NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Civil war is on the minds of many conservatives.
At least many of those gathered just outside of the nation’s capital this week for CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. In recent years, the annual meeting has evolved into a populist confab remade in the image of former President Donald Trump.
If the speakers here are correct in their doomsday predictions — and fear-soaked fundraising pleas — attendees have good reason to be scared.
“I'm worried that we're gonna have a civil war in this country,” CPAC attendee Lucy Kruse — wearing a coat embroidered with her home state of Maryland’s busy yellow, black, red, and white flag — told Raw Story outside the convention hall.
Gone are the days of fiscal conservatism. Like the Republican Party itself, since 2016, when former President Donald Trump started his populist takeover of the GOP, this annual event has continued moving further and further to the far-to-fringe-right.
Victimhood abounds. ‘Deep state,’ the media, academia, Hollywood — or ‘the woke,’ as they call it in these parts — and the Biden White House are all conspiring against Trump. His disciples here take his every prosecution personally — Trump is their “J6er-in-chief,” as some call him, after all.
It’s surely a new day in the GOP. Populism has morphed into paranoia. Angst transformed into anger. Conspiracies are now the code — on paper at least — for many of the card carrying conservatives gathered here.
The formerly fringe is now front and center. Everyone seems prepped — or, at the very least, resigned — for chaos to come.
Kruse, now a grandmother herself, says she can relate to what her foremothers endured in the 1860s.
“I’m worried. I'm worried. I think often about the Civil War, and I think often about how they talked about mothers having brothers fighting each other on opposing sides,” Kruse said. “Well, I can tell you that in my family, there are opposing sides, and I'm not supposed to talk about it. Like, I'm supposed to be quiet — they can say anything they want, but I'm not supposed to talk about it.”
A decade ago, Kruse was an outlier on the right, because she supported gun-control efforts. Not anymore.
While Kruse refused to say if she now owns a gun (“I'll leave that up to your imagination”), she senses an armed clash — a contemporary civil war — is just around the corner.
“I think about those things a lot. I think about the Civil War, and I think how horrible it must have been for a mother and a grandmother — which I am — to sit there and see this coming and feel like you have no way to stop it,” Kruse said.
The Maryland grandmother is far from alone here. She’s also not nuts. Kruse is warm, personable, and has a fun sense of humor.
Kruse is also informed. She’s basically weaned herself off Fox News, and not just because they no longer play Trump’s full live rallies.
“I used to be a Fox News person, but — well, I never really loved Fox. I used to go into my mom and dad's house and they watched it 24/7, and I always said, ‘They were the yellers of the news,” Kruse said. “They were in that mode of yelling, yelling, yelling, you know? And it just drove me crazy, but it's funny how you evolve.”
There’s been a lot of yelling at CPAC this week. It’s now soothing to Kruse. She’s at home.
“They're clamping down on everything here in Maryland, so, again, that's troubling as well,” Kruse said. “When you talk to — when you listen to the new President of El Salvador [Nayib Bukele] and him talk about what they experienced there, we better wake up. We better wake up. Like he said, ‘you don't want to experience everything we've experienced.’ And he's the one who said, ‘stand up and fight.’ You have to fight.”
President Bukele isn’t alone. While only a handful of elected American policymakers are speakers at this year’s CPAC, the common theme is that the civil war’s already started.
And — if they’re to be believed, which they surely are here at CPAC — it was President Joe Biden who fired the first shot. And who, they say, continues to do all he can to ‘destroy’ America.
“Joe Biden is clearly in partnership — without saying it, without having a written contract — with the cartels,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told CPAC attendees Friday.
The top law enforcement official in Texas — who barely escaped being impeached by his fellow Texas Republicans just last year — went on to tell the crowd, “we are at war.”
“It is all designed by our own government,” Paxton said of the border crisis. “So we are at war with the cartels, the Chinese importing fentanyl and our own president against the United States and our country and my state.”
While other elected Republicans stopped short of saying the ‘war’ has begun, some pledged to fight to the death anyway.
“I will die – I will fight to my last breath to make sure that our Second Amendment is protected, because that’s what protects our First [Amendment],” Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) told the crowd Friday.
There’s no gray here. The conference may be titled ‘where globalism goes to die,’ but this is Trump’s turf now and the agenda is all America First. Those who don’t embrace it, according to Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), “hate America.”
“This election, the choice is clear. There are two kinds of people in this country right now: Those who love America and those who hate America,” Noem — who served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives before moving into South Dakota’s governor’s mansion — told attendees. “Those who hate America are working everyday to destroy it, and let’s be clear: Joe Biden is destroying America and taking away your freedoms.”
Freedom’s flowing at this conference where the First Amendment is getting a workout.
While “aiding and abetting” is legalese for anyone found guilty of helping someone else carry out a crime, here at CPAC it’s been tossed around so much one may think it’s part of Biden’s official job description.
“Biden is aiding and abetting the invasion of our nation by thugs, Islamic extremists and Chinese spies,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told the audience Friday afternoon in his address entitled, ‘Burning Down the House.’
Located roughly 10 miles from the U.S. Capitol — which was attacked, including by some gathered at CPAC, on Jan. 6, 2021 — many attendees at this year’s CPAC are proudly celebrating those who stormed the Capitol after Trump lost the 2020 election.
While Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 were awarded Congressional Gold Medals for their valiant efforts to protect American democracy, at CPAC, they’re barely an afterthought. Law and order are viewed differently here, as Biden’s bludgeons, to most.
“I think that the government has gone after these January 6 political prisoners, because they want to make an example out of them,” Helena Gibson, a Virginia resident, told Raw Story. “I think that they're being used as political pawns, so that they can get to Trump.”
Like many here, Gibson’s convinced Biden’s an illegitimate president; Democrats a cabal.
“They can't win an election, so they have to get Trump all penned up in, you know, the traditional sense of the system with false allegations and things that he didn't say and do. And it's a mess,” Gibson said. “I mean, we all know now that the election was stolen.”
If the election was stolen by Biden — a common belief here at CPAC — those in prison for storming the Capitol are ‘patriots.’ Resisting the establishment — whether Democrats or the old guard in the GOP — also makes one a ‘patriot’ here.
Those willing to sacrifice their bodies, futures, and families to try and overturn the 2020 election are now heralded as heroes — heroes memorialized on J6 tees, cookies, DVDs (yes, actual DVDs), and petitions. There’s even a Jan. 6 themed video game for attendees to play at this year’s CPAC.
“It was funny. It was really funny. It’s, like, you’ve got to protect people from the left,” Emerson Young, a student at Ohio University at Athens, told Raw Story after playing. “That’s hilarious.”
Many aren’t laughing though. Rather, there’s an effort underway to make it easy for Trump to pardon all those J6 prisoners if he wins a second term.
“We sometimes call him the J6er-in-chief. He's facing some of those same charges in the same weaponized way and in the same completely abusive manner,” Suzzanne Monk — a J6 activist —- told Raw Story.
Just as the conservative Heritage Foundation has Project 2025 — a roadmap for Trump to staff up to start overhauling the federal government from day one, if he wins a second term — Monk’s crafting a blueprint for Trump to quickly pardon J6 prisoners if he ousts Biden in November.
“We are producing a book for one man: Donald J. Trump,” Monk said. “It's called, ‘How to Pardon the J6ers: A Comprehensive Guide for Donald J. Trump.’ And it will have all of the information. It’s a multi-pronged strategy, as well as a dossier of the information he needs for each and every individual who needs clemency.”
The newly normalized far-right is focused well beyond Jan. 6 prisoners and the national stage they thrust themselves onto. So far beyond the spotlight they’re often hiding in plain sight.
But here at CPAC — like in the Republican Party at large — they’re heroes, especially for their local efforts to upend school boards and influence the 2024 election.
Like much at CPAC, Democrats remain largely in the dark, even as the storm continues growing, looking more ominous by the hour.
“Huge. They’re huge, man,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told Raw Story. “With Moms for Liberty, they’re gonna be a huge part of our elections … so I think that their voices are going to be loud and clear. They're now a major part of us.”
“What do you think of the folks on the left saying that they’re extremists?” Raw Story asked.
“That's what the left always does,” Donalds said. “Man, if you don't agree with the left, you're an extremist. All that means is that they're the real extremists.”
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A pastor preaching to the attendees of this week's Conservative Political Action Conference thinks America needs Donald Trump and Jesus Christ — but there's a more immediate need for the former.
Pastor Steven Gray, from Lee's Summit, Missouri, said, “I'm trying to mix the spiritual with the political,” as he handed Raw Story a press packet from an old leather over-the-shoulder bag. “My church is doing great — everything’s doing great — I felt like just, this is what I should do now, is lean into taking the spiritual and mixing [in] the political.”
"Does America need Jesus more or Trump more?” Raw Story asked him.
“This will just have to be my plain opinion, okay? In my plain opinion, I am a big supporter of Trump,” Gray said.
“I think the spiritual is going to be long term, the political is short term: We need him now. The spiritual, we got, you know, we can work into it."
He recalled seeing an ad for Trump with a list of bullet points. The last one struck him most — it asked if America is "spiritually sick?"
"That’s in my lane. I'm not in the other lanes, but that’s in my lane," the pastor explained.
“He is one of the big reasons I’m doing this, because I think it needs to be combined," Gray said of Jesus and Trump. "And I think he’s a candidate that would not oppose the political and the spiritual.
“We need 'em both."
He wasn't the only pastor at the event, or the only one speaking about faith.
Former Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) walked Steve Bannon through his brand of Christian Nationalism while appearing on the former Trump adviser's show from CPAC.
Before a crowd of about 100 people, Brat explained, "God’s put a special hand on this country. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t be ashamed of that. Get out, teach your kids that."
When Raw Story caught up with him after Bannon's show, he said, "God is with everybody that he made in his own image," and that includes Trump. He also agreed God was "with" President Joe Biden.
Joseph Daniels said he's "probably running for Congress one day."
The Christian from Naperville, Illinois, expressed his fears: “The left is so demonic now, bro.”
He claimed liberals are "trying to sexualize children" while also "trying to wipe out the next generation with abortion and Planned Parenthood and the organ harvesting trade. There’s a lot of evil stuff going on. A lot. It’s really, really sad.”
“Trump let me down with not pardoning Julian Assange," Daniels said. “Speaker Johnson’s weak, bro. He hasn’t done much. He’s just like McCarthy."
Evan Robey, 18, a student at the University of Georgia, was asked whether he'd pick Trump or Jesus, and while he went for the latter, he also told Raw Story, “Trump is the only way for our country,”
“There are a bunch of liberals trying to determine whether or not Trump is a Christian in all these articles, like, ‘Trump doesn't exhibit the values of Christianity.’ I’m like, ‘How the hell do they know?’ That’s actually ridiculous," he said.
Raw Story asked about the "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump confessed he could sexually assault women without any consequences as a "celebrity."
“I disagree with that, because it’s about the policy," Robey claimed. "And look at everything Donald Trump stands for: He stands for closing our borders. He stands for bringing back the American values. He wants us to have jobs. Basically, it’s the whole help your neighbor mentality that we have learned through Christ. It’s less about what you say and more about what you do. That’s the heart of Christianity."
