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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Raw Story that the biggest mistake the Republican Party made was not choosing a candidate firmly behind former President Donald Trump to run in the New York Third District special election.
Disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was expelled, and a new election was called, which Greene called their first mistake. It's a bad precedent to set to expel a member of Congress, she said.
"We shouldn't have lost that seat to begin with," she told Raw Story, meaning Santos.
She then claimed, "redistricting turned that district over to a D+8." Redistricting happened in 2020 and Santos was elected in 2022 after redistricting. There are new maps being drawn using a bipartisan commission, but those haven't yet been decided, much less implemented.
"Number three, they picked the worst possible candidate," Greene said, bashing Republican candidate Mazi Pilip. "She was a registered Democrat but, um, didn't like President Trump. And, uh, why would we pick a Democrat to run as a Republican? That's the dumbest thing they could have done. All of those reasons there — that's not an indicator of the election as a whole."
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) explained that newly elected Tom Suozzi was basically an incumbent because he'd previously held the seat.
"So, he had name recognition," said Thompson.
When asked whether Trump was right, if she was more of a MAGA candidate and had his endorsement, she would have won, Thompson said "no." He blamed it all on name identification for Suozzi. There's "nothing in my opinion to take away."
Rep. Ken Buck (R- CO) agreed that Suozzi had the overall advantage of name recognition after spending so much time in office previously there.
"He's a moderate Democrat who does work across the aisle. He had accomplishments he could point to, um, the weather was a factor," Buck said, citing the several inches of fluffy snow that fell on the Long Island congressional district.
"Either way it was going to be a wake-up call," said Buck. "When a party in power loses something, they say, 'Well, politics is local.' When you win something, you say, 'See what a great job I'm doing?' So, it's a mixed bag."
Buck's comments were almost a premonition of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who said, "To me, every election has a local geographic point to it, and it's been a Democrat district. We were fortunate to flip it. I equate it to the district in Charleston. They flipped it forever but they flipped it back. So, that was perceived as a huge Democrat (sic) victory. There was a fluke — a huge divide in the Republican party that got a Democrat elected."
He was optimistic about Pilip, calling her "an attractive candidate background, gosh."
When asked if she should have asked for his support, Wilson said that his endorsement has always helped in his South Carolina race.
"We've gotta stick to what we're doing," Wilson said.
Buck went on to tell Raw Story that while Trump certainly has a lot of influence over members of the conference, he doesn't believe that the ex-president is fully running things from Mar-a-Lago.
WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers now want the border security deal that they turned down after reports that Donald Trump ordered the leadership he didn't want another "win" under Joe Biden's presidential belt.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now calling on Speaker Mike Johnson to take up the Ukraine/Israel funding bill, but several GOP House members told Raw Story that they "need" border security in the bill.
Last week, it was so toxic that Republican Sen. James Lankford (OK) became a huge target on the right for helping to negotiate the legislation.
“It’s obvious to me they don’t want to do anything,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). "I mean, they had a great deal that included border security and all the funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, the humanitarian system which most of the Republican senators were willing to support. Now, they have 70 members, including a significant number of Republican senators who want to pass this package. They (the House GOP) want to scuttle that. They wanted only Israel aid, they couldn't pass that. It's just a do-nothing Republican leadership."
He said that they are simply following Trump's demands.
"He says do nothing. So they do nothing, and they're willing to do nothing," said Pallone. "Now, I don't know.... it's actually embarrassing. It's dangerous. It's all of the above."
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said that he doesn't want to vote on the aid package.
"I think you have to look at, [Rep. Steve] Scalise is back," he said of the Louisiana lawmaker who was in the hospital for cancer.
"So, it's a leadership requirement not just a Speaker, but the floor is typically controlled by the [Majority] Leader. So, I guess what I'd answer is I want to continue to push back on Russia and whatever vehicle does that I'm for," said Issa. "I certainly think we shouldn't take anything that comes from the Senate at face value. They don't take ours at face value."
