Conservative journalist Lara Logan suggested Christian nationalism was more significant than the beliefs of Native Americans because white colonizers massacred them.
During an interview on the
War Room podcast, Steve Bannon asked the reporter if she was "going full Christian nationalist."
Logan accused Bannon of using a "completely made-up term."
"You can like it, or you can not like it," she opined. "But this country was a Christian nation from the beginning. It was established as a Christian nation. It was established on the principles of Judeo-Christian civilization."
"But there were not 400 religions in America at the time of its founding," she insisted. "There was one. And that was Christianity."
Bannon pointed out other belief systems in North America at the time of the country's founding.
"The hard left would say that there was actually a religion here beforehand, and that was the pantheistic beliefs of the Native Americans," he noted. "The Indians have believed in spiritual and Gaia and all the, you know, this."
"And that the white Protestant and their sidekick Catholics, European, came here and exploited this and we're the colonizers," Bannon continued, "And we're just like they're saying the Israelis, the Israelis in Palestine."
Logan admitted there were, "Cultural religions and things that existed here and all over the world."
"And you know what?" she asked. "These groups conquered other groups, and they massacred each other. They massacred each other. They did exactly the same thing. They just didn't win."
"And that's what no one talks about."
Native American religions encompass
diverse beliefs and practices passed down through generations. These belief systems often emphasize a deep connection to the earth and the spirits of nature.
Many Native American tribes believe in a great spirit or creator and various deities and spirits that inhabit the natural world. Rituals, ceremonies, and storytelling play essential roles in these religions, fostering a sense of community and cultural identity.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said Tuesday that he opposes the Alabama Supreme Court's decision that embryos are children — after initially supporting it.
ABC's Rachel Scott caught up with Tuberville outside the Capitol.
"You've been back and forth on this issue," Scott noted. "Do you support the Supreme Court's decision?"
"I support that people that want to have IVF, I'll support them 100 percent," Tuberville insisted.
"Okay, but that's not what the Supreme Court's decision is allowing at this point," the ABC reporter observed.
"I know, but the state's getting ready to pass a law in Alabama that it's gonna be okay," the senator replied. "When we're going to pass it, that it's going to be positive."
Scott pointed out that some women were still not able to receive their IVF treatments.
"I just came back from Alabama," Scott explained. "I talked to one woman. She's on her last embryo transfer. It was scheduled for tomorrow. And now she has to start all over. Is that acceptable to you?"
"Well, not really," Tuberville admitted. "Now, I want everybody, if they want kids, if they can't have it, and that's the only way they can have it, I won't be able to use that."
"So, to be clear, you believe it's the wrong move?" Scott asked.
"Wrong move by the Supreme Court, yes," the senator agreed.
But just days earlier, Tuberville approved of the IVF decision.
Christian actor Kirk Cameron speculated that the End Times might not happen in the near future as many of his religious contemporaries believe.
Despite starring in the 2000 "Left Behind" film about The Rapture, Cameron suggested to right-wing podcast host Steve Bannon that he had given up on Jesus coming back anytime soon.
"Many people are just thinking that the sky is falling and we've had world wars," Cameron explained in the Tuesday podcast. "What if, Steve, this isn't the end of the United States?"
"What if this isn't the, the last days of planet earth, even as some of my Christian brothers and sisters would like to think, what if we are in the early days of, of, of a golden era of liberty and blessing and prosperity?" he asked.
"What if this national setback is really a divine setup for a spiritual comeback led by the family of faith?"
Cameron is a well-known evangelist who first found acting fame as a teen star of the ABC sitcom Growing Pains.
Two rabbis sat down for dinner at Chabad Jewish Center in Pensacola, Fla.
The air on this July evening was warm and tranquil. A sense of peace filled the kitchen where the men shared their meal.
Suddenly, something crashed through the window, sending glass flying. The rabbis rushed over to investigate. Scrawled on the brick that lay on their floor: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
Within days, local police arrested four white teenagers and collectively charged them with 18 felonies — not only in connection to the brick-throwing incident, but also for bigoted attacks on two area synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge.
The group’s reputed ringleader, 17-year-old Waylon Fowler, initially denied responsibility. But he later admitted to an Escambia County sheriff’s deputy that he threw the brick. Fowler is also accused of throwing another brick — marked with swastikas, “SS” symbols and the words “Death to k----” — through the bathroom window at Temple Beth El.
That could have been the end of Fowler’s hate-filled story — the saga of a misguided boy and his friends who, when caught red-handed, vowed to right their ways.
Instead, the boys began taking an ever-darker path that, in their vision for America, includes a revolution leading to the collapse of the United States and a race war that drives Black people, Jews and LGBTQ+ people out of future whites-only homelands.
It’s a vision that has attracted young neo-Nazis across the country.
Raw Story spent four months investigating the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, a nationwide network of teenage Nazis. The investigation revealed that Fowler now ranks among the leaders of the network.
In recent months, 2119 members have waged a campaign of targeted terror aimed at Jews, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and leftists. Their targets include Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and California. In mid-November, 2119’s official Telegram channel suggested the group had expanded to 21 states.
The 2119 gang’s rise as a clandestine network of teenagers who promote and carry out acts of antisemitic and racist violence hasn’t been organic. The group has undertaken a concerted marketing strategy of recruiting children by appealing to their interests, such as online gaming and skateboarding.
Nazi youth associated with 2119 are now under investigation by the FBI, Raw Story has confirmed. The FBI is also actively assisting local police departments as law enforcement pursues crimes committed in the group’s name.
But this legal danger has only emboldened the Nazi teens. They’ve indicated even bigger plans for sowing hate and fear across the country. And they’re recruiting more and more disaffected children to their cause.
The group’s activity comes at a moment when social tension throughout America builds by the day.
Local crime spree, national emergence
Fowler’s neo-Nazi youth group first emerged in 2022 as an under-18 boys auxiliary to the burgeoning “active club” movement — a loose collection of white supremacists united by their interest in fight training, mixed martial arts and white nationalist activism.
After renaming itself Revolutionary White Brotherhood — some bricks that shattered Pensacola windows featured the initials “R.W.B” — the group resurfaced after the arrests of Fowler and his associates as “2119.”
The number is an alphanumeric code. Two represents “B” for “blood,” 1 represents “A” for “and,” and 19 represents “S” for “soil. “Blood and soil” is a slogan dating back to Nazi Germany that invokes a racial claim on land.
Using a newly formed channel on encrypted social media app Telegram, 2119 members gleefully celebrated Fowler’s deeds by circulating an image of the brick used in the Chabad Jewish Center attack. They fashioned Fowler a martyr, circulating a stylized image of him with boyish looks and tousled hair and peppered their communications with the hashtag #FreeWaylon.
The brick quickly became a symbol of action central to the group’s identity. Members in the various Telegram chats associated with 2119 often used the verb “bricking” and referred to themselves as “brickstas.”
A national leadership cadre that had been coalescing since 2022 had now shifted into high gear. Members shared unsettling characteristics: all white boys or young men in their mid- to late-teens who embraced extreme violence against Black people and members of other marginalized groups. They delighted in a catchphrase that encapsulates an extreme aspect of a segment of the hyperviolent, racist internet culture: — “total n— death.”
