press Club 'Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism' 2020 & 2021 Award Winners

Chris Abele: Sean Lowe Campaign ‘Made a Mistake,’ Refunded Excess Donation

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Sean Lowe, a pro-BLM candidate, ran on a self-proclaimed “anti-racist” platform of bringing “police reform” to Wauwatosa.

Former Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele told Wisconsin Right Now that Sean Lowe’s Wauwatosa aldermanic campaign “made a mistake here which they’re addressing” and has refunded his donation amount that exceeded campaign limits.

Chris Abele’s comments come the day after Wisconsin Right Now exclusively reported that Lowe’s campaign finance reports violated campaign finance laws in several ways. For one, his campaign filed its pre-election campaign finance reports on April 4, the day before the election, when they were due on March 28. The other media have ignored the problems in Lowe’s reports.

Why that matters: Lowe, it was announced Friday, won the race by ONE VOTE. But his late filings made it difficult for voters to know who was funding his campaign before the election, not only Abele but also a host of out-of-state donors, as well as the husband of a lawyer who is suing the City of Wauwatosa over its curfew and other matters alongside controversial BLM attorney Kimberley Motley. Motley has been a thorn in the side of Wauwatosa police for months.

[If you want a sense of how Lowe did his job as chairman of the Wauwatosa “Equity and Inclusion Commission,” check out this video, especially the portion starting at 2:18. Lowe loses complete control of this heated June 2020 meeting and makes it clear he believes a police captain should apologize to the mother of an armed teenager shot by an officer outside Mayfair Mall. The DA cleared the officer of wrongdoing. If you have time, watch the whole video.]

The campaign finance reports also indicate that Lowe spent all of the money, raising the question as to whether the unlawful donations made a difference in a race that initially tied, with the single provisional ballot breaking that tie in Lowe’s favor on Friday.

We confirmed that the City of Wauwatosa Clerk, Steve Braatz, has sent a violation report in Lowe’s name to the state Ethics Commission. Usually, such offenses are handled civilly. However, if intent can be shown, they can be criminal, although that rarely occurs because it’s so hard to prove.

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Furthermore, we discovered that several donations, including from Abele and the lawyer, exceeded the $500 donation allowed in such a local race.

The Wauwatosa Professional Firefighter union’s $1,200 donation was listed as a PAC but under a column for conduits; PACs are limited to $400; conduits are bundled individual donations, but the individual donors are supposed to be listed. Campaigns have a short window in which to return excess donations without penalty.

In short, the reports were a mess and that reduced transparency in a race that came down to one voter.

Chris Abele’s Comments

“What happened is that the online platform they used for donations has, in addition to the campaign amount a donor wants to contribute, a box you can check if you’re willing to also cover the transaction/processing fee that all platforms charge,” Abele explained to WRN. “Those options are a lot more common on online giving platforms these days.”

“In any event, they apparently set it up incorrectly so the whole amount went to the campaign. I haven’t looked at the donor list, but if you’ve got it, I’m guessing you’d see the same for anyone else who did the max donation. Your article listed two other individuals who had the same specific and low amount over the limit. I don’t know the other two individuals but even if I did, it’s hard to imagine why, if we all wanted to do more for his campaign, we wouldn’t simply use any of the numerous legal options that are out there to do it and instead opt to collectively add less than $60 in a manner that publicly flouts the law.”

Chris Abele added, “In any event, their campaign reached out to me immediately and is refunding my $19.52. Still, it’s a totally reasonable question and I think we can all agree that if we want the public to have the trust it deserves in the integrity of all elections, all campaigns need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. The campaign made a mistake here which they’re addressing and, while I believe they didn’t intend to, I’m hoping their lesson is that they need to work harder to intend NOT to make those mistakes in the future. I still support Sean, who I’ve known for a long time, and believe he would be an effective and honorable public servant.”

We reached out to Lowe when our original story ran, but he has yet to comment.