He went on to say that the funding bill would pass with a majority and not just from one party. He encouraged Speaker Johnson to find out if he had a majority of Republicans or Democrats for the bill. What he is describing is "whipping" the votes, the job of the GOP Whip, who finds out where a vote stands.
"As Speaker of the whole House I think he has a responsibility," Issa continued.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-M.D.) joked that the Senate must have a lot of C.O.D.E.L.s (Congressional Member Delegations) heading out of Andrew's Air Force Base because the lawmakers were gone as of Tuesday morning.
When asked about the foreign aid funding bill, Harris said it was "D.O.A. baby, D.O.A."
His reasoning is that "it has no border control," the measure that Republicans said they wouldn't vote on.
It puts the country in a quandary because Republicans won't pass a foreign aid bill without border security but are refusing to pass any border security measures at all.
"You know Speaker Johnson said, or one of the senators said, in fact, Mitch McConnell said it has to have the border in it. It doesn't have the border in it. So, I guess we're going to see."
Harris went on to say that he opposed the Lankford compromise because it allowed for "illegal immigration."
Harris said that they should pass a bill that "chops it up," as they do with continuing resolutions, instead of providing a defense budget for over a year.
President Joe Biden explained in a press conference on Tuesday that the bill doesn't send a blank check to Ukraine, rather it sends a check to American companies that are crafting weapons that are then sent to Ukraine.
Raw Story caught up with Rep. Gary Palmer (R-A.L.) and asked what he thought about the early morning Senate vote of 70 to support the foreign aid funding bill. He said he didn't even know it happened and demanded the Senate take up their far-right border bill, which is expected to fail or be held up with a filibuster.
WASHINGTON — Barring something monumental — a health crisis, a debilitating legal development — Donald Trump is all but guaranteed to become the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
And potential Trump running mates seem to be working overtime this month to audition for the part.
In doing so, many are contrasting their philosophies and MAGA fealty to that of former Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump long ago dumped from consideration.
On January 6, 2021, Pence refused calls from Trump and his allies to overturn the results in crucial swing states during a congressional joint session to certify the 2020 election — won by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
So what would any of Trump’s current vice presidential suitors do differently, given the same chance as Pence to certify the 2020 presidential election?
The answer: it depends.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)
Just last week, Stefanik was asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about what she would have done had she been the vice president that day.
Her response, which contained multiple falsehoods, was notable.
“I would not have done what Mike Pence did. I don’t think that was the right approach. … There was unconstitutional overreach in states like Pennsylvania, and I think it’s very important that we continue to stand up for the Constitution and have legal and secure elections, which we did not have in 2020.”
Stefanik, 39, was one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the House in the midst of his attempts to overturn the election. Even after the attack on the Capitol, she voted against certifying the results in Pennsylvania, a state that Biden won by just over 80,000 votes.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem
Noem, who has campaigned for Trump during the primary, has not definitively said whether she supported Pence’s decision to not block or attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Instead, she’s used a common tactic among Republicans in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol: condemn the riots, while emphasizing the need for election reform.
“What happened on January 6 was horrible and should never happen again in this country,” she said in January of 2021. “What I want to do is look forward and make sure that we continue to have fair and transparent elections that people can trust.”
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy
Six days after the Jan. 6 attacks, Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “what Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”
Since then, though, he has changed his tune, defending Trump’s role in the attack.
During an appearance on NBC News’ Meet the Press in August, the entrepreneur said he would have handled the situation differently than Pence did, although he didn’t offer many specifics.
“I think that there was a historic opportunity that he missed to reunite this country in that window,” said Ramaswamy, who himself ran for president but suspended his campaign after the Iowa Caucuses. “What I would have said is, ‘This is a moment for a true national consensus,’ where there's two elements of what's required for a functioning democracy in America. One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power.”
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson
In the years since, Carson has not said much regarding the events of January 6, or Pence’s role in the certification of the election.