Other teenage neo-Nazis that gravitated to the 2119 banner steeped themselves in virulent hate and a paramilitary aesthetic that draws as much from the Irish Republican Army and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as the Third Reich.
A still from an October 2023 propaganda video displays 2119's paramilitary aesthetic. Source: Telegram
The exact size of 2119’s membership is unknown. But a source knowledgeable with the group’s internal dynamics said it numbers in the hundreds. While that figure could not be independently verified, Raw Story has confirmed at least 20 self-identified 2119 members that participate in group activities. They live throughout the country, from California to Texas to New Hampshire.
The white power ethos embraced by members of 2119 draws from a loose collective of extreme Telegram accounts known as Terrorgram. Together, they promote acts of domestic terror and destruction that range from mass murder to attacks on the power grid.
A steady diet of gore videos and images — a photo of nude, Black female body missing her head stands out for its depravity — and instruction manuals for industrial sabotage swirl amid unyielding racist discourse.
But while spectacular and devastating, those modes of violence — by the 2119 members’ own admission — rarely allow the perpetrators to stay on the offensive and effectively network with one another.
The 2119 teenage neo-Nazis have instead embraced what’s for them a more scalable and sustainable — although no less disquieting — model of racist criminal violence.
Considered in isolation, the attacks across several states might be classified as acts of youthful vandalism and criminal mischief. Juvenile perpetrators who police catch might expect lenient punishments — ones that could be expunged as they reached adulthood.
But by 2119’s acknowledgement, these acts are deliberately designed to terrorize Jews and Black people. They offer 2119 members high propaganda value with relatively low risk to themselves.
These attacks also provide 2119 a model for a continuous, insidious feedback loop of documenting crimes, incorporating footage into propaganda videos and recruiting new members. Newly minted 2119 adherents, largely from rural and suburban communities, franchise the brand by committing new crimes in the group’s name. The process repeats and metastasizes.
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
Internal communications reviewed by Raw Story indicate that group members believe their status as children gives them a critical advantage — the impunity to commit acts of targeted terror against innocent people, while laying the groundwork for a future that they hope will allow them to commit murder on a grand scale.
When asked why he wasn’t already killing Black people, one former 2119 member responded, “When the system collapses, that’s the plan.”
Rapid radicalization
The 2119 leaders’ ambitions are chilling and plain in their voluminous online posts.
Their actions preceding prior run-ins with law enforcement speak even more loudly.
Aiden Cuevas, one of 2119’s most enthusiastic promoters, was charged as a juvenile in Alabama with terroristic threatening. He exhorted his peers to assault Black people “to save the white race.”
Aaron Alligood, a longtime member from Georgia, said that he wants “total collapse to happen” and has spoken of this desire to “stick a pistol” in a Black person’s nose, using a racial slur instead of “Black.”
Noah Houran, a 17-year-old from North Carolina described as “a 2119 OG,” distributed the IRA’s guerilla warfare handbook and a sniper training manual on his Telegram channel and expressed approval in response to a news story about a house that was booby-trapped with explosives in anticipation of a police raid.
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year–old Marine Corps veteran who joined 2119 last year, has unapologetically advocated for assassinating judges.
Members of 2119 likewise glorify mass shooters as “saints,” said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
Kaufman noted that 2119 members also display the influences of the most extreme violent faction of the white power movement — what experts call “accelerationism” — “geared towards recruiting youth.”
Accelerationism is a tendency within the white power movement that seeks to hasten the collapse of American society for the purpose of creating conditions favorable to the rise of white ethno-states. Accelerationists reject political methods for achieving the movement’s objectives.
One 2119 member — Alligood — directly endorsed accelerationism on Telegram in December 2022: “I want total collapse to happen.”
Racist and antisemitic intimidation
When the authorities released Fowler on bond around Sept. 1, Georgia-based Aaron Alligood hailed his freedom as a signal that 2119 was on solid ground.
“Good news, Waylon is out on bail,” Alligood wrote in a Telegram chat with an extensive audience of racist skinheads from as far away as Southern California and the Balkans. “And the feds don’t got a case on him.”
Fowler, the reputed 2119 ringleader, awaits trial later this year in Pensacola, having pleaded not guilty to all charges. His freedom appears emboldening.
Since September, 2119 members have allegedly committed at least three additional hate crimes, twicetagging buildings in Laconia, N.H. with antisemitic graffiti and defacing a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C.
Raw Story has independently confirmed vandalism incidents in at least four different states during the past 12 months that incorporated 2119’s various monikers.
The group makes scant effort to conceal its criminal intent. An “action report” it published online baldly states: “Members/associates of the crew are known to have a militant/violent reputation, and embrace confrontation with political/racial enemies.”
Impatience with standard-issue MAGA activism
When voters elected Donald Trump president in 2016, most of 2119’s members were elementary schoolers.
But they came of age during a time when Trump, as a candidate and president, demonized Muslims, attacked transgender Americans and generally shattered democratic norms.
They watched many Republicans cheer the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and jeer subsequent congressional inquiries and criminal trials. And they have seen multitudes of conservatives, from community agitators to federal lawmakers, fully commit to culture-war attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Black history and even library books.
Raised on internet violence, racism and homophobia, the children who gravitated to 2119 helped build their own, unique communion of hate. They could be as extreme and unmoored as they pleased. They operated free from adult-led, optics-conscious white power groups such as Patriot Front or extreme MAGA movements organized around the cult of Trump.
Patriot Front, for one, “failed to make any change in a matter of 6 years,” Alligood complained on Telegram in December. He dismissed Patriot Front’s activism as indistinguishable from MAGA, adding that he encountered the group’s members at a Trump rally — and he was not impressed.
Now, in 2024, Trump is once again all but guaranteed to become the Republican presidential nominee.
But for 2119 members, it’s not enough to be MAGA. It’s not enough to just support Trump.
The 2119 children aspire to something beyond Trump.
For them, it’s about “activism” that spreads fear, if not outright violence.
National 2119 leadership on FBI's radar
Two 2119 devotees in particular have made direct action their calling card of intimidation.
Eight days before his 16th birthday, in November 2022, the FBI summoned Noah Houran at his high school on the North Carolina coastline.
The agents asked Noah about a video he posted that he claimed showed him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. They quizzed him about an online statement he made about plans to attend an unspecified rally.
The agents wanted to know if Noah’s online statements were merely his fantasies, or if he really intended to carry out an act of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ+ violence was cresting at the time. Hysterical rhetoric among conservative politicians and right-wing media personalities braided into a mounting harassment campaign aimed at drag shows. The protests drew far-right groups, sometimes armed, ranging from the Proud Boys to avowed neo-Nazis.
The hostile political climate spilled over into fatal violence on Nov. 19, 2022, when a shooter gunned down five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. As an indicator of the legitimate concern about mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ+ community, the Club Q shooting took place only three days after the date Noah Houran reported to Aaron Alligood that he had been questioned by the FBI.
Noah Houran was a hiking enthusiast whose interest in nature extended to eco-terrorism. A Telegram channel Houran created in October 2023 served as a distribution hub for texts written by Ted Kaczynski, who died in prison last year while serving time for the murders of three people during a 17-year bombing campaign carried out from a cabin in rural Montana.