We discovered that 50% of Lowe’s donors were from out of state. We obtained the reports through an open records request.

Sean Lowe was running for District 5 alderman in Wauwatosa against Rob Gustafson. Both initially received 702 votes.

We discovered these donations violated the $500 campaign finance limits for the local race for individuals.

-Chris Abele’s $519.52 donation on Feb. 23.

-Chris Knowlton gave $519.52 on March 14. He is the husband of Kathryn Knowlton, whose name appeared with Motley’s on lawsuits suing the city over its handling of the demonstrations that erupted into the police shootings by Joseph Mensah.

-Marshawn Wolley, a CEO from Indianapolis, Indiana, gave $519.52 on March 19. His company works to advance diversity and equity initiatives.

Sean Lowe reported $5,290.29 contributions from individuals and $1,200 from committees, for a total of $6,490.29. The report said he spent $10,708. He was left with a cash balance of $109.20 because had carried money over from a previous report.

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The report was filed by Chelsea Cross, his campaign manager. Although the reports ask for a signature and date, there is no date listed with her signature on the reports.

In contrast, Lowe’s opponent in the race didn’t have to file a report at all because he didn’t make the $2,000 minimum threshold for doing so, the city clerk told WRN.

Sean Lowe has attended the Get Your Knee Off Our Necks Commitment March with Motley, according to an old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. He has called for “police reform” in Wauwatosa, the article says. He’s chairman of the Wauwatosa Equity and Inclusion Commission. In 2021, he tweeted, “No charges for the police officer, no justice for Jacob Blake’s family. Shameful.” The DA later cleared that officer. In 2020, he wrote, “Some of y’all had #BlackLivesMatter hashtags last month and this month trying to convince people that Kamala Harris isn’t black. Please have several seats! I support @KamalaHarris ✊🏽 #HerLifeMatters”

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Bill Brewer

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Governor’s Veto Powers Wisconsin Republicans Parental Bill of Rights Outlaw Child Sex Dolls Embrace Them Both Unemployment Reforms Wisconsin’s Professional Licensing Bail Reform Amendment wisconsin covid-19

Wisconsin Bans AI Porn, Child Sex Dolls

(The Center Square) – Consider it a sign of the times.

Wisconsin’s newest laws deal with AI-generated porn and new, lieflike child sex dolls.

Gov. Tony Evers signed more than two dozen new laws, including bans on child sex dolls and child porn created by artificial intelligence.

“We’re working to address the cycle of violence, prevent crime, and keep our schools, streets, and communities safe across Wisconsin,” Evers said in a statement.

One of the new laws creates the new crime of possession of virtual child pornography. Prosecutors say the law is needed because even AI generated images feed into child pornography and often the pictures or videos are created based on real images.

Another new law bans the sale, possession, manufacture or advertisement of child sex dolls.

“Protecting our kids is one of my highest priorities. As technology increases access and availability to new forms of abuse for pedophiles, we have to adjust our laws. We will always take a stand against those looking to prey upon our children,” Sen. Jesse James, R-Altoona, said after the governor's action.

The child sex doll ban makes it a felony to have one but adds years to any sentence if the doll is made to look like a specific child.

Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, said the new law is not something Wisconsin would have needed even just a few years ago.

“Law enforcement across the county is reporting an increase in child sex dolls. The dolls are anatomically correct life-like versions of children ranging from infants to teens. Dolls include accessories with programmable child voices, warming devices, and cleaning tools. They can resemble photos of real children and can contain software enabling the owner to simulate rape. Frequently, these dolls are seized during investigations into child sexual abuse material,” Goeben said.

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New Bill Would Require Feds to Screen Border Crossers Against Terror Watch List

A congressman from north Texas has introduced a bill that would require federal agents to screen everyone who enters the country illegally against the federal terrorist watch list.

The bill was introduced as more than 200 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) have already been apprehended attempting to enter the country this fiscal year.

