americafest Kirk
12 25 schism knife fight?
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Former Scientologist Leah Remini is warning that members of the religious group she escaped from have successfully carried out an "infiltration" of President Donald Trump's inner circle.
On Tuesday, Redstate founder Erick Erickson tweeted that there were a "lot of Scientologists hanging out in the President's orbit lately," which could be a reference to two Scientologists prominent in conservative politics. Real estate developer Grant Cardone — who spoke at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally in October of 2024 — was
at Turning Point USA's annual Americafest event in Phoenix, Arizona this month.
Cardone is also a featured content creator on far-right PragerU's website, where he is described as "an entrepreneur, real estate investor and sales trainer recognized for his high-energy approach to business and personal growth." In 2011, the Village Voice reported that Cardone had reached OT VIII (Operating Thetan Level Eight), which is the highest level within the organization.
In addition to Cardone, Scientologist Patricia Duggan is also close to Trump, as he appointed her to the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts earlier this year. Duggan's level within the organization is not publicly known, though she is the largest single donor to the group, with the Tampa Bay Times reporting that the Church of Scientology created the donor category "Patron of Legend" just for her. Her then-husband Robert Duggan said in 2016 he donated ore than $360 million to the group.
"Yes, this is accurate, Erick, and very scary," Remini wrote in a response to Erickson's tweet. "Thank you for always being aware of the dangers of Scientology and their successful infiltration of the Trump administration and the federal government overall."
The act of infiltrating government agencies is a longstanding practice of the organization, according to a 1980 St. Petersburg Times report that won the Pulitzer Price, In the 1970s, the Church of Scientology carried out a plan dubbed "Operation Snow White" in which approximately 5,000 Scientologists sought to gain access to 136 government agencies, embassies and private organizations to purge all documents casting the organization in an unfavorable light. An IRS librarian spotted two Scientologists at its Washington D.C. office, which led to a federal raid on the group's buildings resulting in the seizure of more than 48,000 documents.
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mma 1`2 23 the blaze
JASON WHITLOCK: They have recreated this history that oh God, it was all just sexism, and we didn’t have the right to vote until Susan B. Anthony and the women’s suffrage movement and I will defend life before suffrage. Because a vote used to represent the family. When we were a culture that really valued family and really understood the natural order that God intended, man serving God, woman following man who serves God, man and woman developing and nurturing children.
You only needed one vote per household because that vote was about the entire family as they have destroyed our family structure and made this all an individual pursuit. Not everybody has to have a vote and everybody has to have an agenda that a lot of times has nothing to do with family.
an 12 23
at Turning Point USA's AmeriFest gathering, Trevian Kutti — one of Donald Trump's co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference case — posed for a photo with Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. The QAnon Shaman. On Monday, December 18, the Chicago-based Kutti posted the photo (which shows her raising her middle finger) on Instagram. And that same day, her attorneys filed a motion to drop her as a client.
Kutti's Instagram post, referring to Chansley, reads, "just like they lied on him THEY ARE LYING ON ME." Chansley served time in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.
Atlanta-based attorney Darryl Cohen, who has been representing Kutti in Willis' case, told The Messenger, "In order to have a good lawyer-client relationship, the client has to listen. The client has to be on board, and you have to be paid. All these things have to happen. I'm not saying any of those things did or didn't happen, but you can extrapolate."
Cohen, according to Messenger reporters Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Darren Samuelsohn, said he was speaking in general terms and didn't talk about Kutti specifically.
The attorney, however, also told The Messenger, "This case is so unusual and so high profile with everybody looking at it under a microscope, that you've got to be very careful as to what you say because you never know who's coming after you."
Kutti, an ex-publicist for R&B singer R. Kelly and the pro-Donald Trump rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is facing RICO and witness intimidation charges in Willis' case but is free on bail — at least for now.
The Messenger's Zachary Leeman, on December 4, reported that Willis' office was considering a request to revoke Kutti's bail in response to threatening comments she made on Instagram about former Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/turning-point-usa-turns-its-attention-elementary-schoolers
biblical citizen?!
mma 12 22
a decade ago, Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA, whose stated intent is playing “offense with a sense of urgency to win America’s culture war” on high school and college campuses. Now, the organization has turned its attention to an even younger demographic, announcing the launch of Turning Point Academy, a supposedly anti-“woke” “educational movement” curriculum which aims to bring conservative values and right-wing talking points into elementary and high school classrooms.
Recent TPUSA campaigns, which feature at least one K-12 school and incentives for young people to attend the organization's annual conference, come amid a broader political landscape in which right-wing media and political figures, including Kirk and others associated withTPUSA, have been lobbing false accusations that Democrats are forcing a “woke” agenda on children that amounts to sexual grooming.
On June 7, TPUSA put out a press release announcing that it would be opening its first “brick and mortar” school, Turning Point Academy, in collaboration with Dream City Christian Schools in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. According to the release, “Dream City Christian, a Turning Point Academy,” is the first in a “growing network of schools” that will incorporate the curriculum and structure designed by TPUSA and Kirk.
This curriculum attempts to
what right-wing figures have identified as threats to conservative education. Rather than arguing that this educational project is apolitical, as other right-wing figures have, Turning Point Academy is proud to announce that it is “Christian, Classical, conservative, church-based and cost-affordable.” Turning Point Academy assures parents that “CRT, postmodernism, ‘Wokeism,’ deconstructionism, queer theory, radical LGBT agendas, and anti-American ideas such as the 1619 projectwill have no place at our institution” and promises “to never waver from the truth and to teach self-government and liberty to students.”
Dream City Christian is an existing K-12 private school that claims the “current political and spiritual climate in the country is in turmoil” and that a “well-established biblical worldview is a must for every student.” This combined ethos of Christian education and right-wing politics makes Dream City Christian a clear fit for TPUSA’s particular blend of Christian fundamentalism and Trumpism.
While Dream City Christian provides the institution and the location, TPUSA brings its experience campaigning at colleges and high schools across the country. As Kirk said:
“Having been in the educational world for 10 years, we have access to some of the best educational resources, teachers, academics and curriculums this country has to offer. We can bring those to bear as we relaunch Dream City Christian as the first Turning Point Academy, ensuring it is a model for others to follow as we launch additional Turning Point Academies around the country.”
The “educational resources” TPUSA offers include activism kits, original media, and access to a number of conservative speaking events. Alongside Young America’s Foundation, and its campus organization Young Americans for Freedom, TPUSA is a major conservative influence on campuses around the country.
TPUSA also hosts AmericaFest, a conservative conference that will take place from December 17 to December 20 of this year, featuring speakers including Candace Owens and Matt Walsh. This year’s conference will also include Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who was the subject of a federal probe due to allegations that he violated federal child sex trafficking laws and whose associate, Joel Greenberg, was recently convicted of charges for similar infractions resulting from the investigation.
TPUSA has special provisions in place aimed at attracting conservative minors to the event, including reduced ticket prices, hotel accommodations, and travel stipends. At the same time, the organization will host its Educators’ Summit, an event it has advertised to parents and teachers who may be curious about Turning Point Academy.
[cost perks]
TPUSA’s appeal to the next generation comes while right-wing figures continue to accuse the Democratic Party of indoctrinating students with “woke” curricula and falsely conflate LGBTQ representation in schools with the sexual grooming of young people. In addition to rejecting LGBTQ representation and inclusive curriculum in schools, these conservative influences are often explicitly anti-trans, as in the case of conservative children’s books recently published by Matt Walsh and Steven Crowder. TPUSA, which has long been a conservative influence on college campuses and a pipeline to conservative media outlets across the country, is now highlighting the next frontier of the conservative educational ecosystem: children and minors “15 & under.”