One of Houran’s posts displayed a photo of a shed built from salvaged materials that was captioned, “Here’s my Ted K cabin, built it about 2 years ago.”
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Less than two months after Houran was questioned by the FBI, Aiden Cuevas announced on Telegram chat that he was in legal trouble, while reassuring his peers that “just in case they get my phone I took off everything affiliating with 2119.”
“I’m on probation for some bulls— charge of terroristic threat (by the FBI of course),” he said.
Cuevas, who in November said he was 18 years old, told his friends he would be serving a sentence at the Mt. Meig’s campus, an Alabama juvenile correctional facility outside of Montgomery.
Raw Story was unable to find any record of Cuevas’ case. It is likely sealed, as he would have been a juvenile at the time of the offense. But in January 2019, WBRC-TV 6 in Birmingham, Ala., reported that a juvenile in Madison County was charged with making a terrorist threat to Thompson High School in Alabaster, Ala..
Cuevas lived in Madison County, which surrounds Huntsville, more than 100 miles to the north.
An Instagram post, made in November 2023, appears to show Noah Houran dressed in camouflage and aiming a rifle. The firearm, with the exception of the scope, is blurred out. Responding to a commenter who said he was “afraid to show his gun,” Noah wrote that he would “rather not repeat 2022” — an allusion to his run-in with the FBI agents.
Raw Story confirmed Cuevas’ identity as a 2119 member who posted on Telegram under the screen name “Bozak” by matching biographical details such as his mother’s birthplace in the Chuvash Republic in Russia, and his father’s U.S. Army assignment in Japan.
'The fascist pipeline'
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania, meanwhile, came out of the extreme end of the MAGA movement, having been active with the Proud Boys when they stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. He appears to be one of the few members of 2119 older than 18 years old.
After Jan. 6, 2021, Bair increasingly gravitated to an array of far-right groups that embraced national socialism more explicitly than the Proud Boys.
“The fascist pipeline is very real, as you well know,” Bair said. “I was in a direct pipeline chapter.”
A well-publicized fistfight between Proud Boys and neo-Nazis in June 2023 appeared to hasten his transition. By November, he began heavily promoting 2119 on his Telegram channel.
In a phone call with Raw Story, Bair confirmed he is now a 2119 member.
The difference between the Proud Boys and younger groups such as 2119, Bair said, is that the Proud Boys tend to attract older men who join to fulfill a need for friendship. The younger members of 2119 are more ideologically committed and less concerned about concealing their racist beliefs, he said.
He said he admired the 2119 members for their brashness.
“When these young ones, when they’re talking to their peer groups — to take the step and proclaim your viewpoint, even talking surface level, they might not mention Hitler, but they’ll say, “Have you read Mein Kampf?”
Bair described Trump’s supporters as a natural constituency for Nazism, while condescendingly treating them as if they are clinging to outdated political norms.
“Regardless of your opinion on Trump,” he wrote on Telegram, “his MAGA following incorporates a large number of people who would be our guys if they could break the matrix.”
‘An untapped market full of white children'
In recent months, recruiting children to 2119’s hate-filled cause has become a top group priority.
For example, in August, Cuevas praised a Telegram channel called Robloxwaffen Division — a coupling of “Roblox,” a popular online game geared for youth, and “Waffen,” the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, or SS.
Cuevas hailed the teenagers behind Robloxwaffen as “geniuses.”
“They are reaching an untapped market full of white children that could potentially change their worldview and get them into the movement just from some fun on Roblox,” he said.
In January, the creator of Robloxwaffen — a teenager known only by his Telegram nickname “Patrius” — posted a Roblox-generated scene that simulated the 1999 Columbine massacre with two avatars holding assault rifles while striking a pose between rows of bookshelves. While his age is unknown, “Patrius” has said he isn’t old enough to drive.
That hasn’t stopped the violent ideations of “Patrius” from becoming even more acute. Earlier this month he threatened to “bomb” a gathering at a skating rink to raise awareness for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day — adding the obligatory disclaimer, “in Roblox.”
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
Cuevas, for his part, counseled fellow neo-Nazi teenagers to immerse themselves in subcultures, such as skateboarding, where they can easily make friends.
“I myself choose to target younger whites, still in high school that are lonely and all they want is a tight group of friends to have fun with,” Cuevas wrote.
Cuevas reported that he met a girl who was skateboarding alone after his local skate park had closed, and “she thought the swastikas were cool and had never seen ‘Nazis’ before.”
He boasted that in the past three weeks he had met “4 young white men that have seen my flag and hung out with my friends while we [will] be casually racist and throw up Romans,” referring to Nazi salutes.
‘Death squad'
Since its inception in May 2022, under the moniker “American Columbian Movement,” the 2119 group has made propaganda videos a key recruiting tool — one they consider essential to their growth and the advancement of their long-term goals.
One shows 2119 members marching to an anti-abortion rally.
“Nat soc death squad,” the teenagers chant in a robotic drone, a reference to the “national socialism” of the Nazis. The children occasionally giggle during the bizarre video.
As recently as December 2023, Cuevas and two other young men dressed in skull masks and protested outside a drag show in Albertville, Ala. The event organizer reviewed Cuevas’ Telegrams posts boasting of his involvement in the protest, and confirmed that she saw the men there.
Another early outing for the members of what would become 2119 took place in 2022, when they attempted to disrupt a May Day cookout in Pensacola. The event was co-hosted at a local park by two far-left organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Democratic Socialists of America.
“We were cleaning up,” Sarah Brummet, a Party for Socialism and Liberation organizer, recalled in an interview with Raw Story. “Some kids came tearing through the park. They were yelling something. We couldn’t really hear it.”
They only learned later from a video that the boys were yelling, “F— you, you f—ing socialist slimy little s—.” After the socialists left the park, the teenage Nazis left flyers reading, “Commies stay off our street.”
“It was like they were afraid to confront us, and they were making agitation for the Internet,” Brummet told Raw Story.
When the official 2119 Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel launched in September 2022, the group began churning out content that positioned it as a digital-era Ku Klux Klan teen auxiliary.
An eight-second video clip posted on the channel in November 2022 included the caption: “Pensacola lads out on patrol searching for Antifas! We protect our community!”
In another evocation of the Klan, a 2119-connected X account published a video showing a flier affixed to a front porch support post reading, “Attention! You have been visited by the 2119 Crew. We are pro-white, pro-Christian national socialists; anti-communist, anti-woke, anti-Zionist.”
Aaron Alligood of Georgia has indicated in online chats that he’s been involved with 2119 since at least October 2022. He also immersed himself in the Terrorgram community, as 2119’s on-the-ground activities became more aggressive.
Alligood became close with both co-administrators of the “P.A.W.G. Ops” channel, an acronym for Primal Aryan Warlord Gang.
A cross-country runner whose father was the head football coach at Berrien High School in Georgia until last year, Alligood became particularly close with Skyler Philippi, one of the channel’s co-administrators.
Philippi called Alligood a “little brother.” Raw Story was unable to determine Alligood’s age, but a runner profile indicates that he is currently a sophomore in high school.