The day of, though, he condemned the attacks on the Capitol, posting on X that “violence is never an appropriate response regardless of legitimate concerns. Please remember: if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
Shortly after, he told the Washington Examiner that while Trump should have toned down his rhetoric on January 6, he was “not sure that we can say that all this was all one person’s fault.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)
Scott, despite his South Carolina ties, endorsed Trump over Haley last month. It marked a surprising pivot from the 58-year-old, but one that has been seen from a number of Congressional Republicans since Trump announced his initial campaign for president in June of 2015.
But at the time, Scott did not object to the certification of election results, and said in a town hall in July of last year that he did “not believe the election was stolen.”
During the first Republican debate in Milwaukee last August, Scott defended Pence’s actions on January 6, saying “absolutely, he did the right thing.”
Haley has been steadfast on the matter. The 52-year-old has consistently defended Pence, making it unlikely that she will be on the ticket — despite it being a move that would unite the party in advance of the general election.
“Mike Pence is a good man. He’s an honest man. I think he did what he thought was right on that day,” she said in February of 2022.
“The fact that he wanted to change what the states did, the fact that he wanted to overturn the elections in D.C. — those votes happen at the state level," she said last month. "You don’t ever allow in D.C. for those votes to be changed at the federal level. States’ rights matter.”
Of course, Haley remains in the presidential race, running against Trump in the Republican primary. Both candidates have incessantly trashed one another. Trump selecting Haley seems implausible.
But for years, Trump and Haley have found themselves in a political make up/break up cycle, and Trump has long shown a willingness to welcome outcasts back into his orbit — if it suits his needs.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
Burgum condemned the violence at the Capitol on January 6, and told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in August of last year that the party “had to move on to the future.”
The 67-year-old governor, who suspended his own presidential campaign last December, endorsed Trump last month and has been on the campaign trail for the former president.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Sanders, who endorsed Trump in November, said in announcing her Arkansas gubernatorial candidacy in January of 2021 that the events of January 6 were “not who we are as Americans.” A former White House spokesperson for Trump, she has not directly commented on Pence’s role in certifying the election.
Sanders has long touted her time in the Trump White House, and while a longshot for the vice presidential position, could be in line for some Trump administration post in the event the then-78-year-old Trump wins the presidency in November.
Kari Lake
Lake was one of the most vocal backers of Trump’s plot to overturn the election, and even sought to overturn her loss to Katie Hobbs in the 2022 Arizona Gubernatorial race.
In December, she promoted a far-right conspiracy that the events of January 6 were partially staged.
“All that January 6 was, was a staged riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election,” she said in August, during longtime Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “And frankly, if [Pence’s] got a problem with what happened on January 6th, he should … talk to the folks in the FBI who planted a bunch of you know, rabble rousers in the crowd to cause trouble.”
Lake is currently running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona.
Vance, who has gone from self-proclaimed “Never Trump” conservative to staunch Trump backer, was asked by Stephanopoulos on Feb. 4 what he would have done if in Pence’s position on Jan. 6, outlined an approach that would have differed heavily from that of the then-vice president.
“If I had been Vice President, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” said Vance, who became a senator in 2023. “That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.”
Vance, 39, is — along with Scott — the most likely vice presidential choice from the Senate. His conversion to Trump’s wing of the party could pay off come this summer in the form of a spot on the ticket.
It’s hard to imagine anything wearing down the bravado of Donald Trump, but will his legal troubles play poorly in a general election, leading him to lose again in November 2024?
Or might the current Republican front runner go out a different way?
At present, Trump stands accused of 91 charges in four felony cases, testing his political death-defying ability.
So far, the primary campaign has been a display of Trump’s political impunity, with the former president having dispatched all major challengers, except for Nikki Haley, who’s running 32 points behind him in South Carolina, her home state. That’s the next primary, on Feb. 24.