Bishop Joseph Strickland told Raw Story it was an easy pick between Jesus and Trump.
"Jesus," he said. “Pastors can get off track, too. Believe me.”
A University of South Carolina alumnus and donor said he would still keep his upcoming meeting about funding an endowment for the school’s Honors College.
But the donor was furious and appalled at the school for introducing former President Donald Trump on the field at halftime of last November’s football game against Clemson. Dressed in a blue suit and striped tie, Trump smiled, clapped and waved to the crowd, which showered him with a mixture of cheers and jeers.
“Give me a reason to believe in USC again,” the email to Athletics Director Ray Tanner said. “Give me a reason to consider establishing an endowment. Because at this moment I’m questioning the leadership of the athletic department and the university, and wondering if my money is better off being spent elsewhere, where truth, morality, and human decency matter.”
He continued, “We can’t wait around and hope Trump will fade away and cause no more damage. He has proven time and time again that there is no limit to how far he will go to advance his evil interests — and make no mistake, he is evil.”
Injecting a political spectacle, especially a Trump spectacle, into a revered rivalry game dating to 1896 prompted impassioned messages from a variety of school stakeholders and concerned citizens, according to emails obtained by Raw Story from the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster's office. Raw Story obtained the emails via the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act.
The extent to which donors followed through on their threats is unclear. But the division was a harbinger of political turbulence in the lead-up to Saturday’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary.
Polls show Trump with a commanding lead over his last remaining Republican challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
But Haley has announced she will remain in the race regardless of the South Carolina primary result — a decision fueled in part by anti-Trump sentiment among a minority of Republicans who don’t believe the former president is fit to serve.
'Shame'
A South Carolina alumna’s email to Tanner exemplifies that sentiment.
The alumna said she and her husband changed their plans to travel from Texas to Columbia, S.C., for the rivalry football game, calling it “sullied” and Trump’s on-field presence “a huge slap in the face, especially to your female students, staff and alumna.”
They went to New Orleans instead and vowed to “never attend another game.”
“Let me be perfectly clear: Trump's attendance at the game isn't the problem,” she wrote. “It's that you insulted half of your fan base by letting him walk onto the field. I hope your Republican donors can fill the gap left by Democrats who, like me, are for the first time ashamed to be Gamecocks.”
Trump had his turn upstaging Haley in her home state. As for university President Michael Amiridis and Tanner, they received emails expressing outrage at the situation.
“It was a dark day as far as I'm concerned,” said an email from a 62-year-old fan who said she has attended games since she was 15. “I'm glad I took a stand and didn't attend. I have zero pride in USC right now and it is something that will be difficult to forget.”
One fan had the same reaction to Trump’s appearance at the South Carolina game as someone who emailed the University of Iowa about Trump’s appearance at the Iowa-Iowa State rivalry football game two months earlier.
“Did Trump grab any cheerleaders?” said an email from an alumnus in Lexington, Ky. “Shame on the University.”
The University of Iowa, in contrast to the University of South Carolina, did not allow Trump on its football field when Trump attended a game last year. The University of Iowa also went out of its way to say that the former president’s presence did not indicate an endorsement.
University of South Carolina Assistant Vice President Jeff Stensland told Raw Story that the school does not invite political candidates to games, noting that Trump attended at the governor’s invitation.
“Former President Donald Trump was a guest of Gov. Henry McMaster, the state’s top elected leader,” Stensland said. “Because this game was the ‘Palmetto Bowl’ featuring South Carolina’s two largest colleges, USC planned to recognize the governor on the field during the contest. The governor chose to have the former president join him on the field.”
Stensland did not address whether the university made any effort to discourage the governor from bringing Trump onto the field.
Neither Trump’s campaign nor McMaster’s office responded to Raw Story’s requests for comment.
The emails obtained by Raw Story showed that the University of South Carolina recognized the potential for Trump-related controversy, and it gathered top leadership to discuss how to craft a message to the public.
An agenda for a leadership meeting the week of the game referred to Trump by his initials, “DJT.”
The agenda offered possible approaches for handling Trump’s appearance, such as “DJT attending as a guest of Governor” and extending him “every courtesy as you would a guest in your home” and “Southern hospitality regardless of your political persuasion.”
But it didn’t work out that way.
‘Don't gaslight me’
Some of the criticism articulated in documents obtained by Raw Story centered around a post on the University of South Carolina athletic department’s official account on X, formerly Twitter.
The account featured a photo of Trump and the governor on the field. It said, “Welcome South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and his guest, former president Donald Trump, to Williams-Brice Stadium.” The post also used a hand emoji connoting something cool, plus university-specific hashtags.
A University of South Carolina class of 2004 alumnus wrote that it “crossed a line that should be sacred in educational and athletic institutions.”
Another alum wrote, “The Gamecocks Athletics social media essentially promoted a political campaign of a person whose values and character are the complete opposite of the university’s I graduated from. I say this sincerely as someone who can accept political differences, but this is an entirely different situation. Morality matters.”
Even Trump’s introduction when taking the field appears to have been influenced by his staff.
The emails obtained by Raw Story include a reference to the script used to introduce Trump and McMaster as coming “from Campaign staff.”
It said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to the 25 yard line to welcome Governor Henry McMaster and the 45th President of the United States, President Donald J Trump.”
The university responded to the angry emails with a canned response: “The University of South Carolina has not invited any active candidates for office to its events, including football games. We do welcome, however, all visitors invited by our fans and supporters who attend those events.”
That prompted indignation and mockery.
“Don't gaslight me,” said an email from an alumnus. “I saw what you did with Trump. It was shameful.”
The alumnus and donor with the endowment conversation wrote, “To suggest that USC merely welcomed a ‘visitor’ invited by a ‘fan’ to ‘attend’ is frankly insulting.”
“Oh, wonderful!” the 2004 alumnus said. “I must have missed the memo about the new ‘Bring a Guest onto the Field’ policy at halftime. It's quite a progressive move, really. Next time, I'll be sure to extend an invitation to my choice of high-profile guests.”
As for the football game itself, Clemson defeated South Carolina, 16-7.
Backlash directed at the governor
McMaster’s office also received dozens of complaints between Nov. 14 through Dec. 9 about Trump’s presence at the game, according to documents Raw Story obtained through a South Carolina Freedom of Information Act request.
Many of the letters came before the game, asking the governor to reconsider the invite.
“Please, please rescind your offer to Trump to attend the Carolina-Clemson football game this Saturday,” one letter from a Columbia, S.C., resident said. “Let the game be about the rivalry between the two South Carolina teams and not about him. It will be a logistical nightmare and people just want to enjoy the game, not politics.”
“Please do not invite former president Trump to Carolina Clemson game Saturday,” said a Lugoff, S.C., resident. “This would be a huge disruption to students and fans and take away from the excitement of the day. This event should not be turned into a political rally. The traffic hassle, road closures and general disruption would not be appreciated by fans, alumni and students.”
Just one letter of 36 obtained by Raw Story was complimentary. It came from a man who identified himself as Kai Kroeger, the All-American punter for the University of South Carolina football team. He asked to meet McMaster and Trump.
“I have a great deal of respect for you both, and I am grateful to be living and playing in the great state of South Carolina,” Kroeger wrote. “Please let me know if this is a possibility and thank you for your support of our program!”
Kroeger could not immediately be reached for comment.
Others worried about the message Trump’s visit would send to students.
“You are not setting a good example, especially when my 17-year-old asks why OUR Governor, invited a known sexual predator to our beloved Carolina-Clemson match!” said a resident of Mt. Pleasant, S.C. “Thanks for making South Carolina look like a bunch of backwards idiots!”
‘Leftover Confederacy’
Courts have found Trump civilly liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, ordering him to pay more that $88 million combined in damages.
Trump also faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases, including two cases involving his alleged efforts to overturn 2020 election results.
Trump’s legal turmoil factored into some of the angry messages the University of South Carolina received. The governor’s office received a card with an image of a forest that said “Thinking of You” in curly script surrounded by two hearts — which the author drew an X through.
The handwritten letter in cursive script blasted McMaster for turning the game into “a political rally” and questioned why the governor supported Trump over his gubernatorial predecessor, Haley.
“There are hundreds of inmates in S.C. jails who have more morality and fewer charges against them than Trump,” the letter said. “You seem to live in a world of the leftover Confederacy.”
“If I understand correctly, you initiated the visit of former President Donald Trump to the Carolina-Clemson game. If this is true, can you explain the invitation in light of the insurrection on January 6th after the former president lost the election?” wrote a South Carolina resident and alumnus of the university. “I realize I am in the minority in our state, but I refuse to forget the former president's actions while in office and after the people of our nation voted him out of office.”
Another alumnus wrote, “I'd like you to know the embarrassment felt by bringing Donald Trump to last week's football game … I can't imagine why you would recognize any individual facing criminal indictments. I'm sure you are aware that the state of Colorado recently ruled that Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021. It was a terrible look for our university and state.”
A resident of Adams Run, S.C., wrote: “Once again you have reinforced your inability to govern anything except maybe your hair … My only wish is that in addition to the booing he received is that paper cups had been thrown at both of you — hopefully with the beer still in them. You are an embarrassment to SC. You literally make me want to vomit.”
Taxpayer toll for the spectacle
Other letters expressed concerns about the toll increased security and traffic for a former president to visit the game would take on taxpayers and local resources.
A resident of Conway, S.C., wrote to the governor’s office calling McMaster a “fraud and liar” who should be investigated for the misuse of taxpayer money.
“McMasters disgusting tramping of the POS trump at Saturdays Football game was a violation of the use of State owned higher education property and money,” the resident wrote. “He deceived the people by turning a highly anticipated game into a political rally. I TURNED IT OFF AT HALF TIME IN TOTAL DISGUST.”
One former South Carolina voter who said he “voted solid GOP in NC for decades” said Trump’s visit was “ruining the game” and bemoaned his inability to “unload my tickets but no one wants them even at face value — because of Trump.”
“He will screw up the traffic, and logistics for those going to the game,” the Fayetteville, N.C., resident wrote.
Trump’s appearance cost upward of $17,000 in additional security costs, according to records from the University of South Carolina’s Athletic Department received by the South Carolina Daily Gazette. The university has yet to fulfill Raw Story’s similar Freedom of Information Act request from Jan. 25.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina Department of Public Safety and City of Columbia, S.C., said they did not have documents responsive to Raw Story's Freedom of Information Act requests.
Trump has a long history racking up security costs in small towns where he campaigns, failing to pay nearly $2 million in public safety-related municipal bills through 2020, according to an Business Insider tally.
A year-long series of investigations by Raw Story found that eight of Trump’s 2024 campaign visits cost local taxpayers at least $100,000 in total — expenses that the Trump campaign refuses to pay and which local municipalities end up covering.
Trump has continued to visit South Carolina ahead of the state’s Republican primary election on Saturday, polling at 58 percent versus Haley’s 35 percent, according to The Hill.