“Like I said, keep your spirits high and play s— smart,” Philippi counseled Alligood. “We will prevail. Be the little man to a big man Hitler would be proud of. Go start reading Mein Kampf tonight.”
Like other Terrorgram channels, the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang celebrated racially-motivated mass murder, valorizing the shooters as “saints,” and promoted attacks on the energy grid. When anti-fascist researchers attributed a fatal shooting in Slovakia to a member of the Terrorgram community, participants in the chat congratulated themselves.
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Terrorgram has been publicly credited for spawning one mass shooter, and here was one of the administrators of a channel where Alligood was a frequent commenter claiming victory.
Alligood’s involvement with the channel came to an abrupt end in January 2023, when one of the channel’s co-administrators was arrested at his home in Rustburg, Va. for conspiring with two other white supremacists to commit a bank robbery.
Shortly after the arrest, the FBI seized Aaron Alligood’s cell phone and laptop, he recounted on a Telegram chat with fellow white supremacists several months later. Although there is no public record of the seizure, Alligood confirmed the incident in a recent interview with Raw Story.
Meanwhile, the 2119 members’ online extremism was also manifesting in aggressive behavior on the ground.
In March 2023, a handful of 2119 members showed up to counter-protest a celebration of International Women’s Day hosted by the PSL in Pensacola. There’s no indication that Alligood, who lived in Georgia, was there.
Brummet described the incident as “a marked escalation.”
“They came up and they started standing close over our members and they were yelling racial slurs,” Brummet recalled. “We were speaking to a lot of things we identify as major social problems and the role of the existing capitalist system in that. They were yelling, ‘F the Jews.’”
2119 members disrupt an International Women's Day celebration in Pensacola, Fla. in March 2023.
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‘Sounds like you fear the brick'
Following the arrests of Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants in Pensacola, Fla. for their antisemitic hate spree in late July, a gusher of local news coverage followed.
The brick inscribed with a swastika instantly became the group’s singular totem of power — an implied threat.
It also became a liability.
Alligood turned to a white power activist named David William Fair, who runs a separate white power group that is friendly with 2119, for advice. He confided that his girlfriend was concerned about his involvement in extremist activity.
Fair advised caution.
“I don’t want you in jail just as much as she don’t,” Fair said on Telegram. “Brick through the finance building is fun and all. But not worth your youth.”
Cuevas interrupted the heart-to-heart conversation between Fair and Alligood by posting a cutout of the brick used to vandalize the Chabad Jewish Center from the photo published in the Pensacola News Journal.
“Sounds like you fear the brick,” he quipped.
“I’m angry at the brick bc it got good boys put behind bars,” Fair replied.
“It rooted out the weak,” Cuevas shot back. “The others are out and will get thru it ez.”
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
Cuevas was likely referring to the Ferry brothers, Kessler and Nicholas. Kessler Ferry, Fowler’s 18-year-old co-defendant, admitted to a Pensacola police detective that he drove Fowler to Chabad Jewish Center.
Randall Etheridge, who is representing both Ferry brothers, told Raw Story his clients are fully cooperating with law enforcement, and that they were “ordered” to drive the Fowler brothers to the crime scenes.
Fowler and his younger brother have pleaded not guilty to all charges. His grandparents, with whom the boys live, referred Raw Story’s questions to their attorney, who declined to comment.
When another member chat asked about 2119, David Fair felt compelled to vouch for the members while also attempting to shield them from the consequences of the alleged crimes in Pensacola.
In an audio recording obtained by Raw Story, Fair identified “Bozak,” who is Cuevas, and “AllenWrench,” who is Alligood, along with “Constantine,” who remains unidentified, as “guys inside” 2119.
Fair opined that 2119’s critics were “insecure,” adding a homophobic slur. They might be “hooligans” who spray-painted swastikas, he said. But so what?
In the recording, Fair acknowledged the alleged crimes in Pensacola, but attempted to insulate the national 2119 leadership from them.
“You know, that was from a local crew of boys that did something objectively stupid, and it shouldn’t have happened,” Fair said. “But that’s not really something on the crew.”
David Fair, the leader of Southern Sons Active Club, discusses 2119 on a Telegram chat for racist skinheads in late 2023.
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Multiple comments on Telegram show that “Constantine,” Alligood and Noah Houran were involved in assessing prospective members to determine if they were suitable material for 2119.
Chatting online with other extremists in early December, Alligood claimed to be on “house arrest.”
Reached by Raw Story for this story, Alligood initially claimed he quit 2119 after he was partially doxed by anonymous antifascist researchers. The researchers were able to identify Alligood because his mother posted a photo of him on her Facebook page posing with a deer he had killed, and Alligood posted the exact same photo on the official Blood and Soil Crew channel.
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
But when Raw Story offered Alligood evidence that he had continued to promote 2119 online and helped members network, he walked back his statement by claiming instead that he never did any “IRL,” or in-real-life, activities after he was doxed.
Alligood admitted to Raw Story that “house arrest” didn’t mean he was legally confined to his house, but rather, it was a way of saying that he had been grounded by his parents.
Commenting on Telegram in early December, Alligood said he was “looking forward to f---ing leaving this house so I can actually meet you n------.
“Oh yeah, it’s gonna be on,” he added. “Thinking about doing a country tour with 2119.”
When contacted by Raw Story in late January for this story, Alligood said he had decided to leave 2119 a couple days earlier.
At one point, Alligood said he would be willing to check in with Raw Story once a month to provide assurances that he continues to avoid any associations with other neo-Nazis.
“I promise you I’ll walk away,” he said. “I’m done with that.”
Antisemitic hate arrives in New Hampshire
The antisemitic vandalism spree in Pensacola had provided 2119 with a degree of notoriety, at least in Florida.
But 2119 members faced a question: How could they extend their brand across the country?
On the weekend of Rosh Hashanah 2023, six weeks after Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants were arrested in Florida, a man ambling down a central New Hampshire walking path discovered antisemitic graffiti on the abandoned Laconia State School building.
The graffiti included the “2-1-1-9” tag, a swastika and a crossed-out Jewish star.
It also said the word “f—,” followed by the name of a specific Jewish person in Laconia whose identity Raw Story has agreed to withhold. Following the person’s name: an antisemitic slur and the words “go to hell.”
Local news reports noted that a year earlier, graffiti depicting Nazi symbols and antisemitic messages had been found at the Laconia Public Library and a local park. A couple months later, police found antisemitic graffiti at the state school property.
The group has had a presence in New England since at least October 2022, when the original 2119 channel displayed a banner described as “a new flag for our folk in New England!”
City Manager Kirk Beattie told the Laconia Daily Sun that the recent graffiti in September 2023 marked an escalation by “calling out a member of the Laconia Jewish community.”
The official 2119 Telegram channel posted a video two weeks later that interspersed images of the graffiti at the Laconia State School and the earlier incident at the public library with images of members stepping on a Black Lives Matter flag and carrying an ammunition box. The video ended with the URL for the Telegram channel and the invitation to “join today.”
Law enforcement struggles
Laconia police have taken note that the graffiti at the state school included 2119’s Telegram address spray-painted onto a nearby water tower. That Telegram channel then displayed a video publicizing the crime.