“He is a tank. He is a boulder. I don't think there is literally anything that can happen to this man that would make him lose because he has such a chokehold on the Republican Party,” said Amani Wells-Onyioha, operations director at Democratic political firm Sole Strategies.
But others still consider him vulnerable to defeat — just not exactly in the way you might think.
“There's a very real possibility that he gets convicted of one of these and is looking at prison time,” said Nicholas Creel, assistant professor of business law at Georgia College and State University. “When we get to the hypothetical point of him needing to take office, we've got to figure out now, is he actually above the law. The Supreme Court will have to step in.
“There is a very, very real possibility that a Supreme Court majority — probably a five-four ruling — could say you still have to face the music, Mr. President, and if we enter political paralysis, that's because we have chosen that you would be the president in prison,” Creel continued.
Here are 11 other scenarios where Trump fails for a second straight time to get back to the White House — without losing the 2024 general election:
The other 13 states and a territory use a different system, which favors Trump.
“The remaining states use some sort of winner take all or winner take most system,” she wrote. “For instance, in delegate rich California, if a candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, they get all the delegates. If not, the delegates are awarded proportionally. In a two-person race Trump is likely to win many delegates.”
Then what is Haley doing?
“In the months before the convention Trump may be convicted of one or more crimes,” she wrote. “It’s hard to predict how his loyal base will react. So far Trump’s indictments have only made them more loyal and there’s no reason to believe that convictions would change their minds. Nonetheless a conviction would certainly play into Haley’s critique of him as the chaos candidate. And she may be thinking she’d be the last person standing.”
Or she’s laying the groundwork for a run in 2028.
Trump loses the GOP nomination in a floor fight
Republicans are saying there’s no chance of this, according to NBC News. Morton Blackwell, a member of the Republican National Committee’s convention rules committee since 1988, said convention rules can be changed but it won’t happen — “absent a cement truck coming around the corner and killing the nominee.”
But James Long, professor of political science at the University of Washington, has said Trump supporters might have to ask themselves some tough questions amid the various indictments and Trump’s increasinglyerraticbehavior.
“Everyone saying they’re going to support Trump is going to have to face the reality that this is going to get worse and worse for him, and they’re going to have to think about whether or not he’s a credible winner in the (general) election,” Long said. “And they’re going to have to decide if they care more about him as a person, or they care more about winning.”
A recent CNN poll, however, showed Trump ahead of President Joe Biden by four percentage points.
Trump flees the country
As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote, Trump “is one of the most recognized figures in the world. He would have to go to Mars to live incognito. It is facially absurd.”
As outlandish as it may sound, Trump could theoretically find refuge from legal threats in a country that’s not so friendly to the United States — but potentially friendly to Trump.
Think Russia. China. Saudi Arabia. Even — dare one say it — North Korea. Unlike most people in legal peril, Trump has massive amounts of money and the physical means — specifically, his own “Trump Force One” Boeing 757 — to get to a place beyond the reach of special counsel Jack Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis or the U.S. justice system, writ large.
Trump ally Tucker Carlson, it’s worth noting, was welcomed by Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin at a time when the Russian government has for months detained two American journalists — the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva. News organizations and press freedom advocates have roundly condemned the detentions as unjust, with the Wall Street Journal saying that Russia has arbitrarily and wrongfully detained” Gershkovich “for doing his job as a journalist.”
And in addition to the Russias and Chinas of the world, there are dozens of other nations that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States, which makes it extremely difficult for the U.S. law enforcement officials to spirit a wanted man into custody and back to American soil.
Of course, such a drastic move by Trump would all but guarantee that he could never again return to the United States as a free man.
But Trump has well-established business ties in numerous foreign countries and could ostensibly live like a fugitive king in a welcoming nation.