Trump is scheduled to rally today at another South Carolina college — The Citadel — which has recently sought to deflect questions about an honorary degree it bestowed upon former Trump lawyer and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who faces criminal charges in Georgia and a slew of other legal troubles.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Fresh off being ordered to pony up $5 million over peddling election conspiracies, pillow maker Mike Lindell is pushing election conspiracies at this year’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Lindell — contrary to all evidence — continues pushing election conspiracies, even as many Republicans gathered at this convention center just outside of the nation’s capital have rejected former President Donald Trump’s losing 2020 strategy and are now encouraging early voting, including by mail.
The MyPillow guy dismisses members of his party — from local officials to those at the Republican National Committee (RNC) — encouraging vote-by-mail in 2024.
“They're completely insane. That's an insane thought there,” Lindell told Raw Story. “They can’t. They're wrong, they're wrong and they're wrong.”
That’s becoming an increasingly lonely position within the GOP, though Trump seems to be one of the few Republicans left in Lindell’s corner after he recently promised to end vote-by-mail if he wins this November.
“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” Trump told a Michigan crowd earlier this month. “Get that through your head. It has to be.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Minneapolis ruled Lindell has 30 days to pay $5 million to software developer Robert Zeidman.
Zeidman beat Lindell’s so-called “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge with a 15-page paper debunking his 2020 conspiracies by proving – first in arbitration and now in a federal court – they’re based on misrepresentations and incomplete data sets.
Lindell plans to appeal. He says the key issue in 2024 is the need to unplug all voting machines in America and go completely wireless.
“You have to go to paper ballots — hand counted — and we will get there,” Lindell said.
Lindell can hardly think about anything else.
“Mike, why aren’t you running for public office?” an older CPAC attendee asked Lindell in-between questions from reporters.
“Because I'm too busy trying to get rid of these electronic voting machines and save the country,” Lindell re[lied. “That's my focus. Nothing else matters.”
Veteran political journalist Ben Jacobs also tried to get Lindell on a different subject at CPAC, to no avail.
“Mike, just a slightly different point,” Jacobs asked. “What do you make of Liz Truss being here?”
“What’s that?”
“Liz Truss, the former prime minister?”
“Who?”
“The former prime minister of the U.K., Liz Truss?”
“What about it?”
“She’s here.”
“I didn’t know,” Lindell replied. “You’re telling me this stuff. I’m focused on machines, guys.”
Lindell also rebuffed questions about MyPillow and its operations.
“Are you changing your behavior and the way you do business using apps and phones and machines?” another reporter asked.
“What now?”
“That's the dumbest question ever heard,” Lindell said. “It's just like this, some things are better done manually, like making my pillows. I make my pillows manually. Every single one of them. You can't have a machine weigh the patented filling and do that right.”
Raw Story stayed on topic.
“Do you trust encrypted apps on your phone? Do you think there’s no way to safeguard…?” Raw Story asked.
“Of course, there's no way to safeguard. Are you kidding?” Lindell said. “Come on, give me a break. Everything –- you cannot use computers in our elections.”
The made-for-TV businessman says the pillows and sheets he peddles are different from elections.
“I have a huge business. If we get hacked, or businesses get hacked … let's say it's a breach, a cyber breach … insurance covers it. It's all about money and life goes on. It's all about money,” Lindell said. “But when elections get hacked, you lose your country. Everything's based on election, not selections. We have to have elections.”
RIFLE, Colo. — In March of last year, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) announced to the nation she would become a 36-year-old grandmother and her 17-year-old son, Tyler Boebert, would become a father.
Both times, it received national attention, like much of what Boebert seeks out with her performative, flame-throwing MAGA politics.
The baby’s mother, however, hasn’t been heard from publicly — until now.
Naomi Rocha acknowledged to Raw Story that she’s raising her son — Boebert’s grandson, Josiah Boebert — in the midst of a political maelstrom.
Rocha said her son is doing well, “definitely starting to grow a lot and getting a lot smarter, which is scary” and that she’s “managing pretty good.”
“My son never leaves my side unless I’m at work or he’s with Tyler,” Rocha said.
That is, except for what Rocha said was “a few times (Lauren Boebert) took him to D.C.”
Seeing her son at the U.S. Capitol, Rocha said, “was shocking because I didn’t know he was going to be on the House floor.”
Asked if she has any political leanings, Rocha said, “Honestly, I truly don’t.”
Rocha is not Boebert’s “daughter-in-law,” as she has never been married to Tyler Boebert and she has split with the baby’s father.
“We are not together,” Rocha said. “We were for a year and a half.”
While no longer a couple, Rocha and Tyler Boebert share parenting time.
“We do 50-50,” she said. “As of right now, no courts are involved.”
Rocha said she and her son live with her parents after they stayed for about a year with Tyler Boebert and his parents.
‘Lauren and Jayson’s drama’
Late last year, Lauren Boebert switched the congressional district in which she’d run during 2024, moving from the western part of Colorado hours away in hopes of representing the eastern part of the state.
Her prime motivation: pursue an even more conservative constituency and salvage her flagging political career, which has endured a series of high-profile controversies and scandals.
Rocha said Boebert’s decision to switch districts has complicated her parenting arrangement.
“It did,” she said. “Her switching districts means more distance. We meet halfway.”
Rocha said her relationship with Lauren Boebert, who herself recently split with husband Jayson Boebert, is “pretty good.”
“There are a few ups and downs. Just mainly Lauren and Jayson’s drama,” Rocha said.
Lauren Boebert's office did not respond to a request for comment.
They divorced in October. Lauren Boebert brought her grandson to the hearing.
At the time, the Vail Daily reported, “The public portion of the dissolution of marriage hearing was over in minutes, but that came after nearly 40 minutes of negotiations behind closed doors when shouting between the Boeberts, and a baby crying, could be heard through the locked door of the courtroom.”
Asked about the impact of the Boebert family drama on her relationship with Tyler, Rocha said that was “a little bit of it.”
In an alleged incident during early January, Jayson Boebert was charged with misdemeanor obstructing a police officer and two petty offenses of disorderly conduct during an argument with Lauren Boebert at a restaurant in Silt, Colo.
On Jan. 9, Tyler Boebert called 911 on his father after an alleged fight and argument after 1 a.m. Jayson was charged with possessing a gun while under the influence of alcohol, misdemeanor harassment, and misdemeanor assault.
The police report is partially redacted, but it alleged that Jayson, under the influence of alcohol during an argument, shoved Tyler to the ground and pushed his thumb into his son’s mouth, inflicting pain by trying to pull a tooth out. The report further alleges that Jayson grabbed a rifle when he saw Tyler calling 911 — then left the house.
Rocha has had to deal with all of this as a teenager. She revealed her age — 17 years old — in response to a question during the interview.
A day after the interview with Rocha, Tyler Boebert left a voicemail asking about Raw Story’s “intentions.” He did not agree to speak on the record, but in a subsequent conversation, he agreed to consider questions sent by email. He did not immediately respond to those questions.
Culture warrior
The youngest grandmother in Congress and only one of a handful of millennial lawmakers, Lauren Boebert has spoken out against sex education in public schools.
“They have comprehensive sex ed,” she said. “They’re teaching kids how to have and enjoy sex and even same-sex sex. How to pleasure themselves. This is not something elementary students should learn, nor any student in a public school. These are things we need to go after and cut their funding.”
Boebert is a culture warrior but said she “fell short of my values” in September after being kicked out of the musical “Beetlejuice” for vaping, recording the performance and singing. Security video showed her groping with her date.
Boebert faces a tough Republican primary campaign in her new district with a crowded field of candidates. The primary is June 25.
As for Rocha, she shoulders a lot of responsibility. In addition to being a mom, “I work. I do GED classes,” she said.
She added that she hopes to work in a medical field.
Asked how she handles the seemingly non-stop drama swirling around the Boebert family,” Rocha acknowledged that “there are some times I do lose my cool.”
But she added: “I try not to read everything in the media and leave the drama to them.”
Aaron Houran, a local water quality technician, was summoned to his son’s high school on the North Carolina coastline in November 2022.
A school resource officer had pulled his 16-year-old son, Noah, aside. The FBI was involved, too.
They were concerned, Aaron Houran recounted to Raw Story, about a video that his son posted online purporting to show him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. Noah Houran talked of attending an unspecified “rally.”
The online content that caught the FBI’s attention appears to have also involved firearms, based on a reference Noah made in a subsequent Instagram post.
An Instagram post by Noah Houran from November 2023 likely alludes to his interview with the FBI a year earlier. Instagram
“There was an agent who came to school, who was talking to him, just to try to figure out, is this a fantasy, or could it become real?” Aaron Houran recalled by phone to Raw Story.
Noah Houran is one among a handful of white male teenagers who emerged as the national leadership cadre of 2119, a violent neo-Nazi youth group that uses encrypted social messaging platform Telegram to promote hate and recruit new members.
As detailed in a Raw Story report, authorities are investigating attacks targeting Jews and a Martin Luther King Jr. monument that were committed in 2119’s name in New Hampshire and North Carolina, respectively. Four members face felony hate crime charges for a vandalism spree that includes attacks on two separate synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge in Florida.
The national leadership promoted 2119’s hate-fueled attacks through propaganda videos highlighting criminal acts while recruiting new members and expanding across the United States. While encouraging 2119’s active campaign of vandalism, national leaders cultivated a paramilitary aesthetic. They shared how-to manuals promoting mass shootings, industrial sabotage and race war. They aspire to violence.
He told Raw Story that his son makes up stories to fit in with other teenagers on the internet. Whether true or not, Noah claimed in a Telegram chat that he has been a national socialist since he was 13 years old.
“A lot of it was for attention,” he added. “These people find you and pull you into their world, and you’re not lonely. Next thing you know, he’s a leader and he’s important.”
As a result of Noah’s online posts, he was kicked out of school, his father said.
In December, Noah made an announcement on Telegram that his father offered as evidence of his willingness to reform. He said that in January he would be “heading out west for a military academy.”
The announcement wasn’t entirely true: The Tar Heel ChalleNGe Academy in Salemburg, N.C., where Houran is currently enrolled in a six-month program, is only 90 miles from his home on the North Carolina coast.
Aaron Houran said his son’s decision to enroll in the academy, which is described as “a preventive rather than remedial at-risk youth program,” was motivated by a genuine desire to leave the white power movement.
The program, which is sponsored by the National Guard, “targets voluntary participants, 16- to 18 years of age, who have dropped out of school or are not satisfactorily progressing, are unemployed or under-employed, drug-free, and crime free.”
As a condition of his enrollment, Aaron Houran said his son is not allowed to have electronic devices.
It appears that the last post Noah Houran made in his Telegram channel was on Jan. 5 — the day before he left for Salemburg — but the channel remained active after his departure.
Seven hours after Aaron Houran spoke to Raw Story, his son’s Telegram channel switched from public to private. Aaron Houran told Raw Story that he found his son’s password and deleted his Telegram account.
In contrast to Noah Houran, 2119 member Aiden Cuevas, who is 18, has given no public indication that he has any intentions of leaving the neo-Nazi group and he did not respond to requests for comment.
But in a voicemail to Raw Story, Kevin Cuevas, Aiden’s father, gave a taciturn response to questions about his son’s extremist involvement.
He initially attempted to cast doubt by pointing out his Puerto Rican heritage.
But when Raw Story responded with a voicemail presenting evidence of Cuevas’ involvement with 2119, the elder Cuevas responded with an air of resignation.