Detective Eric Benoit, who was assigned to the case, reported that he could not determine who submitted the footage to 2119’s Telegram channel.
Telegram is designed in a way that makes it difficult for law enforcement to investigate user communications. For that reason, Benoit said, Laconia police aren’t putting legal pressure on Telegram to release the information.
Benoit reported that the investigation had so far uncovered no suspects, and he requested that efforts “be suspended pending new information or suspect leads.”
The following month, in October 2023, vandals spray-painted the “2-1-1-9” tag on a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C. Two days after the vandalism was discovered, the official 2119 Telegram channel posted a link to a local news story, accompanied by the comment, “Hitting the news once again.”
Sgt. Gary Mearite, supervisor of the Concord Police Department’s criminal investigation division, told Raw Story that investigators have struggled to develop leads.
Currently, Mearite said, the Concord police are reviewing Telegram channels that have reposted images of the vandalism “and see if we can work our way back.”
“We’re still investigating,” he said. “It takes a long time.”
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), whose district includes Concord, N.C., expressed fury and frustration at the situation. She condemned the vandalism as an act that “shows an appalling absence of basic decency or empathy.”
“I don’t know if it’s social media raising the mirror closer to our faces, the lingering isolation from the pandemic, or something more sinister, but the rise in hatred in this country is apparent,” the congresswoman told Raw Story. “Hate is contagious. Those who catch the illness can only expel it onto others. They seek nothing more than to divide us and then spread their darkness in the void. They want us to hate each other like they hate us. We cannot give in, no matter how we’re provoked.”
In November, 2119 struck again in New England, spray-painting a swastika and the “2-1-1-9” tag on the Belknap County Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Laconia. The perpetrator glued fliers to the windows. One featured a swastika with the slogan, “Save the planet and your race,” while the other featured a quote by American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.
On the same day as the attack on the Democratic Party headquarters, someone placed a bogus order to deliver pizzas to the home of the Jewish community member who was named in the earlier graffiti incident at the state school building.
Elected officials in New Hampshire have also condemned 2119’s attacks.
“The people who did this are domestic terrorists,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer toldTheLaconia Daily Sun. “They want to strike fear in you — not just our Jewish brothers and sisters, but anyone that disagrees with them.”
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) posted on X: “This antisemitic vandalism is part of a surge in hateful attacks on the Jewish community across the country. There is simply no place for bigotry and hate in our society, and we must speak with one voice to condemn it.”
Shortly after the antisemitic harassment in Laconia, 2119 announced that Telegram had deleted its channel.
This hardly deterred them. They simply created a new Telegram channel, and more notably, the 2119 members turned to the broader neo-Nazi community for help promoting the group’s it so they could continue their propaganda push.
“I think the feds ordered our account deleted, with the recent incident in Laconia,” Alligood wrote. “Shout-outs of the channel would be appreciated.”
One member of the chat, unfamiliar with the incident, asked what happened in Laconia.
“Constantine,” the 2119 leader, replied: “2119 Member may or may not allegedly spray-painted the Democrat HQ and left a s— ton of fliers.”
He quickly added: “2119 takes no responsibility for the action taken.”
Feds catching up with 2119?
Tucked into the crevices of their bluster, profanity and grotesque racism, some of the 2119 members have quietly been expressing concern that law enforcement might be catching up to them.
“I’m surprised the feds haven’t been on 2119s ass since the whole Pensacola fiasco,” Alligood remarked to Houran on Telegram in mid-September.
“I’m sure they are,” Houran replied. “We just don’t know it yet.”
Detective Joseph Taschetta told Raw Story that the FBI has assisted the Pensacola Police Department in its investigation of the antisemitic vandalism spree. Likewise, Sgt. Mearite at the Concord Police Department said one of his vice officers contacted an FBI task force officer to obtain information about the 2119 group. And multiple outlets have reported that the FBI is assisting the investigation by the Laconia Police Department.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny that the agency is investigating 2119.
“We would also point out that the FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” a spokesperson for the FBI National Press Office told Raw Story. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Bair, for one, is well acquainted with law enforcement.
In 2018, he unsuccessfully sued the city of York, Pa., and its police department for civil rights violations because an officer allegedly assaulted him during an arrest for disorderly conduct.
During his deposition, Bair told the opposing counsel that he had received multiple concussions while playing soccer in high school and while on combat deployment with the Marine Corps in the Middle East — all of which went untreated. He said he was court-martialed out of the Marine Corps for larceny and sale of classified materials during a deployment to Djibouti, and served one year in the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Va.
Following his military service, Bair said he checked himself into a sober living house in Colorado, and has been in and out of prison for domestic violence and burglary.
Bair, who specialized in demolition in the Marine Corps, told Raw Story that he likes Terrorgram for the “aesthetics.”
“It’s like what the Proud Boys did,” he said. “Nobody promotes the acts themselves, but here’s the information. Read it your goddamn self.”
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram
Asked about a video he posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel, Bair suggested that the “judge” referenced on the flier was a kind of handgun — a Taurus Judge.
He responded with equanimity when asked whether he thought someone might interpret the sign as an endorsement for shooting a judge in a court of law.
“That’s all right,” Bair said.
Bair then volunteered that he lives close to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home in New Jersey during 2020 and fatally shot her son.
A future for 2119?
In response to Raw Story’s reporting, some 2119 members have gone dark on Telegram.
Others, such as Bair, remain defiant. The recent exposure, which also includes a new reference page by the Anti-Defamation League, might cause 2119 to rebrand once again, or potentially splinter.
Bair told Raw Story he expects 2119 will be leading large Nazi marches ahead of the 2024 election.
That seems unlikely given the group’s philosophy of spreading hate while avoiding public scrutiny. And if evidence were needed that his words should be treated with skepticism, Bair mentioned his interview with Raw Story on his Telegram channel, writing, “There’s a lesson about misinformation and misdirection here.”
But now that 2119 is a known entity, history suggests the individual members could put on new costumes to evade scrutiny from law enforcement, antifascist researchers, the media and communities at large.
So don’t look for the young white boys and men steeped in terror doctrines to march under a banner reading “2-1-1-9.” Next time 2119 members show up on the streets of American cities and towns, it’s plausible they’ll have migrated to completely new neo-Nazi groups. And regardless of what mantle they claim, they’ll likely downplay their group identity while merging with other fledgling groups in a bid to project maximum force.
The 2119 members, however, appear unyielding as they continue to propagate hate, lionize those who attack the power grid and laud racially-motivated mass shooters.
* * *
About this investigation: This is the first in a two-part series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The second part, published here, examines how parents navigate the challenges posed by online youth radicalization. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
This project draws upon numerous interviews, primary sources and accounts of 2119’s members and activities, along with information uncovered by Appalachia Research Club, an anonymous antifascist research collective.
A judge told Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) that a restraining order against her ex-husband was "not enforceable" because he was never served with it.
Westword reported that Boebert showed up alone to a court hearing on Thursday, hoping to make the restraining order against her ex-husband, Jayson, permanent.
Boebert received a temporary restraining order on Monday after a series of police-related incidents. But Garfield County Judge Jonathan Pototsky said on Thursday that Boebert's former husband had to be officially served before it could be enforced.