And in October 2020, days before the election he wouldn’t win, Trump himself floated the idea of becoming an ex-pat: “Could you imagine if I lose? I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”
Said Wells-Onyioha: “If he doesn't want to face charges, I can see him attempting to flee. Trump genuinely feels like the rules don't apply to him, so I think that there's nothing that he won't do. I don't think he wants to face any accountability or any repercussions for any of the things that he's done thus far, so I can see him trying to flee.”
In actuality, it’s much more likely that Trump’s legal team will just try to delay the court proceedings as long as possible, John Geer, dean of the college of arts and science and professor of political science and public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, has said.
“(Trump) can tie the legal system up for a long time, so that’s what I suspect he'll end up doing,” Geer said.
Last month, Trump was hit with an $83.3 million verdict by a jury that found Trump liable for defaming a woman — for a second time — about what a previous jury determined was sexual assault.
Trump faces a potentially much larger verdict for what a judge has ruled was fraud involving his business interests in New York. The judge has delayed a verdict on damages after a report that a Trump finance executive planned to plead guilty to perjury.
Trump is scheduled to go on trial March 25 in New York on charges that he falsified financial records to hide payments — prior to being elected President in 2016 — to porn performer Stormy Daniels for staying quiet about an alleged affair.
A March 4 trial date on federal election subversion charges against Trump was delayed for courts to consider Trump’s claim of presidential immunity. A federal appeals court unanimously found no such privilege. The next step is the Supreme Court, which could choose not to take the case and let the appeals court ruling stand.
The start date is uncertain for Trump’s federal trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left the White House. The judge set a trial date for May but has suggested she might move that back as Trump’s lawyers say they need more time to review “voluminous” evidence.
A Georgia election interference case against Trump is delayed by allegations that the Fulton County District Attorney had a relationship that created a conflict of interest. A hearing is scheduled Feb. 15 on Trump’s motion to dismiss the case over the relationship and alleged financial improprieties.
Trump falls gravely ill or dies of natural causes
When Americans discuss age and the presidency, it’s usually about President Joe Biden, the nation’s first octogenarian commander-in-chief who will be 82 years old on Inauguration Day 2025.
But Trump, 77, is not a young man, either.
Trump turns 78 in June. If elected president this year, Trump would become the oldest president in history at the time he took office, surpassing Biden.
The average age of death for a man who’s served as president of the United States is about 72 years old, according to Statista, and only 12 out of the 45 U.S. presidents have lived to celebrate their 80th birthday.
So while the topic itself is grim, even uncouth, the odds of Trump falling gravely ill or dying before Election Day 2024 are not insignificant.
What would happen next upon either scenario would largely be a function of the point in time Trump stopped running.
Kamarck has written that state election officials are allowed to adjust filing deadlines for new candidates if the frontrunner dies or is incapacitated. For some of the states that haven’t yet conducted their nominating contests, they could also move back their primaries.
If Trump couldn’t continue after winning enough primary votes to become the presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, the nation would almost certainly gird for a brokered Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for mid-July in Milwaukee, Wis.
And if Trump officially secured the GOP nomination, but couldn’t stand for election in November 2024, a select group of Republican Party bigwigs would likely convene to choose a replacement — whether that was Trump’s vice presidential running mate, or someone else.
Trump dies from assassination
Even more grim is the specter of assassination, an ever-present specter for presidents and presidential candidates alike.
Four presidents — John F. Kennedy, William McKinley, James Garfield and Abraham Lincoln — died after being shot.
Ronald Reagan, in 1981, could have been the fifth assassinated president but for the quick reactions of law enforcement and medical personnel.
Last August, while attempting to serve a warrant, FBI agents shot and killed a Utah man who had allegedly made “credible” threats against Biden.
High-profile presidential candidates also come under threat. The most notable modern example is that of Robert F. Kennedy, who died in 1968 after being shot at a campaign event. (Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is now running for president as an independent, and he has publicly stated that he believes his father’s convicted killer isn’t the man who committed the crime.)
Trump, like every past president and many presidential candidates, receives U.S. Secret Service protection and will ostensibly be entitled to such protection even if he’s convicted of a crime and sent to prison or home detention.
Trump agrees to quit the race before Election Day
Scott Galloway made this prediction on the popular podcast Pivot, which he hosts with journalist Kara Swisher:
Trump, Galloway said last year, "has a very nice life, and his life can be going back to golf and sycophants and having sex with porn stars. … Or he can live under the threat of prison. The [political] momentum he has is real leverage and power. And I think he’s going to cash that leverage and power in for a plea deal that includes no jail time.”
With Trump is facing state charges in Georgia and New York, he wouldn’t be able to escape by pardoning himself as president — something he could attempt to do for the federal-level charges he faces. Therefore, Trump’s calculus may change.
Creel noted Spiro Agnew’s resignation from the vice presidency in 1973 after facing the threat of jail for his corruption while governor of Maryland.
“One of the parts of the agreement was [to] resign, get out of politics forever, and we will not pursue this,” he said. “So with a more rational defendant, that would absolutely be something that's on the table. That's something Jack Smith would be bringing to Trump, but for one, we're not dealing with a particularly rational individual. Two, this scenario is significantly different in that we have state-level charges also facing him. And so because they can't really immunize him against that at the state level, the incentive to take that sort of a deal is greatly diminished.”
Wells-Onyioha said Trump maybe – maybe – would come to the realization that prison, and the potential life-long loss of his freedom, is a real and unpalatable possibility.
“I can see them coming up with some sort of like plea agreement, where in exchange for dropping out of the race, they will let him be on probation or something like that,” she said. “I can see that happening. But even so, I'm not even sure if he would take that deal.”
Trump is removed via the 25th Amendment
The Constitution’s 25th Amendment spells out the succession plan if a president dies or is removed from office, which means the vice president takes over.
If the vice president and his cabinet determine that the president is unable to discharge his duties as president — say, being in prison — Congress will have 48 hours to convene and 21 days to decide if the president is fit to hold office. It can remove him by a two-thirds vote.
“You can even see his cabinet exercising the 25th Amendment, saying, look, you're incapacitated. You're not capable because you're needing to go to prison or are in prison. You're not capable of fulfilling the oath of office, therefore, we're invoking [the] 25th Amendment and removing you from office that way, and so you would see whoever his vice president elect is [at] that point stepping up,” Creel said.
If Trump wins the 2024 election, the Supreme Court will ultimately need to decide if a sitting president is immune from state-level prosecution in Georgia and New York, and the Court might rule against his ability to serve as president.
Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
“Functionally this would mean Trump is the legitimate president but would still be forced to carry out a sentence in a state prison,” Creel said. “In that scenario, it’s difficult to see how he wouldn’t be either impeached and convicted or otherwise removed via the 25th Amendment due to his ‘incapacity.’”
But with a third of the Supreme Court being Trump appointees, Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way and former mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., said he could see the Court ruling in Trump’s favor and allowing him to serve any legal consequences at a later time.
“Uncharted legal territory with stakes this high means questions like that usually get kicked up to the Supreme Court. Given that, Donald Trump appointed three members of the Supreme Court on a six-person ultra conservative majority, I think the most likely scenario is that he's allowed to stand for office, and if he wins, he could avoid or at least delay paying his debt to society,” Myrick said.
The 25th Amendment could also be used for a president’s mental competence. While Trump attacks Biden for being “cognitively impaired,” Trump is 77 years old and isn’t always sharp himself. He said last year Biden would lead the U.S. into “World War II” and, in the same speech, said he was leading former President Barack Obama in polls for the 2024 election.
Amid Trump’s continued gaffes this year, Haley has called him “confused” and has tried to use the issue to bait him into appearing with her in a debate.
Trump has the 14th Amendment applied to him
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Feb. 8 on whether the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and its “insurrectionist ban” makes Trump disqualified from holding office because of his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
Colorado’s Supreme Court held in a 4-3 decision in December that the ban does apply to Trump.