Kevin Cuevas acknowledged that he had asked his son “if he belongs” to 2119, and said Aiden’s response was that “he does not.”
He said his son no longer lives with him since he graduated from high school.
“I have relayed all your messages, and it is up to him now,” Kevin Cuevas said. “I have nothing further to add.”
A friend posted a photo on Telegram that shows Aiden Cuevas riding in the back of a pickup truck. Telegram
Cuevas’ mother is an immigrant from Russia, and his Russian heritage is a point of pride that Aiden often emphasizes in chats with fellow neo-Nazis on Telegram.
Discussing his legal troubles with peers, Cuevas appeared to be especially bitter about the FBI seizing his Russian empire flag and a video game console.
“Took my f—ing Xbox lad,” Cuevas told Houran on Telegram. “They will strip you of everything they can possibly get away with.”
For one 2119 member, family was a prime reason he says he’s quitting the group.
Aaron Alligood cited the risk to his parents and siblings as a reason for leaving 2119,, along with legal peril. Raw Story could not confirm Alligood’s age, but a page on a athletics website indicates that he is now a sophomore in high school.
“It got too hot,” Alligood told Raw Story last month. “I realized that it was leading me to a pathway of destruction. You’ve seen how some of the legal stuff shapes up to this. I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
It’s clear that Alligood’s parents disapproved of his extremist activity.
A year ago, in January 2023, he reported to his neo-Nazi associates on Telegram that his parents forced him to burn some white supremacist stickers that he received in the mail. Alligood said he lied to his parents by telling them that he was “tricked” into ordering the stickers, and that in fact he loved Black people.
He said he had wanted to earnestly explain his racist beliefs to his parents, but feared they would disown him.
“Try living with a father that is cuckservative,” Alligood complained last year. The insult he threw at his father — who coached African-American football players for Berrien High School until his retirement in May 2023 — denotes a weak-willed conservative who treats minorities, women and liberals as equals.
Alligood’s parents could not be reached for comment for this story.
Agonizing realization for parents
Teenage 2119 members have quickly radicalized online to commit in-real-life criminal acts targeting minority groups, said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
“Anytime we see the move from online to on-the-ground, it’s concerning,” Kaufman said, adding that the rhetoric they’re using is different from that of a white supremacist groups such as Patriot Front, which might use “some innocuous propaganda with a QR code.
“This is a different strategy of ‘look how far we’re willing to go with the extreme rhetoric,’” she said.
White supremacy and other toxic content is so ubiquitous on the Internet that it’s almost impossible to avoid, said Dana Coester, a professor at Reed College of Media at West Virginia University who is researching youth online radicalization.
Parents often ask her how they will know that their child is being exposed to white supremacy or other dangerous ideologies, and Coester tells them that if the children are online they’re encountering it through memes, game chats and other content.
“My heart goes out to parents,” Coester said. “This is a completely different landscape than the one they grew up under.”
She added that parents need to come with a large dose of humility when they grapple with the online content their children are consuming.
“There are two kinds of parents I interact with,” she said. “The parents in the room with hollow eyes that are saying, ‘Omigod, yes. I’m terrified. I’m dismayed.’ The other kind of parent will be, ‘Not my kid. No, my kid would never do something like this.’ I always feel more concerned about the parents who are so sure rather than the parents who are agonized.”
Raising children to hate
Then there are is a completely different subset of parents — those who are raising their children to hate.
Mathew David Bair is a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania.
Bair is also a father who joined 2119 relatively late in the group’s development, and he’s one of the few members older than 18.
At the end of last year, Bair posted a photo of his 4-year-old son posing in front of a swastika and the numbers “2-1-1-9,” written in graffiti.
A Telegram post by Mathew Bair shows his 4-year-old son posing next to graffiti swastika. Telegram
Asked by Raw Story about the dynamic of a thirtysomething adult organizing with teenagers, Bair volunteered that he wouldn’t be opposed to his eldest daughter, who is 14, dating one of the young 2119 members.
“If she would bring home one of you, what is it that I would want as a father?” Bair told Raw Story. “I think this dude saying ‘n—’ online is a lot more of a man than this person pushing sex surgeries. It’s a weird line to draw.”
In the same way that people normalize transgenderism through drag queen story hours, Bair said he wants to see the swastika normalized to “strike fear into people’s hearts.”
Aaron Houran lamented that there are older extremists cultivating children on the Internet. It’s not just Bair, but also older members of neo-Nazi active clubs and racist skinhead crews who have mentored 2119 members.
He might have added that it’s also 16- and 17-year-olds who have been marinating in extreme Internet culture since they were adolescents, and now have the clout and seniority to influence younger children.
“It’s a crazy world with so much going on,” Houran said. “It’s easy to fall into these traps. It’s sad that there are people trying to take advantage of these kids and change them into the same hateful pieces of s--- that they are.”
* * *
About this investigation:This is the second in a two-part Raw Story series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The first part revealed 2119’s violent aspirations and the group’s inner workings. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
The political action committee for Fox Corporation, the parent company of conservative-boosting Fox News, gave $25,000 to Democratic candidates and causes in January alone, according to a Raw Story review of federal campaign records.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee received $15,000 from FOX PAC, and the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund received $5,000.
The campaign for Tom Suozzi (D-NY) — who last week won back his House seat vacated by embattled former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) — received $2,500 from the PAC. So did the campaign of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who’s running for re-election in one of the most contested Senate races in the nation.
A $1,000 check for the campaign of Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) was voided.
The $25,000 to Democratic causes is equal to the amount given to Republicans.
On the Republican side, the campaign of Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) received $1,000 and Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) got $1,500 for his campaign. The fundraising committee for California Assemblyman Vince Fong (R-CA), who is running for the seat vacated by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, received $2,500.
The Johnson Leadership Fund received $20,000 in combined funding to support House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
FOX PAC has often played both sides of the aisle with its money. But some Democratic candidates have declined FOX PAC donations of late, with the campaign committees of Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Peter Welch (D-VT), former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) sending back $12,500 collectively in 2022, Business Insider reported.
In April, Fox News settled a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems that alleged the network promoted former President Donald Trump's baseless claim that its voting machines were used to rig the 2020 presidential election that he lost to President Joe Biden, Raw Story reported. Fox agreed to a $787.5 million settlement.
Representatives for Fox News Media and the Fox Corporation PAC did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, New Democrat Coalition Action Fund, Montanans For Tester, Suozzi for Congress and Scanlon for Congress also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Two rabbis sat down for dinner at Chabad Jewish Center in Pensacola, Fla.
The air on this July evening was warm and tranquil. A sense of peace filled the kitchen where the men shared their meal.
Suddenly, something crashed through the window, sending glass flying. The rabbis rushed over to investigate. Scrawled on the brick that lay on their floor: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
Within days, local police arrested four white teenagers and collectively charged them with 18 felonies — not only in connection to the brick-throwing incident, but also for bigoted attacks on two area synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge.
The group’s reputed ringleader, 17-year-old Waylon Fowler, initially denied responsibility. But he later admitted to an Escambia County sheriff’s deputy that he threw the brick. Fowler is also accused of throwing another brick — marked with swastikas, “SS” symbols and the words “Death to k----” — through the bathroom window at Temple Beth El.
That could have been the end of Fowler’s hate-filled story — the saga of a misguided boy and his friends who, when caught red-handed, vowed to right their ways.
Instead, the boys began taking an ever-darker path that, in their vision for America, includes a revolution leading to the collapse of the United States and a race war that drives Black people, Jews and LGBTQ+ people out of future whites-only homelands.
It’s a vision that has attracted young neo-Nazis across the country.
Raw Story spent four months investigating the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, a nationwide network of teenage Nazis. The investigation revealed that Fowler now ranks among the leaders of the network.
In recent months, 2119 members have waged a campaign of targeted terror aimed at Jews, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and leftists. Their targets include Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and California. In mid-November, 2119’s official Telegram channel suggested the group had expanded to 21 states.
The 2119 gang’s rise as a clandestine network of teenagers who promote and carry out acts of antisemitic and racist violence hasn’t been organic. The group has undertaken a concerted marketing strategy of recruiting children by appealing to their interests, such as online gaming and skateboarding.
Nazi youth associated with 2119 are now under investigation by the FBI, Raw Story has confirmed. The FBI is also actively assisting local police departments as law enforcement pursues crimes committed in the group’s name.
But this legal danger has only emboldened the Nazi teens. They’ve indicated even bigger plans for sowing hate and fear across the country. And they’re recruiting more and more disaffected children to their cause.
The group’s activity comes at a moment when social tension throughout America builds by the day.
Local crime spree, national emergence
Fowler’s neo-Nazi youth group first emerged in 2022 as an under-18 boys auxiliary to the burgeoning “active club” movement — a loose collection of white supremacists united by their interest in fight training, mixed martial arts and white nationalist activism.
After renaming itself Revolutionary White Brotherhood — some bricks that shattered Pensacola windows featured the initials “R.W.B” — the group resurfaced after the arrests of Fowler and his associates as “2119.”
The number is an alphanumeric code. Two represents “B” for “blood,” 1 represents “A” for “and,” and 19 represents “S” for “soil. “Blood and soil” is a slogan dating back to Nazi Germany that invokes a racial claim on land.
Using a newly formed channel on encrypted social media app Telegram, 2119 members gleefully celebrated Fowler’s deeds by circulating an image of the brick used in the Chabad Jewish Center attack. They fashioned Fowler a martyr, circulating a stylized image of him with boyish looks and tousled hair and peppered their communications with the hashtag #FreeWaylon.
The brick quickly became a symbol of action central to the group’s identity. Members in the various Telegram chats associated with 2119 often used the verb “bricking” and referred to themselves as “brickstas.”
A national leadership cadre that had been coalescing since 2022 had now shifted into high gear. Members shared unsettling characteristics: all white boys or young men in their mid- to late-teens who embraced extreme violence against Black people and members of other marginalized groups. They delighted in a catchphrase that encapsulates an extreme aspect of a segment of the hyperviolent, racist internet culture: — “total n— death.”
Other teenage neo-Nazis that gravitated to the 2119 banner steeped themselves in virulent hate and a paramilitary aesthetic that draws as much from the Irish Republican Army and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as the Third Reich.
A still from an October 2023 propaganda video displays 2119's paramilitary aesthetic. Source: Telegram
The exact size of 2119’s membership is unknown. But a source knowledgeable with the group’s internal dynamics said it numbers in the hundreds. While that figure could not be independently verified, Raw Story has confirmed at least 20 self-identified 2119 members that participate in group activities. They live throughout the country, from California to Texas to New Hampshire.
The white power ethos embraced by members of 2119 draws from a loose collective of extreme Telegram accounts known as Terrorgram. Together, they promote acts of domestic terror and destruction that range from mass murder to attacks on the power grid.
A steady diet of gore videos and images — a photo of nude, Black female body missing her head stands out for its depravity — and instruction manuals for industrial sabotage swirl amid unyielding racist discourse.
But while spectacular and devastating, those modes of violence — by the 2119 members’ own admission — rarely allow the perpetrators to stay on the offensive and effectively network with one another.
The 2119 teenage neo-Nazis have instead embraced what’s for them a more scalable and sustainable — although no less disquieting — model of racist criminal violence.
Considered in isolation, the attacks across several states might be classified as acts of youthful vandalism and criminal mischief. Juvenile perpetrators who police catch might expect lenient punishments — ones that could be expunged as they reached adulthood.
But by 2119’s acknowledgement, these acts are deliberately designed to terrorize Jews and Black people. They offer 2119 members high propaganda value with relatively low risk to themselves.
These attacks also provide 2119 a model for a continuous, insidious feedback loop of documenting crimes, incorporating footage into propaganda videos and recruiting new members. Newly minted 2119 adherents, largely from rural and suburban communities, franchise the brand by committing new crimes in the group’s name. The process repeats and metastasizes.
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
Internal communications reviewed by Raw Story indicate that group members believe their status as children gives them a critical advantage — the impunity to commit acts of targeted terror against innocent people, while laying the groundwork for a future that they hope will allow them to commit murder on a grand scale.
When asked why he wasn’t already killing Black people, one former 2119 member responded, “When the system collapses, that’s the plan.”
Rapid radicalization
The 2119 leaders’ ambitions are chilling and plain in their voluminous online posts.
Their actions preceding prior run-ins with law enforcement speak even more loudly.
Aiden Cuevas, one of 2119’s most enthusiastic promoters, was charged as a juvenile in Alabama with terroristic threatening. He exhorted his peers to assault Black people “to save the white race.”
Aaron Alligood, a longtime member from Georgia, said that he wants “total collapse to happen” and has spoken of this desire to “stick a pistol” in a Black person’s nose, using a racial slur instead of “Black.”
Noah Houran, a 17-year-old from North Carolina described as “a 2119 OG,” distributed the IRA’s guerilla warfare handbook and a sniper training manual on his Telegram channel and expressed approval in response to a news story about a house that was booby-trapped with explosives in anticipation of a police raid.
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year–old Marine Corps veteran who joined 2119 last year, has unapologetically advocated for assassinating judges.
Members of 2119 likewise glorify mass shooters as “saints,” said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
Kaufman noted that 2119 members also display the influences of the most extreme violent faction of the white power movement — what experts call “accelerationism” — “geared towards recruiting youth.”
Accelerationism is a tendency within the white power movement that seeks to hasten the collapse of American society for the purpose of creating conditions favorable to the rise of white ethno-states. Accelerationists reject political methods for achieving the movement’s objectives.
One 2119 member — Alligood — directly endorsed accelerationism on Telegram in December 2022: “I want total collapse to happen.”
Racist and antisemitic intimidation
When the authorities released Fowler on bond around Sept. 1, Georgia-based Aaron Alligood hailed his freedom as a signal that 2119 was on solid ground.
“Good news, Waylon is out on bail,” Alligood wrote in a Telegram chat with an extensive audience of racist skinheads from as far away as Southern California and the Balkans. “And the feds don’t got a case on him.”
Fowler, the reputed 2119 ringleader, awaits trial later this year in Pensacola, having pleaded not guilty to all charges. His freedom appears emboldening.
Since September, 2119 members have allegedly committed at least three additional hate crimes, twicetagging buildings in Laconia, N.H. with antisemitic graffiti and defacing a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C.
Raw Story has independently confirmed vandalism incidents in at least four different states during the past 12 months that incorporated 2119’s various monikers.
The group makes scant effort to conceal its criminal intent. An “action report” it published online baldly states: “Members/associates of the crew are known to have a militant/violent reputation, and embrace confrontation with political/racial enemies.”
Impatience with standard-issue MAGA activism
When voters elected Donald Trump president in 2016, most of 2119’s members were elementary schoolers.
But they came of age during a time when Trump, as a candidate and president, demonized Muslims, attacked transgender Americans and generally shattered democratic norms.
They watched many Republicans cheer the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and jeer subsequent congressional inquiries and criminal trials. And they have seen multitudes of conservatives, from community agitators to federal lawmakers, fully commit to culture-war attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Black history and even library books.
Raised on internet violence, racism and homophobia, the children who gravitated to 2119 helped build their own, unique communion of hate. They could be as extreme and unmoored as they pleased. They operated free from adult-led, optics-conscious white power groups such as Patriot Front or extreme MAGA movements organized around the cult of Trump.
Patriot Front, for one, “failed to make any change in a matter of 6 years,” Alligood complained on Telegram in December. He dismissed Patriot Front’s activism as indistinguishable from MAGA, adding that he encountered the group’s members at a Trump rally — and he was not impressed.
Now, in 2024, Trump is once again all but guaranteed to become the Republican presidential nominee.
But for 2119 members, it’s not enough to be MAGA. It’s not enough to just support Trump.
The 2119 children aspire to something beyond Trump.
For them, it’s about “activism” that spreads fear, if not outright violence.
National 2119 leadership on FBI's radar
Two 2119 devotees in particular have made direct action their calling card of intimidation.
Eight days before his 16th birthday, in November 2022, the FBI summoned Noah Houran at his high school on the North Carolina coastline.
The agents asked Noah about a video he posted that he claimed showed him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. They quizzed him about an online statement he made about plans to attend an unspecified rally.
The agents wanted to know if Noah’s online statements were merely his fantasies, or if he really intended to carry out an act of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ+ violence was cresting at the time. Hysterical rhetoric among conservative politicians and right-wing media personalities braided into a mounting harassment campaign aimed at drag shows. The protests drew far-right groups, sometimes armed, ranging from the Proud Boys to avowed neo-Nazis.
The hostile political climate spilled over into fatal violence on Nov. 19, 2022, when a shooter gunned down five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. As an indicator of the legitimate concern about mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ+ community, the Club Q shooting took place only three days after the date Noah Houran reported to Aaron Alligood that he had been questioned by the FBI.
Noah Houran was a hiking enthusiast whose interest in nature extended to eco-terrorism. A Telegram channel Houran created in October 2023 served as a distribution hub for texts written by Ted Kaczynski, who died in prison last year while serving time for the murders of three people during a 17-year bombing campaign carried out from a cabin in rural Montana.
One of Houran’s posts displayed a photo of a shed built from salvaged materials that was captioned, “Here’s my Ted K cabin, built it about 2 years ago.”
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Less than two months after Houran was questioned by the FBI, Aiden Cuevas announced on Telegram chat that he was in legal trouble, while reassuring his peers that “just in case they get my phone I took off everything affiliating with 2119.”
“I’m on probation for some bulls— charge of terroristic threat (by the FBI of course),” he said.
Cuevas, who in November said he was 18 years old, told his friends he would be serving a sentence at the Mt. Meig’s campus, an Alabama juvenile correctional facility outside of Montgomery.
Raw Story was unable to find any record of Cuevas’ case. It is likely sealed, as he would have been a juvenile at the time of the offense. But in January 2019, WBRC-TV 6 in Birmingham, Ala., reported that a juvenile in Madison County was charged with making a terrorist threat to Thompson High School in Alabaster, Ala..
Cuevas lived in Madison County, which surrounds Huntsville, more than 100 miles to the north.
An Instagram post, made in November 2023, appears to show Noah Houran dressed in camouflage and aiming a rifle. The firearm, with the exception of the scope, is blurred out. Responding to a commenter who said he was “afraid to show his gun,” Noah wrote that he would “rather not repeat 2022” — an allusion to his run-in with the FBI agents.
Raw Story confirmed Cuevas’ identity as a 2119 member who posted on Telegram under the screen name “Bozak” by matching biographical details such as his mother’s birthplace in the Chuvash Republic in Russia, and his father’s U.S. Army assignment in Japan.
'The fascist pipeline'
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania, meanwhile, came out of the extreme end of the MAGA movement, having been active with the Proud Boys when they stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. He appears to be one of the few members of 2119 older than 18 years old.
After Jan. 6, 2021, Bair increasingly gravitated to an array of far-right groups that embraced national socialism more explicitly than the Proud Boys.
“The fascist pipeline is very real, as you well know,” Bair said. “I was in a direct pipeline chapter.”
A well-publicized fistfight between Proud Boys and neo-Nazis in June 2023 appeared to hasten his transition. By November, he began heavily promoting 2119 on his Telegram channel.
In a phone call with Raw Story, Bair confirmed he is now a 2119 member.
The difference between the Proud Boys and younger groups such as 2119, Bair said, is that the Proud Boys tend to attract older men who join to fulfill a need for friendship. The younger members of 2119 are more ideologically committed and less concerned about concealing their racist beliefs, he said.
He said he admired the 2119 members for their brashness.
“When these young ones, when they’re talking to their peer groups — to take the step and proclaim your viewpoint, even talking surface level, they might not mention Hitler, but they’ll say, “Have you read Mein Kampf?”
Bair described Trump’s supporters as a natural constituency for Nazism, while condescendingly treating them as if they are clinging to outdated political norms.
“Regardless of your opinion on Trump,” he wrote on Telegram, “his MAGA following incorporates a large number of people who would be our guys if they could break the matrix.”
‘An untapped market full of white children'
In recent months, recruiting children to 2119’s hate-filled cause has become a top group priority.
For example, in August, Cuevas praised a Telegram channel called Robloxwaffen Division — a coupling of “Roblox,” a popular online game geared for youth, and “Waffen,” the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, or SS.
Cuevas hailed the teenagers behind Robloxwaffen as “geniuses.”
“They are reaching an untapped market full of white children that could potentially change their worldview and get them into the movement just from some fun on Roblox,” he said.
In January, the creator of Robloxwaffen — a teenager known only by his Telegram nickname “Patrius” — posted a Roblox-generated scene that simulated the 1999 Columbine massacre with two avatars holding assault rifles while striking a pose between rows of bookshelves. While his age is unknown, “Patrius” has said he isn’t old enough to drive.
That hasn’t stopped the violent ideations of “Patrius” from becoming even more acute. Earlier this month he threatened to “bomb” a gathering at a skating rink to raise awareness for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day — adding the obligatory disclaimer, “in Roblox.”
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
Cuevas, for his part, counseled fellow neo-Nazi teenagers to immerse themselves in subcultures, such as skateboarding, where they can easily make friends.
“I myself choose to target younger whites, still in high school that are lonely and all they want is a tight group of friends to have fun with,” Cuevas wrote.
Cuevas reported that he met a girl who was skateboarding alone after his local skate park had closed, and “she thought the swastikas were cool and had never seen ‘Nazis’ before.”
He boasted that in the past three weeks he had met “4 young white men that have seen my flag and hung out with my friends while we [will] be casually racist and throw up Romans,” referring to Nazi salutes.
‘Death squad'
Since its inception in May 2022, under the moniker “American Columbian Movement,” the 2119 group has made propaganda videos a key recruiting tool — one they consider essential to their growth and the advancement of their long-term goals.
One shows 2119 members marching to an anti-abortion rally.
“Nat soc death squad,” the teenagers chant in a robotic drone, a reference to the “national socialism” of the Nazis. The children occasionally giggle during the bizarre video.
As recently as December 2023, Cuevas and two other young men dressed in skull masks and protested outside a drag show in Albertville, Ala. The event organizer reviewed Cuevas’ Telegrams posts boasting of his involvement in the protest, and confirmed that she saw the men there.