U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican whose district lies west and northwest of Fort Worth, introduced HR 7733, the Identifying Potential Terrorist at the Border Act of 2024. It would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to require U.S. Customs and Border Protection to “take into and maintain custody over an alien until the commissioner cross references the name of such alien with the terrorist screening database and a result for such cross reference is received by the commissioner.”

When announcing the bill, Williams said, “We are a land of laws, and it is past time this Administration acts like it. [President] Joe Biden is encouraging a deadly invasion of fighting-age men on American soil and each day this Democrat-created influx of illegal aliens allows bad actors to slip past Border Patrol undetected.”

Williams, Texas’ Secretary of State under former Gov. Rick Perry, last month also introduced a bill to have the federal government reimburse Texas for its border security costs.

Current law does not require illegal border crossers to be screened against the terrorist watch list. CBP agents at ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports of entry do follow the practice and apprehend KSTs.

Every month, CBP reports the number of KSTs apprehended at the northern and southern borders. CBP Office of Field Operations agents working at land ports of entry are tasked with stopping “inadmissables,” or illegal foreign nationals, including KSTs, as well as contraband, prior to U.S. entry. U.S. Border Patrol agents working between ports of entry patrolling the borde are tasked with apprehending foreign nationals, including KSTs, who’ve already illegally entered the U.S.

General practice has been to screen inadmissibles against the Terrorist Screening Dataset, the federal database that contains sensitive information on terrorist identities. It originated as a consolidated terrorist watchlist “to house information on known or suspected terrorists but evolved over the last decade to include additional individuals who represent a potential threat to the United States, including known affiliates of watchlisted individuals,” CBP explains.

“Under current law, CBP is not required to screen migrants against the terrorist watchlist database, and as we have seen too often, dangerous criminals are released into our nation who go on to harm American citizens and communities,” Williams said. “Now more than ever, we must be aware of who is in our country as Republicans fight to restore law and order and end Biden’s deadly open border policies that are destroying America.”

In fiscal 2023, the greatest number of KSTs, 736, were apprehended at the northern and southern borders, The Center Square reported. A significant majority – 66% – were apprehended at the northern border, 487; 249 were apprehended at the southwest border.

The apprehension data excludes gotaways, which Border Patrol agents and others have warned inevitably includes KSTs. “Gotaways” is the official CBP term that refers to those who illegally enter the U.S. between ports of entry, don’t return to Mexico or Canada, and are not apprehended. An estimated two million have illegally entered since January 2021, The Center Square has reported. However, Border Patrol chiefs say this number is underreported by an estimated 20%.

The trend is continuing in fiscal 2024. The fiscal year started Oct. 1, 2023, and goes through Sept. 30, 2024. KST northern border apprehensions outpaced those at the southwest border in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, The Center Square reported.

As of Jan. 26, 2024, 144 KSTs were apprehended, the majority, 90, were apprehended at the northern border.

As of March 22, the total number climbed to 210, according to CBP data. The majority, 127, were apprehended at the northern border; 83 were apprehended at the southwest border.

The number of KSTs apprehended under the Biden administration has increased every year. In fiscal 2022, 478 KSTs were apprehended, up from 173 apprehended in fiscal 2021.

Last fall, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the U.S. Senate about terrorist threats facing Americans including from Iranians. More than a month after he spoke, northern border agents apprehended an Iranian with terrorist ties.

Retired FBI officials also warned Congress in January that a terrorist attack was likely imminent and preventable.

Earlier this month, Wray testified again before the Senate acknowledging that a smuggling organization working with the terrorist group ISIS is funneling criminals through the U.S. border. He said the FBI was investigating its operations that “we’re very concerned about.”

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Biden Administration Defends Decision to Nix Union Accountability Effort

The Biden administration has removed a federal webpage dedicated to union transparency and accountability and apparently has no plans to replace it.