Maine’s secretary of state came to the same conclusion, but a court has ordered that the issue be reconsidered after the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Some other states rejected legal intervention on procedural grounds.
“Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6,” William Baude, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, has said.
The 14th Amendment originally intended to prevent Confederate officials from gaining power after the Civil War, but how the disqualification clause would be applied is unclear to legal experts, especially since it’s never been used in the case of a president before, FindLaw, a Reuters company, reported.
Trump is impeached for a third time, then convicted and disqualified from serving as president
If the Supreme Court does say “nobody's above the law, and that includes the president” and lets the criminal justice system do its work, Creel said, Trump could still be disqualified from the presidency via the political system.
“We have a blueprint for how to do that. Impeachment. Conviction. Removal. That's how you could do it, and so you can see him taking office and having that avenue, where he's president for a day and then they just kind of have this perfunctory removal,” Creel said.
Trump was twice impeached while in office, but was acquitted on all counts by the Senate in both cases.
Congress could technically impeach Trump now with the goal of simply disqualifying him from running for elected office. Recall that Trump’s second impeachment trial took place several weeks after he left the White House.
But with Republicans currently controlling the House, where any impeachment proceeding would begin, such a scenario is exceedingly remote.
Trump accepts pardon promise with the understanding that he’ll quit the race
An exotic and unlikely scenario is Biden pardoning Trump with the understanding that Trump will quit the presidential race.
Biden, who has recently stepped up his criticism of Trump, has never spoken of such an idea.
A most imperfect historical parallel would be President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of President Richard Nixon after Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. But there’s no evidence Ford’s pardon involved either an overt or secret quid pro quo, according to the National Constitution Center, and came only after Nixon had officially stepped down.
Also: Could Trump serve as president while set to serve time?
There’s precedent that presidents don’t have full legal immunity — look at the 1997 Supreme Court ruling in Clinton v. Jones, Creel says — but Trump could be still allowed to serve any prison time post-presidency if convicted and sentenced for any of the 91 charges.
That would require the Supreme Court ruling that Trump couldn’t have his presidential duties interfered with by state level charges.
“We have to just set them aside to the point where he could realistically, in that scenario if that's what the Supreme Court says, be told January 20, at 12:01 p.m., 2028, report for incarceration in the state of Georgia,” Creel said. “That's an actual realistic possibility that could go his way.”
WASHINGTON — Republican senators completely missed Sen. Mike Lee's (R-UT) four-hour filibuster on Saturday.
Raw Story polled Democratic and Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on whether they saw the big speech. Eleven Republicans confessed they missed it.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) all told Raw Story they didn't watch.
Among the things Lee complained about was Russia's invasion of Ukraine, claiming it was a "proxy war."
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told Raw Story that Lee, has no business coming to Arizona until he passes the border security bill Republicans negotiated before abandoning it on Donald Trump's orders.
Kelly confessed he was "uninterested" in Lee's floor speech on Saturday since GOP senators are unwilling to fix what they've spent years complaining about.
“We should’ve voted on the border security bill," Kelly said. "I mean, these guys talk about this for years and have the opportunity to pass meaningful legislation to stop the crisis? I don’t want to hear his speech. I don’t want to see him coming back to Arizona until he passes the bill that was bipartisan, that they, basically, had agreed to.”
When asked what Sen. Romney was doing instead, he told Raw Story, “Livin the life."
Meanwhile, Democratic colleague, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) knew it was happening, but that's about it.
“I saw a few texts about it. I have no idea what that accomplishes or who the audience is,” he said on Sunday.
New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan drew the short straw and was the official who watched Lee bellow in the near-empty chamber for a few hours.
“I got to preside and babysit for two hours,” she said.
“You know what? I decided to go to Target,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) told Raw Story when asked if she caught any of Lee's speech.
Lee posted the video of his filibuster on YouTube. It has 1,868 views as of publication.
Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States