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Butker’s ‘Traditional Values’ PAC Took Retiree Cash, Spent Most on Fundraising: Report
A political action committee founded by Harrison Butker—the pro-Trump NFL placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, whose highly controversial comments have led to allegations of bigotry, including antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, along with anti-vax beliefs—has come under fire.
Butker’s Upright PAC was supposed to “promote and encourage Christian voters to vote, so that their voices are heard this November.” But according to reports, it appears to have taken in donations, and spent most of it on fundraising.
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Butker, 29, a friend of Missouri far-right U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, was described as “the latest angry rich guy with a Pac,” in an opinion piece at The Guardian.
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His controversial views made major headlines this year when he delivered the commencement address at Benedictine college, a small Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas, back in May.
“Butker managed, in just a few minutes, to be homophobic, anti-abortion (saying that Joe Biden was responsible for ‘the murder of innocent babies’), and racist, railing against the ‘tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion,'” wrote Dave Zirin at The Nation. “He cried out against ‘things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media,’ which supposedly ‘all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.'”
“Butker was also antisemitic,” Zirin charged. “He threw down with a ‘Jews killed Jesus’ line, saying, ‘Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.’ Subtle as a blowtorch. But you won’t hear the right say a word about it while they’ll go full-House Un-American Activities Committee on college presidents over fabricated charges of the same.”
He attacked LGBTQ Pride Month as a “deadly sin.”
Butker also went after women, or more precisely, women who want to have careers outside the home—like his mother, a medical physicist, has. His mother also has not one but two university degrees.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you,” Butker told the women graduates (full transcript here). “How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world…I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation…and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
And he went after President Joe Biden, calling him “delusional.”
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“Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally,” Butker charged. “He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.”
“He is not alone, Butker said. “From the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common. They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it.”
(GLAAD published this fact-check.)
On Friday, investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger reported: “Remember when Josh Hawley’s placekicker pal Harrison Butker started a PAC to promote candidates that support Christian values? Turns out it raised $36,000, gave $0 to candidates, and spent about $30K on fundraising fees.”
Sollenberger posted a link to this page at the Federal Election Commission.
He adds, “Most of the donors to Butker’s PAC say they’re retirees. One donor was unemployed three years ago and gave the pro-Christian group $475, listing her current job as an associate at Walmart.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) also investigated, saying, “we took a look. Butker’s PAC raised $36k from small donors. Guess how much it spent on its stated goal? Absolutely nothing.”
So we took a look. Butker’s PAC raised $36k from small donors.
Guess how much it spent on its stated goal?
Absolutely nothing. pic.twitter.com/JqFOubhQ8o
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) December 6, 2024
“But records show it spent more than $30k of that $36k, so where did the money go?” CREW asked. “$100 on office supplies. And all the rest spent on fundraising.”
And CREW notes, “A further search shows no records of Butker, the highest paid kicker in the NFL, making any political contributions himself.”
A further search shows no records of Butker, the highest paid kicker in the NFL, making any political contributions himself. pic.twitter.com/sAKhFiX4iI
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) December 6, 2024
See the social media posts above or at this link.
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Image via Wikimedia
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President Donald Trump continues to tease out a possible 2028 run, despite the constitutional prohibition on a third term. On Friday, the 79-year old unveiled a new “slogan,” and his new name for Trump Republican voters.
Trump has acknowledged the constitutional block on a third term, recently telling reporters that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a constitutional attorney, told him a third term is not allowed — a fact he appeared to accept.
But Trump on Friday afternoon posted an AI meme of a silver-haired, older-looking Donald Trump, holding a campaign sign that reads — not “Make America Great Again” — but, “Trump 2028, Yes!”
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The post, on his Truth Social website, also says, “Trumplicans!”
“There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone,” he recently wrote. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???”
Apparently, “Trumplicans” won out.
Health care activist Melanie D’Arrigo remarked on Wednesday that “Trump is workshopping names for his cult, while Americans struggle to afford the rising costs of groceries, healthcare and housing.”
Reporting on Trump’s musings, TIME on Thursday noted that his new MAGA moniker comes “amid high-profile divisions within the MAGA base.”
Were Trump to run for a third term, he would be 82 on Election Day in 2028.
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump is under fire over a report that claims he is proposing that the U.S. recognize Russian control of parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia has unlawfully annexed, as a means to end the war.
“The Telegraph understands that Donald Trump has sent his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make the direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow,” the news outlet reported. “The plan to recognize territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “on Thursday said Washington’s legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory would be one of the key issues in negotiations over the US president’s peace plan,” according to The Telegraph.
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Critics are blasting President Trump.
Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who served as a contracted Marine fighting in Ukraine’s armed forces, responded to the report:
“I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered.”
“So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal,” he added. “It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.”
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Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked, “Trump would be rewarding imperial conquest, thereby encouraging other autocrats to do so, resulting in a very unstable world.”
Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative, issued a warning:
“If the US recognizes territory taken by force, just replace ‘leader of the free world’ with ‘for sale’. Xi can come up with more cash than Putin for Trump and his pals to do the same for Taiwan.”
Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament, remarked, “If this is true, then we have a major problem, Houston.”
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Image via Reuters
A Trump administration order to keep an aging and unneeded Michigan coal-fired power plant open and online reportedly is costing taxpayers about $615,000 per day, or $113 million to date. Closing the plant would save taxpayers about $640 million by 2040.
“The Trump administration in May ordered utility giant Consumers Energy to keep the 63-year-old JH Campbell coal plant in western Michigan, about 100 miles north-east of Chicago, online just as it was being retired,” according to The Guardian.
“The costs of unnecessarily running this jalopy coal plant just continue to mount,” Michael Lenoff, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is suing over the order, told The Guardian.
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President Donald Trump signed a national energy emergency order on his first day in office this year, rolling back regulations.
In court documents, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that the administration’s latest order is “arbitrary and illegal.”
Consumers Energy, the operator of the plant, did not ask the Trump administration for the order to keep the coal plant running, and the Trump administration did not consult local regulators, a spokesperson for the Michigan public service commission (MPSC), told the Guardian in May.
“The unnecessary recent order … will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the midwest,” the chair of the MPSC, Dan Scripps, said in a statement at the time.
Reporting on what it called Trump’s “pro-fossil fuel agenda,” The Guardian in January quoted the president:
“We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
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Image via Reuters
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