"Even if he knows about it, he doesn't know about it," the judge explained.
"Is there a protection order in place?" Boebert wondered. "Is there still no contact even though he has not been served?"
"The temporary protection order has been issued, but it's technically not enforceable until he is served. Because he doesn't know about it," the judge replied.
Pototsky agreed to continue the case until March 4, giving Boebert time to serve her ex-husband.
Following the hearing, Jayson Boebert said he was unaware of the court proceedings.
"I just want to put our anguish aside and come to a common ground that is in the best interest of our children," he told Westword. "I hope the dust begins to settle and she and I can work together to continue to give our boys what they deserve. I also want the best for Lauren, and I will always keep her in my prayers."
"I am unsure of Lauren's thought process through this," he added. "I just pray that she be led by the Holy Spirit."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) complained after Democrats called out her past statements during a debate over the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
During a House floor debate on Tuesday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) noted that Republicans were following in line behind Greene's impeachment resolution despite her history of conspiracy theories.
"Though she sits on the Homeland Security Committee, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has raised doubts about 9-11 to the false assertion that 9-11 was done by our own government," Thompson noted. "She said that's all true. She also thinks Jewish space lasers cause wildfires. She fundraises off defunding the FBI."
"She's a person whose advice Republicans are taking today on this impeachment," he pointed out.
Greene later complained during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.
"You really took some beating today," Bannon observed.
"That's right, Steve," Greene replied. "I've been the Democrat punching bag. Well, it's kind of been that way since I became a member of Congress, but especially through our debates and impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas."
"They would rather defend the man that has caused our country to be invaded by over 10 million illegal aliens with nearly two million gotaways," she added. "They would rather defend the man that has caused that to happen to the American people than actually agree with me."
"They defend him and attack me all day long and attack President Trump."
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called on Republicans to stop short of giving women the "death penalty" for abortions.
At a campaign stop in South Carolina on Monday, Haley was asked if she made a mistake by calling for a federal ban on abortions without specifics.
"In South Carolina and elsewhere, people on both sides of the aisle, they, they deal with weeks, they want hard, firm weeks," a moderator told Haley. "Was that a misfire on your part?"
Haley insisted she had not made a mistake.
"I mean, no offense, but the fellas don't know how to talk about this, and they just don't," the candidate opined. "The issue of abortion is incredibly personal to every woman and every man, and it requires respect."
"I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband was adopted, and I had trouble having both of my children," she continued. "And I think that there is a place for a federal law, but they need to tell the American people the truth on how you get there."
Haley acknowledged that Republicans could not get 60 votes in the Senate to pass a strict federal abortion ban.
"So what should we do? I think we find consensus. Can't we agree to ban late-term abortions?" she asked. "And can't we agree that no state law should say to a woman that if she has an abortion, she's going to jail or get the death penalty."
"I will not be a part of demonizing this issue," she added. "I think that I've watched Democrats, they have put fear in women. And I've watched Republicans use judgment. There's no place for fear or judgment when you're talking about something this personal and this sensitive."
Haley has said she would have signed a six-week abortion ban as governor of South Carolina.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced a resolution to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — but she insists that measure doesn't go far enough.
"Today, I introduced a censure resolution against Ilhan Omar, and the reason why I did that, and I'll just say this, censure is not going far enough," Greene said Thursday in a video posted to X. "If it were up to me, we would expel Ilhan Omar and deport her out of the United States."
According to Greene, Omar allowed "Somalians in the U.S." to tell the government what to do.
"She also said, for as long as I am in Congress, Somalia will never be in danger," the Georgia Republican continued. "Ihan Omar needs to be censured, but censure is not enough. I'm telling you right now, she's acting as a foreign agent on behalf of a foreign country. Our country is going to be taken over from the inside."
"Ilhan Omar needs to be censured," Greene added. "I urge my colleagues to vote to censure her."
In a recent viral video, Omar told a room full of Somali supporters that they could influence the U.S. government.
"We as Somalis should have that confidence in ourselves. We live in this country. We pay taxes in this country," she said, according to a translation. "It's a country where one of your own sits in Congress. As long as I'm in Congress, no one will take Somalia's sea. And the United States will not support other people to rob us. Rest assured, Minnesotans. The woman you sent to Congress is aware of you and has the same interest as you."
“It’s Josh Hawley. Do you have a second to pray with me?” reads the message sent today from the first-term U.S. senator and Donald Trump loyalist.
Click on the link and it goes to “My prayer for today - January 30th, 2024.”
“... let truth and justice prevail in this land once again,” Hawley’s prayer reads.
“Bless America with Revival!” it continues.
But the Republican from Missouri, who’s up for reelection in November, has an ulterior motive: money.
In bold-faced type highlighted in yellow, Hawley then asks his backers: “Your support means the world to me, can I count on you?”
Listed are a series of suggested donations, ranging from $25 — “Help bring faith back to America” it says next to that figure — to $3,300.
Any contribution will go to Hawley’s reelection campaign, the fine print notes.
“I’m not shy about my strong faith,” Hawley writes. “I’m beyond proud to be a man of God. We need to bring FAITH back into our government and I’m hoping you’ll stand with me.”
Then he hits another hot button: “Woke liberals have already started to attack me.”
Hawley’s prayer is hardly the first time this campaign season that a MAGA-loving politico co-opted God in support of election goals. An extreme example came at a Donald Trump rally during October in Iowa, where pastor Joshua Graber asked God to “silence” critics of the Republican frontrunner for president and that the “horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down.”
Hawley’s Senate seat is rated “solid Republican” by the Cook Political Report.
His likely Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, touted a November poll from a primarily Democratic consulting firm showing him as only 4 percentage points behind Hawley — a gap within the polls margin of error. An October poll from Emerson College gave Hawley a double-digit lead.
Hawley is perhaps best known for pumping his fist in support of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and, when in potential danger from violence, running to safety.
Jared Young, an independent candidate running for Hawley’s Senate seat, wrote in the Kansas City Star that he gives Hawley a pass for running from what Young said was understandable concern.
But, Young added, “To someone like me who voted for Hawley in 2018, it is his actions in the weeksfollowing Jan. 6 that demonstrate he is completely unfit for his office.”
He continued, “For most Americans, Jan. 6 was a shocking and disturbing day. … But it wasn’t a wake-up call for Josh Hawley. … That is not what we heard from our senator. That is not what we heard from our senator. Instead, he doubled down and leaned into his role in the events of that day, believing it would endear him to the Republican primary voters he hopes will one day choose him as their presidential nominee.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and her husband aresuing the federal government, alleging COVID vaccine requirements in the military violated their religious beliefs because the therapy was developed using embryonic stem cells.
But Luna’s husband, Andrew Gamberzky, who resigned from the Air National Guard over the issue, also invests in a company that uses human embryonic stem cells to treat disabilities, according to Luna’s most recent congressional financial disclosure.
Gamberzky owns between $1,001 and $15,000 of stock in Lineage Cell Therapeutics. The California-based company says it intends to “pioneer a new branch of medicine based on transplanting specific cell types to patients with serious medical conditions,” such as paralysis.