The Center Square on Tuesday exclusively obtained a letter from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to 10 U.S. senators defending its decision to remove a webpage built to hold unions accountable.

After the accountability webpage disappeared last year, an OPM spokesperson told The Center Square "previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience."

Since then, OPM has declined to comment on the issue multiple times.

As The Center Square previously reported, the Office of Personnel Management created the webpage in question to track “official time,” a practice when federal employees who are union members conduct union business during normal work hours, which means taxpayers pick up the tab.

The practice has gone on for decades, but concerns about abuse and accountability led lawmakers to push for more reporting. Until last year, OPM had a webpage dedicated to official time accountability with a history of past reports.

Now, in its letter to lawmakers, OPM points out it has moved the official time data to an “agency reports” webpage. However, the last official time report on the site is from fiscal year 2019, meaning none have been completed since Biden took office.

No other official time reports are listed on the OPM reports page.

“Most tellingly, Director [Kiran] Ahuja offered no apology for the removal of the official time webpage, made no commitment to restoring it, and declined to commit OPM to producing any additional estimates of taxpayer-funded union time use and costs in the future…” Maxford Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.

OPM has released the reports regularly since the Clinton administration, but in the letter pointed out they are not legally required to do so.

In the letter, OPM said the official time reports were taken down to improve the website and that the decision “was not based on any discussions with outside parties such as federal unions, other agencies, or the White House.”

The Center Square, however, exposed coordination between the Biden administration and labor unions at taxpayer expense in the past.

A national labor union representing over 100,000 federal employees boasted in a document online that they had persuaded the Biden administration to use taxpayer resources to make it easier for unions to recruit new members. After The Center Square reported on the issue, the document was taken down.

In OPM’s letter this week, the agency says its decision was not political but was part of a larger overhaul to the website.

From OPM’s letter:

As part of modernizing and consolidating our webpages, we routinely remove or migrate information to ensure our web content is up to date and to improve the customer Experience. In the course of updating our website, official time reports were taken down from their original location. The most recent of those reports, from 2019, was migrated along with numerous other documents to the Agency Reports page of OPM’s website. OPM made the decision to remove official time reports for the reasons described above; the decision was not based on any discussions with outside parties such as federal unions, other agencies, or the White House.

Annual reports on official time usage are not mandated by statute, and these statistics have not been reported on a consistent basis for more than a decade. In the past ten years, official time reports have only been issued four times. The most recent estimates on official time are included in the Fiscal Year 2019 report. Agencies reported that bargaining unit employees spent a total of 2,606,390 official time hours representing 1,329,222 non-Postal federal civil service employees. This represents a decrease of 28.26 percent in the use of official time compared to the previous report, which covered Fiscal Year 2016.

Nelsen pointed out that President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated his pro-union stance and his plans to be the “the most pro-union president in history,” so no official coordination was needed, though its unclear whether OPM’s claim of no coordination is true.

Nelsen pushed back, saying Ahuja “made no effort to explain how deletion of the federal government’s sole repository of official time information and historic data – which was perfectly functional and up-to-date until the day of its removal last summer – helps improve the public’s access to data.”

As The Center Square previously reported, “official time” was codified in 1978. Almost immediately, though, accountability became a major concern.

The Government Accountability Office reported in 1979 that “no one knows how much official time is authorized for Federal employees” because of “widespread failure” when it comes to keeping records. The GAO made similar comments again in 1996 before Congress.

“Overall, it’s fair to say that the Biden administration has zero interest in the public knowing the extent to which federal employees are working for unions instead of performing the public service roles for which they were hired and continue to be compensated by taxpayers,” Nelsen said.

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11 Million IllegalsmSouthern Border Arrests

More Than 11 Million Illegals Have Entered U.S. Since Fiscal 2021

According to U.S. Customs and Border protection data, 9.4 million foreign nationals illegally entered the U.S. in fiscal years 2021, 2022, 2023 and through the end of February 2024.