Another early outing for the members of what would become 2119 took place in 2022, when they attempted to disrupt a May Day cookout in Pensacola. The event was co-hosted at a local park by two far-left organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Democratic Socialists of America.
“We were cleaning up,” Sarah Brummet, a Party for Socialism and Liberation organizer, recalled in an interview with Raw Story. “Some kids came tearing through the park. They were yelling something. We couldn’t really hear it.”
They only learned later from a video that the boys were yelling, “F— you, you f—ing socialist slimy little s—.” After the socialists left the park, the teenage Nazis left flyers reading, “Commies stay off our street.”
“It was like they were afraid to confront us, and they were making agitation for the Internet,” Brummet told Raw Story.
When the official 2119 Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel launched in September 2022, the group began churning out content that positioned it as a digital-era Ku Klux Klan teen auxiliary.
An eight-second video clip posted on the channel in November 2022 included the caption: “Pensacola lads out on patrol searching for Antifas! We protect our community!”
In another evocation of the Klan, a 2119-connected X account published a video showing a flier affixed to a front porch support post reading, “Attention! You have been visited by the 2119 Crew. We are pro-white, pro-Christian national socialists; anti-communist, anti-woke, anti-Zionist.”
Aaron Alligood of Georgia has indicated in online chats that he’s been involved with 2119 since at least October 2022. He also immersed himself in the Terrorgram community, as 2119’s on-the-ground activities became more aggressive.
Alligood became close with both co-administrators of the “P.A.W.G. Ops” channel, an acronym for Primal Aryan Warlord Gang.
A cross-country runner whose father was the head football coach at Berrien High School in Georgia until last year, Alligood became particularly close with Skyler Philippi, one of the channel’s co-administrators.
Philippi called Alligood a “little brother.” Raw Story was unable to determine Alligood’s age, but a runner profile indicates that he is currently a sophomore in high school.
“Like I said, keep your spirits high and play s— smart,” Philippi counseled Alligood. “We will prevail. Be the little man to a big man Hitler would be proud of. Go start reading Mein Kampf tonight.”
Like other Terrorgram channels, the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang celebrated racially-motivated mass murder, valorizing the shooters as “saints,” and promoted attacks on the energy grid. When anti-fascist researchers attributed a fatal shooting in Slovakia to a member of the Terrorgram community, participants in the chat congratulated themselves.
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Terrorgram has been publicly credited for spawning one mass shooter, and here was one of the administrators of a channel where Alligood was a frequent commenter claiming victory.
Alligood’s involvement with the channel came to an abrupt end in January 2023, when one of the channel’s co-administrators was arrested at his home in Rustburg, Va. for conspiring with two other white supremacists to commit a bank robbery.
Shortly after the arrest, the FBI seized Aaron Alligood’s cell phone and laptop, he recounted on a Telegram chat with fellow white supremacists several months later. Although there is no public record of the seizure, Alligood confirmed the incident in a recent interview with Raw Story.
Meanwhile, the 2119 members’ online extremism was also manifesting in aggressive behavior on the ground.
In March 2023, a handful of 2119 members showed up to counter-protest a celebration of International Women’s Day hosted by the PSL in Pensacola. There’s no indication that Alligood, who lived in Georgia, was there.
Brummet described the incident as “a marked escalation.”
“They came up and they started standing close over our members and they were yelling racial slurs,” Brummet recalled. “We were speaking to a lot of things we identify as major social problems and the role of the existing capitalist system in that. They were yelling, ‘F the Jews.’”
2119 members disrupt an International Women's Day celebration in Pensacola, Fla. in March 2023.
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‘Sounds like you fear the brick'
Following the arrests of Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants in Pensacola, Fla. for their antisemitic hate spree in late July, a gusher of local news coverage followed.
The brick inscribed with a swastika instantly became the group’s singular totem of power — an implied threat.
It also became a liability.
Alligood turned to a white power activist named David William Fair, who runs a separate white power group that is friendly with 2119, for advice. He confided that his girlfriend was concerned about his involvement in extremist activity.
Fair advised caution.
“I don’t want you in jail just as much as she don’t,” Fair said on Telegram. “Brick through the finance building is fun and all. But not worth your youth.”
Cuevas interrupted the heart-to-heart conversation between Fair and Alligood by posting a cutout of the brick used to vandalize the Chabad Jewish Center from the photo published in the Pensacola News Journal.
“Sounds like you fear the brick,” he quipped.
“I’m angry at the brick bc it got good boys put behind bars,” Fair replied.
“It rooted out the weak,” Cuevas shot back. “The others are out and will get thru it ez.”
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
Cuevas was likely referring to the Ferry brothers, Kessler and Nicholas. Kessler Ferry, Fowler’s 18-year-old co-defendant, admitted to a Pensacola police detective that he drove Fowler to Chabad Jewish Center.
Randall Etheridge, who is representing both Ferry brothers, told Raw Story his clients are fully cooperating with law enforcement, and that they were “ordered” to drive the Fowler brothers to the crime scenes.
Fowler and his younger brother have pleaded not guilty to all charges. His grandparents, with whom the boys live, referred Raw Story’s questions to their attorney, who declined to comment.
When another member chat asked about 2119, David Fair felt compelled to vouch for the members while also attempting to shield them from the consequences of the alleged crimes in Pensacola.
In an audio recording obtained by Raw Story, Fair identified “Bozak,” who is Cuevas, and “AllenWrench,” who is Alligood, along with “Constantine,” who remains unidentified, as “guys inside” 2119.
Fair opined that 2119’s critics were “insecure,” adding a homophobic slur. They might be “hooligans” who spray-painted swastikas, he said. But so what?
In the recording, Fair acknowledged the alleged crimes in Pensacola, but attempted to insulate the national 2119 leadership from them.
“You know, that was from a local crew of boys that did something objectively stupid, and it shouldn’t have happened,” Fair said. “But that’s not really something on the crew.”
David Fair, the leader of Southern Sons Active Club, discusses 2119 on a Telegram chat for racist skinheads in late 2023.
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Multiple comments on Telegram show that “Constantine,” Alligood and Noah Houran were involved in assessing prospective members to determine if they were suitable material for 2119.
Chatting online with other extremists in early December, Alligood claimed to be on “house arrest.”
Reached by Raw Story for this story, Alligood initially claimed he quit 2119 after he was partially doxed by anonymous antifascist researchers. The researchers were able to identify Alligood because his mother posted a photo of him on her Facebook page posing with a deer he had killed, and Alligood posted the exact same photo on the official Blood and Soil Crew channel.
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
But when Raw Story offered Alligood evidence that he had continued to promote 2119 online and helped members network, he walked back his statement by claiming instead that he never did any “IRL,” or in-real-life, activities after he was doxed.
Alligood admitted to Raw Story that “house arrest” didn’t mean he was legally confined to his house, but rather, it was a way of saying that he had been grounded by his parents.
Commenting on Telegram in early December, Alligood said he was “looking forward to f---ing leaving this house so I can actually meet you n------.
“Oh yeah, it’s gonna be on,” he added. “Thinking about doing a country tour with 2119.”
When contacted by Raw Story in late January for this story, Alligood said he had decided to leave 2119 a couple days earlier.
At one point, Alligood said he would be willing to check in with Raw Story once a month to provide assurances that he continues to avoid any associations with other neo-Nazis.
“I promise you I’ll walk away,” he said. “I’m done with that.”
Antisemitic hate arrives in New Hampshire
The antisemitic vandalism spree in Pensacola had provided 2119 with a degree of notoriety, at least in Florida.
But 2119 members faced a question: How could they extend their brand across the country?
On the weekend of Rosh Hashanah 2023, six weeks after Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants were arrested in Florida, a man ambling down a central New Hampshire walking path discovered antisemitic graffiti on the abandoned Laconia State School building.
The graffiti included the “2-1-1-9” tag, a swastika and a crossed-out Jewish star.
It also said the word “f—,” followed by the name of a specific Jewish person in Laconia whose identity Raw Story has agreed to withhold. Following the person’s name: an antisemitic slur and the words “go to hell.”
Local news reports noted that a year earlier, graffiti depicting Nazi symbols and antisemitic messages had been found at the Laconia Public Library and a local park. A couple months later, police found antisemitic graffiti at the state school property.
The group has had a presence in New England since at least October 2022, when the original 2119 channel displayed a banner described as “a new flag for our folk in New England!”
City Manager Kirk Beattie told the Laconia Daily Sun that the recent graffiti in September 2023 marked an escalation by “calling out a member of the Laconia Jewish community.”
The official 2119 Telegram channel posted a video two weeks later that interspersed images of the graffiti at the Laconia State School and the earlier incident at the public library with images of members stepping on a Black Lives Matter flag and carrying an ammunition box. The video ended with the URL for the Telegram channel and the invitation to “join today.”
Law enforcement struggles
Laconia police have taken note that the graffiti at the state school included 2119’s Telegram address spray-painted onto a nearby water tower. That Telegram channel then displayed a video publicizing the crime.
Detective Eric Benoit, who was assigned to the case, reported that he could not determine who submitted the footage to 2119’s Telegram channel.
Telegram is designed in a way that makes it difficult for law enforcement to investigate user communications. For that reason, Benoit said, Laconia police aren’t putting legal pressure on Telegram to release the information.
Benoit reported that the investigation had so far uncovered no suspects, and he requested that efforts “be suspended pending new information or suspect leads.”
The following month, in October 2023, vandals spray-painted the “2-1-1-9” tag on a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C. Two days after the vandalism was discovered, the official 2119 Telegram channel posted a link to a local news story, accompanied by the comment, “Hitting the news once again.”
Sgt. Gary Mearite, supervisor of the Concord Police Department’s criminal investigation division, told Raw Story that investigators have struggled to develop leads.
Currently, Mearite said, the Concord police are reviewing Telegram channels that have reposted images of the vandalism “and see if we can work our way back.”
“We’re still investigating,” he said. “It takes a long time.”
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), whose district includes Concord, N.C., expressed fury and frustration at the situation. She condemned the vandalism as an act that “shows an appalling absence of basic decency or empathy.”
“I don’t know if it’s social media raising the mirror closer to our faces, the lingering isolation from the pandemic, or something more sinister, but the rise in hatred in this country is apparent,” the congresswoman told Raw Story. “Hate is contagious. Those who catch the illness can only expel it onto others. They seek nothing more than to divide us and then spread their darkness in the void. They want us to hate each other like they hate us. We cannot give in, no matter how we’re provoked.”
In November, 2119 struck again in New England, spray-painting a swastika and the “2-1-1-9” tag on the Belknap County Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Laconia. The perpetrator glued fliers to the windows. One featured a swastika with the slogan, “Save the planet and your race,” while the other featured a quote by American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.
On the same day as the attack on the Democratic Party headquarters, someone placed a bogus order to deliver pizzas to the home of the Jewish community member who was named in the earlier graffiti incident at the state school building.
Elected officials in New Hampshire have also condemned 2119’s attacks.
“The people who did this are domestic terrorists,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer toldTheLaconia Daily Sun. “They want to strike fear in you — not just our Jewish brothers and sisters, but anyone that disagrees with them.”