That, according to corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, includes the use of embryonic stem cells derived from human embryos — a practice that many conservatives consider morally fraught, if not reprehensible, amid an age-old debate over the definition of personhood and when life truly begins.
The lawsuit, which includes the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force as defendants, seeks monetary damages for “significant financial injury … including loss of healthcare, spousal benefits, and survivor benefits as provided for by the military.”
“Plaintiff is unable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines due to what they believe and understand is a connection between these vaccines and their testing, development, or production using fetal cell lines,” the lawsuit says.
“Plaintiffs hold the sincere religious belief that they must not take anything into their bodies that God has forbidden or that would alter their body functions, such as by inducing the production of a spike protein in a manner not designed by God.”
Luna’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this year — before Luna and Gamberzky filed the lawsuit — Raw Story first reported on Gamberzky’s ownership of Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock in the context of Luna’s staunch anti-abotion position.
At the time, Luna congressional press aide Darren Dershem acknowledged Raw Story’s several requests for comment, but Luna’s office did not otherwise respond to messages and emailed questions.
Luna spokeswoman Edie Heipel subsequently said in an email to Raw Story that "Rep. Luna’s positions on this issue are blatantly clear" and that "she has no and has never had affiliation" with Lineage Cell Therapeutics "to include owning stock".
Heipel did not respond to several follow-up questions, including why Luna's husband purchased Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock, what she thinks of her husband's stock holding and whether he plans to sell it.
Congressional financial disclosures, which require members of Congress to detail stock trades made by themselves, their spouses and dependent children, offer no indication that Gamberzky sold his Lineage Cell Therapeutics.
Lineage Cell Therapeutics did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, the company declined to answer questions about its technology, use of embryonic stem cells or investments in the company by government officials.
“The company is not able to contribute to your report on the personal financial investments of federal government officials,” spokesman Nic Johnson wrote in an email.
‘No better than the Nazis’
Luna herself has previously questioned the use of certain human stem cells in medical research.
"A lot of times doctors and scientists will argue, well, 'we need stem cells.' Well, you don't have to have necessarily fetal stem cells,” Luna said during an interview in 2021 with One America News. “There's other stem cells that they can use. Then they can clone and harvest. So I feel like that whole argument in itself is really disturbing, because at the end of the day, you know, where are they getting this tissue?
"It's not OK. It's morally wrong,” Luna continued, citing the sale of pre-birth tissues for research purposes. “It's not done in the name of science. And frankly, if you're going to do human testing, that makes us no better than the Nazis."
In a March 9 filing with the SEC covering company activity in 2022, Lineage Cell Therapeutics briefly addressed embryonic stem cells.
"Government-imposed bans or restrictions on the use of embryos or hES cells in research and development in the United States and abroad could generally constrain stem cell research, thereby limiting the market and demand for our products," the company stated.
‘Pro-choice & pro-woman arguments are b-------’
The investment in Lineage Cell Therapeutics represents the only stock shares that Luna or Gamberzky own, according to Luna’s most recent financial disclosure, which she filed with U.S. House officials on Aug. 2, 2023.
Gamberzky appears to have purchased the stock sometime between late September 2021 and late August 2022, as an earlier disclosure filed by Luna in 2021 did not list a Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock holding. The 2022 filing did list the investment. No specific date is given for the purchase.
Lineage Cell Therapeutics says it uses stem cells to “replace or support cells that are dysfunctional or absent due to degenerative disease or traumatic injury, or administered as a means of helping the body mount an effective immune response to cancer.”
Then and now, Luna, a freshman who won Florida’s 13th Congressional District seat in 2022, routinely decries abortion and argues that human life is sacred from its earliest stages.
She has cheered the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a federal right to abortion. And during her brief congressional tenure, she's already co-sponsored several House bills that aim to reduce abortions or restrict and regulate abortion rights, including H.R. 862 — the "Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act of 2023" — H.R. 7 — the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2023" and H.R. 4345, which seeks to "protect the dignity of fetal remains".
“My mother chose #life. My husband was adopted. There are so many stories like ours,” Luna wrote in a May 2022 Facebook post in explaining her opposition to abortion. “It’s time we look at what the science says about life. If a single cell organism is considered life on another planet, what about a multi-cellular being in a womb?”
In 2019, Luna wrote: “Abortion was never intended for women’s rights. It was intended to rid the 'supreme' race of less valued bloodlines. Abortion was born in eugenics. All those pro-choice & pro-woman arguments are b-------.”
More recently, in March, Luna pilloried Washington, D.C., city officials during a dramatic House Oversight Committee hearing. She accused them of ignoring “horrific” abortions of fetuses that she said were fully or near-fully developed and aborted by a doctor who should lose his medical license. She said the fetuses were children and named them: Christopher, Harriet, Phoenix, Holly and Angel.
Behind Luna in the Capitol hearing room as she spoke: large posters of their dead bodies.
Stem cell therapy, in general, offers great promise for people stricken with a variety of maladies.
But the use of embryonic stem cells, specifically, has for years caused doctors, scientists, bioethicists and the religious to debate whether the potential for life-improving stem cell treatments outweighs what some consider an immutable wrong — regardless of whether human embryos used would have ever been implanted or viable.
Human embryonic stem cells used for therapeutic purposes primarily come from early embryos known as blastocysts that “were created by in vitro fertilization (IVF) for assisted reproduction but were no longer needed,” according to the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a nonprofit organization that counts 4,500 scientists, educators, ethicists and business leaders among its ranks.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for one, questions their use, stating: “The Church favors ethically acceptable stem cell research. It opposes destroying some human lives now, on the pretext that this may possibly help other lives in the future. We must respect life at all times, especially when our goal is to save lives.”
‘Floridians can count on Anna Paulina Luna’
Anti-abortion organizations have lauded Luna, an endorsee of former President Donald Trump who last year spearheaded the censure of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), for such advocacy.
“Floridians can count on Anna Paulina Luna to champion life-affirming policies that protect moms and babies from the horror of abortion, and we are proud to endorse her for Congress,” Marilyn Musgrave, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s vice president of government affairs, wrote last year when her organization endorsed Luna. “Anna Paulina was raised by a single mother and knows firsthand the compassion and vital services the pro-life movement offers mothers in need. She stands in stark contrast to Democrats who push for abortion on demand up to birth, even cruel late-term abortions, paid for with tax dollars – an agenda Floridians overwhelmingly reject.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America did not immediately respond to questions about Luna’s husband’s investment in Lineage Cell Therapeutics.
Annual personal financial disclosures, which are mandatory for all members of Congress, detail the assets, investments, financial trades, debts, royalties and outside sources of income for lawmakers and their spouses. Congress requires these filings to in part defend against conflicts of interest and enhance government transparency.
Lawmakers are also required to disclose any individual stock or cryptocurrency trade within 45 days of making them, although dozens of members of Congress have failed to comply with this law, leading to some to introduce outright bans on members of Congress making such trades.
Federal records also indicate that on June 1, the U.S. House Committee on Ethics granted Luna’s request in May for a gift waiver associated with the birth of her first child, who was born in August.
The waiver allows Luna to forego publicly disclosing gifts related to the birth.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) Wednesday suggested that pregnant women should be forced to give birth to "fill jobs" and solve the "population growth problem."