Including another more than 2 million gotaways, reported by The Center Square, combined, they total an estimated 11.4 million, more than the population of 43 U.S. states.

They also total more than the population of all individual U.S. cities, including the largest city of New York City, and are greater than the populations of roughly 150 countries.

With February’s record 256,094 illegal border crossers, and more than 120,000 gotaways in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, the number of illegal border crossers in fiscal 2024 through February total more than 1.6 million, the highest in U.S. history.

Record numbers came through in the first quarter of fiscal 2024 both at the northern and southwest borders, the highest of any quarter and per month in U.S. history.

If fiscal 2024 numbers continue at the current trajectory, they will likely be the largest number on record, surpassing last year’s record.

Last fiscal year, nearly 4 million, including gotaways, were reported to have illegally entered the U.S., The Center Square first reported.

“Gotaways” is the official term used by Border Patrol agents to describe foreign nationals who intentionally illegally enter the U.S. between ports of entry and don’t return to Mexico or Canada. CBP doesn’t publicly report gotaway data. The Center Square first began reporting it to provide a more accurate picture of the number of illegal border crossers entering the U.S. every month under the current administration.

Illegal border crossers (fiscal year 2021 through fiscal 2024 through the end of February 2024) total more than 19 Wyomings, 17.5 Vermonts, 15.5 Alaskas, 14 North Dakotas, 12 South Dakotas, and nearly 11 Delawares, President Joe Biden’s home state.

Put another way, they total 29% of California’s entire population, nearly 37% of Texas’ population, and nearly half of Florida’s population, the country's three most populous states.

They total 58% of New York’s population, 88% of Pennsylvania’s population, 91% of Illinois’ population and nearly as much as Ohio’s population. They total more than the eighth most populous state of Georgia and the rest of the U.S. states and territories.

The Center Square first reported on the number of illegal border crossers totaling more than the population of individual states. In June 2022, more than three million had illegally entered the U.S., totaling more than the individual populations of 23 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

By August 2022, that number had increased to total more than the population of 25 states and more than 100 countries and territories.

Now, they total more than roughly 150 countries, outranking the 83rd most populous country of Jordan with 11.3 million people. They total more than the populations of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Sweden, Honduras, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Israel, Austria, Switzerland, Libya and Nicaragua.

They also total more than double the populations of Finland, Norway, Lebanon, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Ireland, Panama and Kuwait.

They more than triple the populations of Georgia, Uruguay, Jamiaca and Qatar.

The numbers exponentially increased after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas implemented policies to create a “legal pathway” for millions of foreign nationals who otherwise would be prohibited from entry. More than half of U.S. states sued over them, arguing they are illegal. The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security identified over a dozen parole policies Mayorkas created that it argues are illegal included as reasons for which he was impeached last month, The Center Square reported.

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Appeals Court Reduces $464M Bond in Trump’s Fraud Case, Gives Him More Time

A New York appeals court on Monday gave former President Donald Trump a lifeline in his New York fraud case, allowing Trump to post a much lower bond while he appeals the verdict in the case.

Trump was expected to come up with $464 million or a bond for that amount Monday to appeal a ruling by Superior Court Judge Arthur Engoron in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2022.

In an order, the five-judge state appeals court panel said it would give the Trump Organization and top executives 10 days to post a $175 million bond.

Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives – including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump – deceived banks and insurers by inflating the value of his family's wealth on financial statements used to secure loans.

Trump said Monday that he planned to comply with the order.

"We will abide by the decision of the Appellate Division, and post either a bond, equivalent securities, or cash," he posted on Truth Social. "This also shows how ridiculous and outrageous Engoron's original decision was at $450 Million."

Trump's attorneys previously said he couldn't get a bond for the full amount and asked to put up a $100 million bond instead. James wanted Trump to have to put up the full amount and had said she will seek "judgment enforcement mechanisms in court" if Trump can't come up with the money.

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