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) posted on X: “This antisemitic vandalism is part of a surge in hateful attacks on the Jewish community across the country. There is simply no place for bigotry and hate in our society, and we must speak with one voice to condemn it.”
Shortly after the antisemitic harassment in Laconia, 2119 announced that Telegram had deleted its channel.
This hardly deterred them. They simply created a new Telegram channel, and more notably, the 2119 members turned to the broader neo-Nazi community for help promoting the group’s it so they could continue their propaganda push.
“I think the feds ordered our account deleted, with the recent incident in Laconia,” Alligood wrote. “Shout-outs of the channel would be appreciated.”
One member of the chat, unfamiliar with the incident, asked what happened in Laconia.
“Constantine,” the 2119 leader, replied: “2119 Member may or may not allegedly spray-painted the Democrat HQ and left a s— ton of fliers.”
He quickly added: “2119 takes no responsibility for the action taken.”
Feds catching up with 2119?
Tucked into the crevices of their bluster, profanity and grotesque racism, some of the 2119 members have quietly been expressing concern that law enforcement might be catching up to them.
“I’m surprised the feds haven’t been on 2119s ass since the whole Pensacola fiasco,” Alligood remarked to Houran on Telegram in mid-September.
“I’m sure they are,” Houran replied. “We just don’t know it yet.”
Detective Joseph Taschetta told Raw Story that the FBI has assisted the Pensacola Police Department in its investigation of the antisemitic vandalism spree. Likewise, Sgt. Mearite at the Concord Police Department said one of his vice officers contacted an FBI task force officer to obtain information about the 2119 group. And multiple outlets have reported that the FBI is assisting the investigation by the Laconia Police Department.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny that the agency is investigating 2119.
“We would also point out that the FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” a spokesperson for the FBI National Press Office told Raw Story. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Bair, for one, is well acquainted with law enforcement.
In 2018, he unsuccessfully sued the city of York, Pa., and its police department for civil rights violations because an officer allegedly assaulted him during an arrest for disorderly conduct.
During his deposition, Bair told the opposing counsel that he had received multiple concussions while playing soccer in high school and while on combat deployment with the Marine Corps in the Middle East — all of which went untreated. He said he was court-martialed out of the Marine Corps for larceny and sale of classified materials during a deployment to Djibouti, and served one year in the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Va.
Following his military service, Bair said he checked himself into a sober living house in Colorado, and has been in and out of prison for domestic violence and burglary.
Bair, who specialized in demolition in the Marine Corps, told Raw Story that he likes Terrorgram for the “aesthetics.”
“It’s like what the Proud Boys did,” he said. “Nobody promotes the acts themselves, but here’s the information. Read it your goddamn self.”
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram
Asked about a video he posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel, Bair suggested that the “judge” referenced on the flier was a kind of handgun — a Taurus Judge.
He responded with equanimity when asked whether he thought someone might interpret the sign as an endorsement for shooting a judge in a court of law.
“That’s all right,” Bair said.
Bair then volunteered that he lives close to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home in New Jersey during 2020 and fatally shot her son.
A future for 2119?
In response to Raw Story’s reporting, some 2119 members have gone dark on Telegram.
Others, such as Bair, remain defiant. The recent exposure, which also includes a new reference page by the Anti-Defamation League, might cause 2119 to rebrand once again, or potentially splinter.
Bair told Raw Story he expects 2119 will be leading large Nazi marches ahead of the 2024 election.
That seems unlikely given the group’s philosophy of spreading hate while avoiding public scrutiny. And if evidence were needed that his words should be treated with skepticism, Bair mentioned his interview with Raw Story on his Telegram channel, writing, “There’s a lesson about misinformation and misdirection here.”
But now that 2119 is a known entity, history suggests the individual members could put on new costumes to evade scrutiny from law enforcement, antifascist researchers, the media and communities at large.
So don’t look for the young white boys and men steeped in terror doctrines to march under a banner reading “2-1-1-9.” Next time 2119 members show up on the streets of American cities and towns, it’s plausible they’ll have migrated to completely new neo-Nazi groups. And regardless of what mantle they claim, they’ll likely downplay their group identity while merging with other fledgling groups in a bid to project maximum force.
The 2119 members, however, appear unyielding as they continue to propagate hate, lionize those who attack the power grid and laud racially-motivated mass shooters.
* * *
About this investigation: This is the first in a two-part series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The second part, published here, examines how parents navigate the challenges posed by online youth radicalization. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
This project draws upon numerous interviews, primary sources and accounts of 2119’s members and activities, along with information uncovered by Appalachia Research Club, an anonymous antifascist research collective.
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest PAC reported to the Federal Election Commission four “fraudulent transaction(s) under dispute with bank,” totaling $14,156.25 over the course of December.
Planned Parenthood’s national organization and Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest did not respond to Raw Story’s requests for comment.
The FEC sent the super PAC a letter on Feb. 11 requesting “information essential to full public disclosure of your federal election campaign finances.” The letter also noted that financial activity on the PAC’s annual report was incorrectly reported.
“Although the Commission may take further legal action regarding this apparent improper use of Committee funds, any further clarifying information that you can provide will be taken into consideration,” the letter said.
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest provides “confidential, comprehensive, high-quality medical services” at 20 health centers servicing San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties in California, according to its website.
Among those services: abortions, birth control, cancer screening, gender affirming care and HIV prevention.
Political committee theft epidemic
This is hardly the first time thieves ripped off a political fundraising committee.
Over the past year, Raw Story reported that scammers stole millions of donor dollars combined from dozens of political campaign committees — which have experienced varying levels of success in recouping the stolen funds.
A thief nabbed a $3,000 check sent by a political committee led by former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The July 2023 check intended for a photographer was “stolen during the USPS mail process and fraudulently cashed,” Raw Story reported.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s political action committee reported theft of nearly $4,700 due to fraudulent checks in December, and the Oregon Republican Party was the victim of a fake check scam last summer.
In May, Raw Story reported that the Managed Funds Association PAC was targeted more than 20 times between Jan. 1 and March 31, initially losing $147,000 in fraudulent check payments, although it appeared to have since recouped the money, according to filings with the FEC.
The Retired Americans PAC, a super PAC that supports Democrats, recouped more than $150,000 it lost in late 2022 after paying fraudulent bills sent to the committee, according to an April 21 letter to the Federal Election Commission, Raw Story reported.
The FBI got involved when Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) was the victim of a cybertheft incident late last year that initially cost his campaign $690,000.
The problem isn’t unique to Republicans: In November 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s campaign fell victim to check fraud worth $10,085, Raw Story reported, and President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign committee lost at least $71,000, according to Business Insider.
One-time Democratic presidential candidate and congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and West are among others who reported money stolen from their political accounts.
The political action committees of Google, National Association of Manufacturers, Consumer Technology Association, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, MoveOn.org, and law firms Akerman LLP and Blank Rome LLP have also experienced theft of various kinds, ranging from cyber theft to forgeries and check tampering, according to Business Insider.
WASHINGTON – House Republicans are divided over what to do about their internal divisions – or even whether anything’s the matter at all.
Welcome to Speaker Mike Johnson’s Capitol.
After a string of recent tactical blunders – from a failed impeachment vote to pulling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA) reauthorization measure he put on the floor this week – some Republicans in the House of Representatives are reassessing the successor to deposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Johnson, Republicans’ replacement speaker, has now been on the job 114 days. Yet the GOP still feels rudderless. He is hardly a phoenix, but the GOP is covered in plenty of ashes from the house fire that is the 118th Congress' Republican conference.
“We're wounded. I'm not saying that's because of Mike Johnson. It’s because of the situation we put ourselves in, no matter who came out of that,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) told Raw Story. “There's a lot of things that are out of his immediate control with the suddenness of this happening.”
The Republican unrest with Johnson (R-LA) is starting to become undeniable, even to his allies such as LaMalfa.
“It feels like there’s a little more unrest. Or that the unrest is now bubbling to the surface?” Raw Story asked.
“I think there’s some underground bubbling going on,” LaMalfa said.
The Republican Party still hasn’t healed since members ran McCarthy out of the speaker’s chair — and right out of Congress. While Johnson hasn’t had his speakership challenged by the gang of eight Republicans who ousted McCarthy, he’s constantly under pressure from every faction of his fractious conference.
“In fairness, I think the problem changes every day, depending on where he's got to focus,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) told Raw Story in front of the Capitol this week. “Sometimes it's just the issue of the day. It's just a tough, tough time.”
Johnson’s job is only getting more complicated now that the 2024 election has fully engulfed the U.S. Capitol. Campaign considerations helped derail a bipartisan Senate border security compromise and cast a broadly bipartisan foreign aid package – and U.S. allies Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan – in limbo.
Speaker in empty suit only?
Looming over everything, including Johnson’s speakership, is former President Donald Trump.
Trump, for example, single-handedly killed the border bill before lawmakers even finished drafting it.
That’s begged the question: Who’s running the show on Capitol Hill?
“Is Donald Trump calling the shots here, Mr. Speaker?” Meet the Press host Kristen Welker asked Johnson a couple Sunday’s ago.
“He’s not calling the shots. I am calling the shots,” a defensive Johnson replied.
The reserved speaker was animated, if not entirely believable.
“Certainly, Trump has influence on people. I don’t want to say he’s in charge. We do a lot of things that Trump disagrees with,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) told Raw Story just off the House floor.
Johnson is known as a staunchly conservative Christian nationalist, but lawmakers still don’t know how to define his leadership style.
As Raw Story revealed in January, Johnson came to Congress in 2017 with big dreams of bipartisanship and civil discourse among lawmakers. Those dreams dashed, he’s embraced the MAGA mantle, ever-evolving – or devolving – as it is.
“He’s just trying to figure out some things,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told Raw Story Thursday.
The speaker is getting pulled in most every direction, and he doesn’t seem to tell anyone ‘No.’
That hurt Johnson last week when he stepped in a political dogpile.
Basically, Johnson backed fringe-right Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) in Montana’s U.S. Senate GOP primary. Within hours of that news dropping, the speaker reversed course. The pressure came from old guard Republicans in the House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee who, along with Trump, are backing retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in the race against Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).
Rosendale was one of the eight GOP lawmakers who ousted McCarthy, making him anathema to the majority of House Republicans who remain bitter over last year’s speaker battle. After formally announcing his Senate bid last Friday, Rosendale reversed course — and withdrew. Johnson’s highly publicized reversal seems to have led to the demise of the Freedom Caucus member’s longshot bid – the opposite of what he set out to do.
Johnson’s a leadership novice, and everyone seems to know it.
“You got some advice for Speaker Johnson?” Raw Story asked former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) – who served as House minority whip during the 1980s – as he strolled past the House floor Wednesday.
“Every now and then,” Lott, now a lobbyist, said with a laugh — and without detailing what that advice is. “I spent a little time over here in leadership. I still stay in touch with them.”
When not crying, Democrats are laughing at the dysfunction.
“Tell them to keep up the good work!” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) told Raw Story as he was entering the Capitol on Wednesday, the day after Democrats won the special election in New York to replace expelled former Rep. George Santos (R-NY).
Despite Democratic chiding, many Republicans say there’s still time to salvage the least productive Congress in recent decades.
‘I wish we did less’
With Democrats recapturing Santos’ seat, Republicans are now down to a mere two-seat advantage on floor votes. House Republicans aren’t calling to reverse course — rather the loudest voices in the conference this week have been bemoaning the bipartisan ouster of Santos, a demonstrated liar and credibly accused fraudster who faces numerous federal charges and potential prison time.
"I voted against expelling George Santos. He wasn’t convicted of anything, and I don’t think he should have been expelled. And I think it was a very bad strategy from our conference to expel a member of Congress who hasn’t been convicted," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Raw Story at the Capitol. “We shouldn't have lost that seat to begin with.”
Johnson was also back in the headlines this week when he pulled a FISA – think warrantless wiretapping – reauthorization from the House floor after it became clear Republicans were prepared to kill the measure.
“Pulling the FISA bill – doesn't that make y'all look like you can't govern?” Raw Story asked Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), the new head of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
“Well, what you guys call ‘not governing’ is not doing more bad stuff, not doing more of what Democrats want to do, not doing more what the D.C. swamp wants us to do, not doing more of what the status quo is,” Good said while walking through a tunnel leading to the Capitol Thursday. “What is it you want us to do more of that would show we could govern?”
“Even when it comes to unwinding the administrative state, you guys are historically a piss poor Congress,” Raw Story replied. “Like, you can't even unwind what you want to unwind, right?”
“Well, I would argue, we are historical in the sense that we have not worsened the administrative state, and we have not done more harm to the American people on the level that most congresses have done,” Good said.
“I wish we did less. Unless we had absolute control of government, and we could truly undo all the harm. At least we're not layering it on and adding to it,” Good said. “Just take FISA, if it weren't for the Freedom Caucus conservatives, FISA would already have been reformed in a way that totally trampled on and expands upon the harm being done to the citizens.”
The House has now joined the Senate on an extended President’s Day recess.
When the two chambers return to town in two weeks, they’ll have just a handful of legislative days to fund the government before federal funding starts clicking off on March 1.
Can Democrats solve Johnson’s problems?
Everything’s not fine in the GOP, and rank-and-file Republicans know it. That has some conservatives now calling on Johnson to do what’s become anathema in today’s GOP: Work across the aisle.
“He’s got a tough job. He’s got the toughest job in America, so he's got to reach out to Democrats to get things done,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Raw Story on his way to vote on the House floor this week. “He doesn’t really have much of a choice.”
Johnson was no one’s first choice to be speaker. In fact, he wasn’t the GOP’s second, third or fourth choice, either.
Over three long weeks last year, Republican speaker-designates Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Tom Emmer (R-MN) all quit after failing to solidify enough GOP support to win the gavel on the House floor.
The party needed someone – anyone, really – to replace McCarthy as speaker.
In that environment, many of the party’s proven leaders refused to run, and thus Speaker Mike Johnson was born.
“This was all made difficult by the unnecessary purging of McCarthy,” LaMalfa of California told Raw Story. “In some cases, the cream of the crop of who would be the ideal leader, weren't presenting themselves – and this is not a personal knock to any individual – so Mike kind of evolved from those different pools.”
Since he was anointed, Johnson’s had to host fundraisers, travel to member’s districts and run the House. He’s proven a quick study in fundraising from GOP donors, and Republican members have been happy to host him in their districts. It’s the whole running the House of Representatives that Johnson seems to be struggling with most these days.
That’s largely because of the same far-right Republicans who seem to hijack most every measure that hits the House floor. The new boss seems to have the same problem as the old boss.
“They’re not going to be happy with anything,” LaMalfa said. “They don't give a s—. They don't care.”
Former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign has been flagged yet again by the Federal Election Commission for accepting donations with illegal amounts, according to a new letter to the campaign treasurer exclusively obtained by Raw Story.
Under the law, a campaign for federal office cannot accept more than $3,300 per person, $2,000 per authorized committee, or $5,000 per multi-candidate committee in a single election — but Trump appears to have accepted well in excess of that from a number of sources.
The letter, which detailed over two hundred pages of "apparent excessive, prohibited, and impermissible contributions," warned that the campaign could face an "audit or enforcement action," which would typically include fines, if the campaign does not respond and take appropriate action within the deadline.
This is not the first time this has happened. Last year, the FEC issued a similar warning to the Trump campaign detailing 88 pages of impermissible contributions.
And in 2022, the Trump campaign also came under scrutiny for how campaign contributions were moved around and used, improperly shuffling hundreds of millions of dollars through intermediaries in ways that obscured the original contributors.
All of this is separate from controversies surrounding how Trump raised the money in the first place; In 2021, the Trump campaign was forced to refund $13 million that was debited from supporters without their knowledge, by pre-checking a box to make the donation recur monthly and obscuring it so many supporters didn't realize what they were agreeing to.
A federal agency fined a Democratic senator’s campaign committee $27,000 for the untimely resolution of excessive contributions, according to a Raw Story review of federal campaign records.
The campaign committee for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) must pay the civil penalty by March 8 related to the issue of “failing to remedy excessive, prohibited and other impermissible 2020 general and runoff election contributions, totaling $363,272.43, within the permissible timeframe,” according to a Feb. 14 letter from the Federal Election Commission.
The negotiated settlement and letter addressed to attorney Graham M. Wilson, representing Jon Ossoff for Senate and its treasurer, Steven Mele, stated that the campaign resolved all donation issues by issuing refunds — just not by federal deadlines.
"Last year the FEC notified the campaign committee that following the unprecedented 2.8 million donations received in the historic runoff election, the campaign’s compliance vendor had failed to refund contributions, as they were contractually obligated, within 30 and 60 day requirements because of the obvious logistical challenges associated with the high volume of contributions,” Jake Best, a spokesperson for Ossoff’s campaign, said in a statement to Raw Story.
“As the settlement makes clear, all contributions discussed were refunded, just not within 30 and 60 days, and the compliance vendor has taken full responsibility for the delay, is covering the total FEC penalty, and will participate in additional mandatory training to ensure they do not make this mistake again," Best said.
Contributions to a candidate’s committee could not exceed $2,800 total during the 2019-2020 election cycle, as noted in the negotiated settlement letter.
The committee said it “has a strong commitment to compliance” with the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, according to the letter.
In addition to paying the civil penalty, “in effort to avoid similar errors in the future,” Ossoff’s committee agreed to “develop and certify” a policy document for its external compliance vendor within 30 days and to “retain an outside consultant to review all compliance procedures and conduct a training with those responsible for preparing and filing its reports” within 90 days, the letter said.
“The Committee states it has facilitated conversations with its compliance vendor reiterating the Committee's internal policies for identifying and remedying excessive, prohibited and other impermissible contributions,” the letter said.
Ossoff beat the Republican incumbent, former. Sen. David Perdue, in a 2020 runoff with 50.6 percent of the vote, according to CNN. At 37, Ossoff is the youngest member of U.S. Senate and one of the few millennial or Gen Z members of Congress.
These are nicknames for Donald Trump offered up by author and criminologist Gregg Barak, who portrays the 45th president’s history of legal troubles as those of a mobster who has long evaded justice for his crimes.
But now, as Trump contends with 91 felony charges across four criminal cases and bears civil liability for the sexual abuse and defamation of a writer, as well as fraudulently inflating the value of his business empire, Trump must face the legal consequences of his actions.
Raw Story got an exclusive first look at the book, which is scheduled for public release on April 1.
Book cover (Rutledge/Gregg Barak)
Trump’s alleged white collar crimes date as far back as 1973, and the former president has been involved in more than 4,000 legal cases in that time, Barak writes. Yet, Trump has evaded major consequences for his alleged malfeasance because “crimes of the powerful and the crimes of the powerless” and “suite and street crime” are treated differently in the United States, Barak told Raw Story in an exclusive interview about his new book.
As Barak writes, there are “two contradictory standards of justice” in the United States, and Trump benefited from “social realities of justice in America” that are “already stacked in favor of the powerful perpetrators of crime.”
“So long as Trump believes that he can prevail to fight another day to retain and/or regain his former power, then the amoral and corrupt racketeer and wannabe dictator will unapologetically continue to transcend democratic norms and to resist the authority of the state even if it means destroying American society in the process,” Barak writes. “Something that he has been working on since he was sworn into office in 2017.”
Barak paints a comprehensive picture of how he says Trump exerts his “legal and political power” and uses his “mob-boss tendencies” to intimidate politicians, citizens and law enforcement agencies who challenge him.
“While most non-revolutionary outlaws would have cut a deal to stay out of prison, Trump behind the scenes and on social media platforms had been trying to stoke his base and threatening harm and violence to prosecutors and judges and other law enforcement personnel,” Barak writes. “Like a mafioso boss and Mussolini’s blackshirts or storm troopers, Trump had been fomenting hate, scapegoats and violence toward the ‘enemies-others’ since his campaign rallies began in late 2015.”
The irony of this, Barak said, is that the Republican Party historically identifies as the “party of law and order.” Yet, the party — particularly its far-right wing — defends Trump’s lawlessness and spreads falsehoods about election fraud and other conspiracy theories on his behalf, he argues.
That, coupled with Trump’s ability to project his troubles onto his opponents, keeps his base loyal to him despite his legal peril, Barak said.
“Everything that he is accusing everyone else of doing is precisely what we've all witnessed him do for as long as we've been observing him,” Barak told Raw Story in a phone interview. “That is just an amazing ability to invert the narrative, and even though the majority of people think it's all poppycock and BS, there's 40 percent of the country who's all in.”
Why are those 40 percent in?
For “psychological reasons, Barak told Raw Story. In a society that is increasingly disconnected, “the cult of personality satisfies that need,” he said.
Among Barak’s greatest concerns: Trump’s threat to democratic institutions, particularly the press, as well as his political weaponization of government agencies. But Barak said he also doesn’t “believe for a minute that Donald Trump will win in 2024.”
Barak predicted Trump will “meet his Waterloo, sooner or later after all these years,” particularly as a judge denied on Thursday his attempts to delay the March 25 start of his New York criminal trial.
“This will be the first but not last time that Trump finally gets his well overdue comeuppance, some time in early May 2024,” Barak said.
Barak’s book outlines the constitutional and democratic reforms needed to avoid an “authoritarian or autocratic regime” now and in the future, ranging from making the House of Representatives’ size more reflective of the population to reforming the outsize influence of wealthy corporations and the electoral process.
In short, a “tyranny of the majority,” not a “tyranny of the minority” is needed, Barak writes.
Barak said he ultimately wants readers to understand Trump and his associates’ threat to democracy — and how to save it.
“It's not to be snookered, to understand what the GOP and Trump are all about,” Barak told Raw Story. “It's that they want to contract rather than expand the rights of people.”
An Instagram post by Noah Houran from November 2023 likely alludes to his interview with the FBI a year earlier. Instagram
A friend posted a photo on Telegram that shows Aiden Cuevas riding in the back of a pickup truck. Telegram
A Telegram post by Mathew Bair shows his 4-year-old son posing next to graffiti swastika. Telegram
A still from an October 2023 propaganda 
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram
Book cover (Rutledge/Gregg Barak)