Greene made the remarks during a House Oversight Committee hearing on immigration policy.
"Sitting in here earlier, I was listening to the discussion on jobs and that the whole reason claimed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that they want to bring in as many illegal aliens as possible, give them amnesty so they can fill jobs in America," Greene claimed. "And then they talked about that we have a population growth problem in the United States."
"Well, I think we can all say that if maybe, perhaps, 63 million people weren't murdered in the womb, we wouldn't have a population growth problem, would we?" she asked. "That's not women's reproductive rights. That's called abortion. It's called murder."
Greene blamed abortion rights for slowing population growth.
"But Democrats claim that we've got to replace Americans with illegal aliens to fill jobs," she said, referring to the theory that immigrants are replacing white Americans.
"That's their solution," Greene complained. "And take away jobs from Americans."
A New York Republican congressman got harsh feedback on Saturday after he apparently misstated what the U.S. Constitution says about hate speech.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY), one of the lawmakers who called for George Santos to be expelled, posted on social media that hate speech is excepted from the freedom of speech that's protected in the American constitution.
"Our First Amendment comes with very few limitations," the GOP Rep. wrote. "Yet, one of those worthy limitations is hate speech."
He added, "A first-year law student understands this and so should the presidents of our 'greatest' institutions of learning." He appeared to be referencing the antisemitic hate speech at top-tier college campuses, and how some school presidents refused to condemn it as against their schools' policies.
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, replied to the post with, "The First Amendment protects your vile hate speech against it."
Former Tea Party congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL), who also has slammed "pathetic" Santos, chimed in on the apparent mistake, as well.
"At first I thought this was a parody account," Walsh wrote. "Congressman, for someone who took an oath to defend the Constitution, you don't understand the Constitution."
He added that hate speech "is allowed in America."
"The First Amendment PROTECTS hate speech," Walsh added. "Please correct this."
It does not seem as though LaLota corrected the post, instead apparently opting to delete it. In its place, there is now a post that reads, "A big thanks to all Servicemembers, First Responders, public employees, and medical staff who will be away from their families on Christmas because they are answering the call of duty. Thankful for their sacrifice!"
But the internet doesn't forget. In the comments of the new post, several people called out the Republican.
"Posting our Constitutional right to free speech is limited if we criticize Israel is cringe. You should resign from shame of being traitorous," one wrote.
Donald Trump’s list of “impressive” people on his recently released Iowa Faith Leader Coalition include several men of hate.
There’s a congressional candidate who once suggested hanging former President Barack Obama and offered conciliatory words for white supremacists and white nationalists.
And a pastor once offered a political rally prayer that asked God to “silence” Trump’s critics.
A Raw Story review of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition list, which includes more than 250 names, identified David Pautsch of Davenport, Iowa, as the person who once suggested Obama should be hanged for treason.
Pautsch, who’s challenging Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks in a congressional primary, also encouraged people to come to the defense of former Rep. Steve King of Iowa after King told the New York Times in 2019, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
“I thought it was an important question to ask — why are those offensive words?” Pautsch said.
Pautsch is the organizer of a longtime annual prayer breakfast, which has attracted politicians such as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and former Louisiana governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal. Pautsch said the breakfast isn’t about politics or skin color.
“This is a matter of who has embraced Jesus Christ,” Pautsch told the Quad Cities Times before the 2019 prayer breakfast. “It is a simple fact that the cultures that have embraced Christ have flourished — and those that haven't are stuck in a degraded state. We are talking about a huge cultural development issue. The cultures that embrace Jesus Christ are the ones that last and are successful. Just read history. And it's a biblically established fact of history."
The Quad Cities Times reporter asked the featured guest at that year’s prayer breakfast, former Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker, if he believed in Christian superiority.
Walker, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2016, demurred.
"My focus at the prayer breakfast will be on how all of us are welcome at the table of God," Walker said.
Pautsch’s most recent prayer breakfast featured losing Arizona gubernatorial candidate and current senatorial candidate Kari Lake. In 2021, MyPillow CEO and Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell was the featured guest.
Pautsch posted to Facebook a list of “Tips for Effective Prayer Breakfast Participation.” Among them: “Encourage every Christian to pay something” and “Collect the $50 for the Table of Eight up front.”
Pautsch said he’s challenging the Republican incumbent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, for Congress because she’s “too often out of step with the principles of her fellow Republicans and with biblical morality.”
Neither Pautsch nor Trump’s campaign responded to requests for comment.
Joshua Graber of Vinton, Iowa, delivered the opening prayer at a Trump rally in October — asking God to “silence” Trump’s critics. Those critics include, apparently, the people who have charged the former president with 91 felonies across two federal and two state-level cases.
“We ask that those who stand against him would be put to silence, that those horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down,” said Graber, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church. “... Give us the courage to stand with President Trump in the caucuses and elections to come.”
Pastor’s opening prayer at Trump rally today in Iowa: “We ask that those who stand against (Trump) be put to silence. That those horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down. Give us the courage to stand with Trump.” pic.twitter.com/lyIRo5PdTm — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2023
Graber routinely rails against the federal government. But he also has personal financial ties to it: It was that government that gave him a Rural Housing Service loan, on which the government foreclosed in 2018, and it was that government to which he turned for help in a 2019 bankruptcy filing.
Graber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yet another of Trump’s faith leaders, Rick Bick, has compared LGBTQ people to pedophiles and claims to have himself traveled to heaven.
“For people that might want to question whether there’s a heaven, there’s a heaven. I’ve been there,” Bick, of Ottumwa, Iowa, said in a 2022 video. “… It’s almost eight years ago that I had a massive heart attack, died, went to heaven and got sent back. It’s a great place.”
In a Facebook post, Bick said, “Jesus sent me back!!” Bick didn’t offer more detail.
Bick did not respond to requests for comment.
In the video, titled The Purpose of the Bible, Bick lashed out at LGBTQ people.
“I live in a city which is adamant about promoting the LGBTQ agenda,” he said. “That’s not how God wants us to live. We need to stand out from that. We need to do things different.”
Bick lost his bid for mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa, in 2021. During the campaign, he was asked if he would approve permits for gay pride events. Earlier in the year, Ottumwa Pride had a block party and the City Council approved a Pride Month proclamation.
Bick said he doesn’t consider the LGBTQ community as a “people group” in the same way he regards racial groups.
“If you pick this sexual group, what about the pedophile group?” Bick said. “Are you going to give them special preference — well, I won’t go any farther because I could say other things I dealt with as a minister. To me, it’s a sexual preference group; not a race or ethnicity.”
Bick also criticized Mormon theology in the video.
“Many years ago I planted a church in the oldest Mormon community in Arizona,” Bick said. “You know, there’s a lot of false doctrine there. They use words and terminology that are the same that we use, but we need to know what (they mean), because their definition of Jesus is a whole lot different than ours.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments about being a “dictator” and immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” — among innumerable other things that would sink the candidacy of anyone else — are actually helping the former president in Iowa. He is gaining support, according to a recent poll of Iowans likely to caucus.
A still from an October 2023 propaganda 
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram