Over lunch a bit ago, I watched the finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” What a mix of happy and sad. Joy Reid gives us a good rundown on her Substack, along with pertinent history. I subscribe for free, so do give her a click to finish reading and watching; I promise you’ll be happy you did! And sad, too.
Late night TV is all but dead, anyway, right? Colbert made it into the lifeboats before the ship went down.
Viewership of the three major network offerings is down 70-80 percent in the “money demo” (18-49) and 9 percent overall versus the peak year for the genre, 2015; the year Colbert took over The Late Show from David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon succeeded Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel moved to 11:35 p.m. That said, Colbert was the highest rated late night show and still brought in an audience north of 2.4 million every night; a number CNN would kill for.
In reality, the declines in viewership really only account for the very much dying medium of network (and cable) television. The realty is, most people who watched Colbert, and still catch Kimmel, Fallon and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, watch on YouTube or catch (and share) the clips on social media (well not the clips – since these geezer broadcast companies will ding any creator who posts their clips on a YouTube channel – as if sharing their content hurts them…) Or they subscribe to the app where John Oliver’s show runs. The real death of the genre has nothing to do with the talents of the hosts. It’s about the audience moving online (and the younger audience choosing streamers over everyone): (snip; skipping to a fun part, but seriously do go read and watch in the entirety!)
Still, for the Ellisons to unceremoniously end not just Colbert’s tenure on The Late Show, but to end the show altogether, is a sign. It’s a sign of the right wing billionaire stranglehold on our media — with the MAGA Zionist family in control of Paramount CBS and soon of Warner Bros and CNN, too, Jeff Bezos ruining the Washington Post, and the Murdochs controlling Fox, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Between that and the rotten billionaire boys club that controls every social media app, we live in a MAGA hellscape that answers the question: what would happen if old time South African apartheid went global?
And the number of CBS employees who are now unemployed because a Zionist family and their MAGA claque wants to give a weak, whiny president who can’t take a joke comfort TV to watch as he drools himself to sleep in his gold-covered Barcalounger every night is both sad and infuriating. (snip-skipping again)
My next appearance, and the first time we met in person was in July 20 2021:
(snip-skipping again)
But beyond the personal, I think it’s important to recall that Colbert has been, alongside people like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers and others outside the very white, male confines of network late night — a brave voice of resistance against Trumpism and autocracy. And that voice will be missed. Silencing Stephen was clearly the Ellisons’ goal. But in this new world of independent media, silencing people isn’t so easy.
Good reads:
This throwback piece on the initial Colbert announcement is great, and not just because it also mentions me. And I love the title:
Eric Trump is threatening to sue Jen Psaki for a segment on her MS NOW show.
Psaki questioned on her show, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, if there’s a conflict of interest by Eric joining his father on his trip to China. She cited an article by the Financial Times that reported that Alt5 Sigma, a company with ties to Eric Trump, was pursuing a deal to build data centers in the US with a Chinese chipmaker that American lawmakers have warned is connected to the ruling Communist Party.
Presidents usually put a blind trust in charge of their finances while they are in office, but not Donald Trump. Instead of a blind trust, he has put Eric in charge of the family business. That does not prevent Donald from controlling his money, and in fact, he has been making a lot of trades and investments lately himself. Psaki pointed out that this arrangement with Eric was supposed to prevent conflicts of interest, “but there he is.” (snip-MORE)
Usually, when someone tells you about a news item you may not have heard about yet, they’ll leave out some pertinent facts. When I first heard that California had banned the Kars4Kids jingle, the most annoying song in the world, they did not tell me why. I thought to myself that California couldn’t do that because of the First Amendment. Right? No one has banned Nickelback yet.
As it turns out, the supposed nonprofit group, Kars4Kids, has to stop airing its jingle in California because the judge found that it violated the state’s false advertising and unfair competition laws. (snip-MORE)
The $1.8 billion slush fund that the Justice Department is awarding to Donald Trump’s criminal allies is so blatantly corrupt that even Republicans can’t defend it. Some Republicans are so upset that they’re actually speaking out publicly against it.
Referring to acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and the fact that J6 terrorists are eligible for the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” Mitch McConnell said, “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – take your pick.”
Senate Republicans derailed a massive immigration enforcement bill and left town until early today, despite Donald Trump ordering them to pass the $7o billion bill before June 1. How disgusting do you have to be to sicken sycophantic MAGAt Republicans? (snip-MORE)
Every day, hair salons sweep countless hair clippings off their floors and toss them into the trash without much thought. But in parts of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, those discarded strands are finding an entirely different purpose: helping forests grow.
French recycling company Capillum has developed a surprisingly effective way to reuse human hair by turning it into biodegradable mulch that protects young trees from hungry deer. The company collects hair from participating salons and transforms it into flattened fiber sheets that can be wrapped around vulnerable saplings.
What sounds unusual at first actually solves several environmental problems at once.
A second life for salon clippings
Hair salons generate an enormous amount of waste each year. Most clippings are simply thrown away, even though human hair is remarkably durable because it is made largely from keratin, a fibrous protein that breaks down slowly over time.
Capillum saw potential in a material most people never think twice about. The company accepts hair regardless of texture, length, color, or whether it has been dyed. Once gathered, the hair is fed into a machine that minces everything together into dense fiber sheets that can be laid around the base of trees. The process transforms something typically viewed as garbage into a practical tool for conservation efforts.
Why young trees need protection
Many forests depend on saplings surviving long enough to mature and replenish the ecosystem. However, young trees often struggle in areas with large deer populations. Deer are known to chew on bark, especially during seasons when food is scarce. Because saplings have thin bark and delicate trunks, even small amounts of damage can stunt their growth or kill them entirely.
Foresters have historically relied on plastic fencing and tree guards to keep deer away. While those barriers can work well, they also create waste and require maintenance over time.
Capillum’s recycled hair mats offer another approach. The scent of human hair naturally discourages deer from getting too close to the trees, steering them toward other vegetation instead. The method protects saplings without harming wildlife.
A biodegradable alternative to plastic
Unlike plastic guards, the hair fibers gradually decompose and return nutrients to the soil. As the keratin breaks down, it releases nitrogen and amino acids that can support plant growth. That nutrient-rich quality is one reason some gardeners have long experimented with placing hair into compost piles or using it directly in garden beds. Knowing this, Capillum sells its eco-friendly hair mulch to home gardeners interested in more sustainable growing methods.
Human hair is more useful than most people realize(snip-MORE)
Surely there are people here in the US, in our profit-driven society, who could do this recycling, as well.
It’s horrifying that these Jewish settlers who want to eradicate entirely the Muslim population. One woman described Islam as a cancer and wants the Islamists killed or reeducated. Muslims who own businesses can’t even open their shops. But there is a small minority trying to protect the arabs. Hugs
Last week I flagged that oral argument was set in the D.C. Circuit for this past Thursday in the combined challenges filed by four law firms against Trump’s executive orders seeking to keep them from conducting much of their business. All four firms won in the lower courts. Based on the panel’s reception, they seem on track to do it again.
These cases are highly significant because they go to the heart of a major abuse of executive power: Trump’s insistence that he has the ability to put entities that oppose him out of business. Former Solicitor General for George W. Bush, Paul Clement, representing the firms, argued that Trump’s executive orders “run afoul of the better part of the Bill of Rights.” Not just one or two provisions, mind you, but “the better part.” He argued that they threaten the right to counsel, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.
Clement explained, “The executive orders here strike at the heart of the First Amendment and the ability of lawyers to zealously represent their clients. Lawyers cannot zealously represent their clients while walking on eggshells for fear of reprisals; thus, the executive orders strike at the heart of the rule of law and the zealous representation on which the judiciary and the adversary process depend.” That seems entirely clear. It could even be possible that firms might avoid representing certain clients—one of Trump’s early attacks was on Covington and Burling, a D.C. firm that gave advice to Jack Smith, the special counsel during the Biden administration who oversaw the two prosecutions of Donald Trump.
Clement also explained the headlock Trump had put firms in: “I either keep my security clearance, or I can sue the Trump administration, not both.” For many defense firms, the ability to obtain a security clearance is essential to doing certain types of work. Trump’s orders purported to remove those clearances for lawyers at firms that ran afoul of him. He also tried to suspend active government contracts and prevent attorneys who worked at the interdicted firms from entering government buildings, including federal courthouses. As we discussed here, it was always going to be a nonstarter because the orders, if permitted to go into effect, would allow a president to pick and choose which attorneys could continue to make a living and put ones he didn’t like out of business.
During argument, the panel seemed unpersuaded that the executive orders were discretionary national security decisions made by a president that aren’t subject to review by the courts. If the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, Trump will undoubtedly argue that the district judges who first considered the case were biased. Assuming Trump loses at the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court could take the case on appeal, but is not obligated to. For instance, Judge Richard Leon, one of first district judges to consider a law firm executive order case, is also the judge who issued a preliminary injunction halting construction of Trump’s ballroom, finding that the president is the “steward” of the White House and not the “owner,” and that Trump had no statutory authority to proceed, absent authorization from Congress. So prepare yourself for meritless arguments about judicial bias if Trump suffers a loss here. There is no way of predicting how long it will take the court to rule, and the administration is enjoined from putting the orders into effect while the cases are being litigated.
Closing the loop on mifepristone
With only two justices, predictably, Thomas and Alito, writing in dissent, the Supreme Court has prevented Louisiana’s law, which would make mifepristone unavailable via telehealth, from going into effect while the litigation moves forward.
It’s not skeptical to question whether this happened because the Court is well aware of the risk of agitating voters in advance of the midterm elections.
Trump is hyperfocused on trying to salvage the November election despite his sinking performance in the polls.
We always knew that, backed into a corner, Trump would become ever more willing to damage democracy to save himself. It’s on.
NOTUS is reporting that meetings are being held, out of the public eye, between the White House, DOJ, DHS, and the Postal Service to try and interfere with the election. The goal seems to be building a national voter database that can then be used to determine who can and can’t vote—which is up to the individual states—and implement Trump’s order that the Post Office should interfere with mailing ballots.
The report in NOTUS included comments from an unidentified White House staffer speaking on background, who declined to acknowledge that the conversations were taking place, but did say that “it is standard process for administration officials to coordinate on implementing President Trump’s executive orders. We do not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened.” That’s as good as a yes.
Trump’s executive order directing USPS to interfere in state-run elections is under challenge in court. At a hearing last week, DOJ argued that the court can’t act because the issue being raised is an “abstract legal question unless and until the Postal Service actually issues a rule that injures the plaintiffs and it does so only because it was directed to by the president — rather than, for example, as an exercise of the agency’s own independent judgment.” Judge Carl Nichols seemed inclined to buy that argument at one point in the hearing, asking how there could be irreparable injury, which he must find before he can enjoin the executive order, when no action has been taken as of yet. But at other points in the hearing, he pushed the government on the constitutionality of the president’s executive order.
We’ll watch carefully for a forthcoming ruling in this case, which will tell us a lot about whether the courts will entertain presidential interference in each state’s administration of its own election. But the White House is making its position clear.
Stephen Miller, who it’s always worth noting is not a lawyer and doesn’t seem to appreciate what the Constitution says, seems to be continuing to look for a new way to militarize the country for reasons that don’t hold water in advance of the election. We’ll take up the issue of the illegality of sending federal troops or federal agents to the polls first breather we get.
Also …
On Wednesday, the state of Tennessee has a court date to defend itself against the NAACP’s allegations that it cannot, without violating state law, redraw its voting maps this late in the decade.
On Thursday, SCOTUS will be issuing more opinions.
By Friday, the Government has to produce discovery to the defendants in the Minnesota church protest case against Don Lemon and individual protestors who were indicted for violating the FACE Act. A judge ruled that heavily redacted discovery that prevents the defendants from identifying witnesses, including members of law enforcement, so they can prepare their cases violates the law. He has given the government until Friday to rectify its errors and “produce discovery consistent with its Rule 16(a) obligations, unredacted as to all victim and witness names, addresses, and telephone numbers; as well as fully unredacted as to law enforcement PII [personally identifiable information]” to every defendant who has agreed to abide by a protective order preventing its public dissemination. The government’s case has been widely viewed as likely violating the First Amendment from the outset.
Next up on the list of bad cabinet secretaries
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is being sued for violating employees’ right to be free from establishment of religion by the government. She’s been proselytizing in emails to the captive audience that is her workforce.
I recall once handling a case where a public employee was being subject to far less overt religious commentary, and the government agency immediately conceded error and fired the offender. This case is even more clear. Government employees are not disciples of Christ.
In new federal lawsuit, employees accuse Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins of "sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees"
But don’t hold your breath for the president to fire her. This was a weekend characterized by a full-scale display of support for Christianity being promoted by the White House. The administration held a “Rededicate 250,” which many observers, both approvingly and disapprovingly, referred to as a Christian religious service featuring high-ranking government officials on the National Mall.
Rededicate 250 was “a White House-backed prayer festival dedicated to America’s Christian roots.” Trump gave a video speech. Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were present, standing with evangelical leaders on the stage. Johnson told the crowd, “Our founders boldly proclaim that our rights do not derive from the government. They come from you, our Creator and Heavenly Father.”
Podcaster Brian Allen posted this snippet from MAGA radio host Eric Metaxas’ speech at the federally funded prayer event on the National Mall today: “It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait two hundred years.”
As Allen put it, Metazas “told a crowd of thousands of Christians that God spent two centuries waiting to raise up Donald Trump — to build a ballroom.” The crowd responded by cheering.
The only way to overcome this sort of thing, a clear violation of the Constitution, is with a relentless commitment to telling the truth and sharing it widely. We know from Trump’s poll numbers that some of it is breaking through. The utter lunacy of the Christian God wanting a ballroom is something to ask people to stop, and instead of just following like sheep, spend a moment thinking about.
More Kleptocracy
Bloomberg is reporting that Trump’s disclosure forms for the first quarter of 2026 show that he made 3,600 Stock trades, and that they are worth as much as $750 Million (the reporting is done in bands, so it’s impossible to determine the exact amount from the forms). Former Undersecretary of State Rick Stengel pointed out that Bush and Clinton kept their assets in a blind trust and neither Obama nor Biden traded stocks or bonds while in office.
“3,700 trades,” Stengel tweeted, “is probably more than all the trades of all the presidents until now. And he is trading stocks that are affected by his decisions. A walking conflict of interest, at the least, and perhaps insider trading. Just as members of Congress should not be able to trade stocks, so too the president.” Stock trades aren’t official acts; they’re clearly personal ones. Stengel has certainly identified reasons that merit a closer look at these trades.
So, lots happening this week. We’ll be here through everything as we head into the Memorial Day weekend, trying to make it make sense. I’m grateful to all of you who spend part of your week here with me, thinking carefully about the law, democracy, and where we go from here. Thank you for being a part of Civil Discourse.
Yet the tRump administration trashed the government’s stance of fighting right wing violence or right wing extremist violent groups. It started with the republicans forcing Obama to remove a government study on right wing extremists. Now the current DOJ and FBI have removed all mention of right wing violence or violent actions instead claiming the violence is all being done and caused by Antifa. The government wants to make the public believe that the people who are against fascism are the real extremist threat to the public. Antifa is antifascism / antifascist. It has no headquarts or central organization it is just people who since the 1930s have pushed back against fascism and fascists. The tRump white supremacists want the public to believe violent groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Nazi groups, the 3 percenters, and other militia groups that joined in the insurrection riot on Jan 6th and are extreme white supremacists. The current people in charge love the way they can steal the money from the treasury and take away people’s rights, so they want to keep the hate groups that support them to be the good guys and anyone who tries to stop the destruction of democracy they hope to make the bad people. Hugs
Disclaimer: WWFU typically redacts the imagery seen in this zine with an iron front or an X, and encourages others to do the same. This zine also contains slurs that we typically redact. For the sake of eduction and proper recognition, the following content is un-redacted.
A Reference Guide For Recognizing Far Right Groups, Symbols and Dog Whistles
Introduction
As of spring 2026, this zine serves as a reference guide to far-right symbols, dogwhistles, and groups, helping you recognize and understand them. The list focuses on the most active groups and the most commonly used phrases and symbols at this time.
Not all neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups openly brand themselves with swastikas or SS bolts. Recognizing their dogwhistles is essential to accurately identifying them as the community threats they are. Some groups and individuals deliberately project a public facing image of “patriotism” or opposition to “foreign wars” to appear more mainstream, while privately holding the same beliefs as more openly neo-Nazi organizations. Because some symbols are not exclusive to neo-Nazis, fascists, or white supremacists, it’s important to look for additional context clues and patterns of use.
Dogwhistles are coded messages communicated through words or phrases understood by a specific in-group, but not by outside observers. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists use dogwhistles to signal to one another while maintaining plausible deniability.
Phrases / Numbers
131: Anti Communist Action (ACA), the numbers referring to the letters of the alphabet.
Blue Lives Matter/All Lives Matter: These phrases are nothing more than a response to people saying “Black Live Matter” and as way to silence Black voices. Cops can always choose to take off their uniform, while Black people cannot take off their skin or escape the discrimination that comes with it. No one would go to an event to save the rainforests and say that all forests matter. If all lives matter, as racists love to say, then Black lives have to matter. All lives can’t matter until Black lives matter because they are the ones being targeted by police, racist attacks, and everyday discrimination.
TDOTR: The Day of the Rope, a fictional day from the book The Turner Diaries in which race traitors (women who marry non-white men, the press, politicians, LGBTQ people and more) are hanged from lampposts.
6MWE: “Six Million Wasn’t Enough” referring to the number of Jewish people murdered during the holocaust.
The Great Replacement Theory: White supremacist conspiracy theory that argues democratic and government officials are intentionally facilitating non-white immigration to replace the white population for political purposes. Similar phrases include “white genocide.”
It’s okay to be white: While no one is saying it’s not okay to be white, this phrase creates perceived victimhood and is a stepping stone to great replacement.
WPWW: White Pride World Wide
GTKRWN: Gas the Kikes, Race War Now
RAHOWA: Racial Holy War
RWDS: Right Wing Death Squad
Blood and Soil: A reference to race and nationality from Nazi Germany
14: A reference to the 14 words “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” coined by David Lane.
88: 8 Represents the 8th letter of the alphabet, HH or “Heil Hitler.” Variations include H8 and 83 “Heil Christ.” You will often see the numbers 14 and 88 together (1488 or 14/88).
WP: White Power. Also sometimes signified by an “okay” hand gesture.
Reclaim America: White supremacist slogan advocating for the “reclaiming” of America from immigrants (referencing the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory).
We’ll Have Our Home Again: Popular phrase used by neo-nazis and white supremacists based on a song of the same title and similar to “reclaim America.”
Groups / Orgs
Patriot Front: A white nationalist group mostly focused on using patriotic imagery and rhetoric to spread propaganda and recruit. Founded by Thomas Rousseau, the group broke off from Vanguard America in 2017 after the deadly Charlottesville rally in Virginia. They care primarily about public image. Their style involves patriotic designs including red white and blue, fasces, khaki pants, and white masks with matching shirts, shields, the Confederate flag, the Betsy Ross flag, and the US flag. Despite their efforts to be palatable to a wider audience, outside of public view they espouse anti-semetic, pro-white and pro-nazi views. Patriot Front is currently one of the largest white nationalist groups in the US.
Active Clubs: Active Clubs are white supremacist fight clubs widespread across the US and throughout parts of Europe. They use the guise of fitness and training to try recruiting mostly younger white men into their clubs. Often members will march with other larger neo-nazi / white supremacist groups, and all chapters share the same logo of a Celtic Cross with text representative of their region. Many Active Clubs in the US are directly tied to Thomas Rousseau and Patriot Front.
Blood Tribe: Blood Tribe is a neo-nazi group started by former marine Christopher Pohlhaus. They are known for being one of the most outward facing Nazi groups, holding semi-regular marches in cities across the US. They wear matching red and black outfits with black face coverings, and march with matching black and white swastika flags, and will loudly chant white supremacist and nazi slogans. Their goal is to instill a Fourth Reich in the US.
AFN: “Aryan Freedom Network” is a neo-nazi group present widespread across the US. The group has begun functioning as an umbrella organization, bringing in members from other groups like the Ku Klux Klan and outlaw bikers to function under their name. Outside of flyering neighborhoods with nazi propaganda, they operate mostly out of public view. They train often with firearms and make efforts to organize nationally across as many regions as possible.
WLM: “White Lives Matter” is a white supremacist movement with chapters all around America and the globe, who focus their activism on low-risk tactics like stickers, flyers, and banners.
Three Percenters: This movement was created in 2008 with the false claim that only 3% of American forces fought the British in the revolutionary war, and therefore it would take only 3% of the population to overthrow the current US government. They are a far-right militia movement of anti-government extremists focused on gun ownership.
Proud Boys: A group of western chauvinists founded by Gavin McInnes in 2016. Although the Proud Boys aren’t explicitly white supremacist, their emphasis on the “western” values and culture is a thinly veiled substitute for “White” values and culture and is used to deflect accusations of racism. Their ideology can be considered a form of proto-fascism as it contains elements of ultra-nationalism, traditionalism, misogyny, and social Darwinism. Their membership has different levels and members are encouraged to participate in street brawls. Level 1 is to exclaim “I am a proud western chauvinist and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” Level two is to recite 5 cereal brands while other members perform a “beat in.” Level 3 is to get a tattoo of “PROUD BOY,” and level 4 is to engage in violence for their cause, usually against LGBTQ or antifascists. They use the acronyms POYB (Proud of Your Boy) and FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out) and can be spotted in black and yellow Fred Perry polo shirts, or other clothes with the black/yellow color combination. They also use the “okay” hand sign on a regular basis.
NOVA: “National Organization for Vital Action” is a white-supremacist organization with the goal of building a “nation within a nation” for whites only. They aim to connect as many neo-nazi and white-supremacist groups and individuals as possible in order to create a broad network of racists in America. Their public actions mostly consist of banner drops and stickers. In private, the group has expressed their willingness to use violence to achieve their end goals of a whites only nation.
GDL: “Goyim Defense League”, founded by Jon Minadeo II, is a network of anti-semetic content creators who focus almost exclusively on anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and hatred. They primarily focus their efforts on online videos and live -streams, but are also active in-person, often flyering neighborhoods doing banner drops, harassing synagogues, and holding marches with swastika flags.
Groypers: “Groypers” are a term for followers of far-right, nazi influencer Nick Fuentes. Less of an organized group, it is a term given to adherents of the anti-immigrant, anti-semetic, and pro-white positions held by Nick Fuentes and pushed into the public. The primary function of Groypers is to push more “traditional conservatives” into a more radical, white supremacist sphere.
The Base: An accelerationist paramilitary nazi group formed by Rinaldo Nazzaro in 2018. They have similar aesthetics to Atomwaffen, but a different logo.
Atomwaffen Division: Also known as the National Socialist Order, Atomwaffen is an accelerationist (accelerating towards a race war in which they hope to overthrow the current government and society and replace it with a fascist order) nazi group responsible for several murders. After numerous arrests and infighting. the group dissolved, only recently attempting to reform in 2025, though failing to gain support. Responsible for popularizing the skull mask within neo-nazi groups, other symbols include the radioactive symbol and flecktarn (a German camo pattern similar to the “peas” pattern from WW2). Although now defunct, their influence remains significant.
Ku Klux Klan: One of the longst running white supremacist organizations. They use the number 311 to represent 3 Ks, which is the 11th letter of the alphabet. Their iconic robes have become so recognizable they may no longer count as a dog whistle. They also use the blood drop cross and variations on the blood drop cross including just the blood drop, and the confederate flag.
Gypsy Jokers: A one percenter motorcycle club with white supremacist sympathies who are known to traffic drugs and engage in low level organized crime and violence. They wear motorcycle gear adorned with nazi symbols and a back patch that says “Gypsy Jokers.” In recent years they have been known to associate with the Proud Boys.
Oathkeepers: Far-right anti-government militia founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes. Oathkeepers played a key role in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Oathkeepers appeal directly to military and law enforcement personnel, encouraging them to keep their “oath” to defend the public from what they perceive as the new world order, by means of discipline and violence. They’re also associated with three percenters.
Hammerskins: A racist skinhead group, aka boneheads. The feeder group is known as Crew 38 (38 for “Crossed Hammers”). Hammerskins focus mostly on spreading racist music, but they also engage in street fighting and targeted attacks. Hammerskin Nation is considered one of the most violent racist skinhead groups in the US. They use a hand sign of crossed arms with fists to represent the crossed hammers.
WoV: “Wolves of Vinland” is a group with heavy folkish influences that promotes white supremacy and misogyny, stressing Asatru or Paganism, including animal sacrifices and blood rituals in the woods. They have recently been partnering with Patriot Front and Active Clubs to hold fascist combat events. Their headquarters is in VA, but membership is not limited to that area. “Operation Werewolf” has been used as a recruiting tool and feeder group for WoV. They can be spotted with Celtic and Nordic imagery, runes, and wolf pack patches..
Asatru Folk Assembly: A norse pagan organization which advocates for pre-Christian European rituals and beliefs. The organization discourages “race-mixing” and promotes a whites-only vision of America, falsely claiming that white people were in North America first and were wiped out. Members of other neo-nazi groups such as Blood Tribe associate often with them.
764 / No Lives Matter: 764 is an international, predatory network that espouses neo-nazi, satanic, nihilistic, and accelerationist beliefs. It targets and exploits children / young people and encourages them to commit mass acts of violence. Adherents have been responsible for acts such as murder, firebombings, and school shootings.
Tempel ov Blood / 09A: The Order of Nine Angles (09A), and it’s most violent chapter, The Tempel ov Blood (ToB), are satanic neo-Nazi cults that have had a significant influence on far-right accelerationist projects, like the now-defunct Atomwaffen. Suffice to say, 09A and ToB glorify nazism and violence, and are adept at radicalizing (and abusing) teenagers. Symbols include the seven-pt star inside a circle, a downward sort of pitchfork with 333 above it, and “Drill Sgt Grey” – a sinister space alien in a military outfit.
Injekt Division: An accelerationist nazi group that was formed by Coleman Blevins (aka Korb) in 2021. They are organized in decentralized cells, embracing a terror guerrilla ideology that looks to collapse the “System”. Their symbols include a syringe, 1494 and “Pray For Rain”.
NWTI: “The Northwest Territorial Imperative” is a vision of a whites-only homeland in the Pacific NW. Proposed in the ’80s by Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations, it is an idea embraced by a wide variety of white supremacists, including secretive militant nazi groups dedicated to implementing the vision, such as Northwest Front (NF) or the Northwest Pioneer Association (NPA). NWTI is represented by an inverted Cascadian tri-color flag – having vertical stripes, rather than horizontal. Their flag sometimes includes a rune or swastika. Common associated phrases: “Come Home, White Man” and “Ex Gladio Libertas”.
Vinlanders Social Club: Vinlanders Social Club (VSC / Firm 22) is a violent neo-Nazi bonehead gang formed in 2003. It uses Firm 22 as a support crew of men and women; the men being prospects for full VSC membership. VSC / Firm 22 went into decline in the 2010s, but has been attempting to build itself back up through proximity to the active club movement, much like the Hammerskins. Its symbols include a black cross on a green flag, 22, 1422, an eagle holding brass knuckles, a red, white & blue shield patch with a laurel, or just a laurel.
TPUSA: “Turning Point USA” is an organization which targets high schoolers and college students with far-right propaganda, talking points, and literature. Founded by Charlie Kirk, and now led by his widowed wife Erika Kirk, the organization has chapters in schools across the US, and regularly sets up tents on college campuses in order to recruit and create content by means of filming bad-faith political “debates.” With a roster of speakers and frequent events, TPUSA regularly promotes popular anti-trans white nationalist talking points, white Christianity, and racial divisions. Using the public image of more traditional conservatism, they function as a pipeline to more fascist far-right ideologies.
References and Further Reading
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The mid-decade fight to redraw congressional lines ahead of the November midterm elections has surged beyond statehouses and into ballot boxes and courtrooms – with millions of dollars pouring in to shape those outcomes, much of it from nonprofits that never have to say who is funding their activities.
Voters in California and, most recently, Virginia have weighed in on new House maps. A Colorado group wants to put its own proposal before voters. Missouri petitioners are trying to stop a new map from taking effect. And lawsuits are stacking up from Florida to Utah.
One through-line: dark money from 501(c)(4) nonprofits. Free from donor-disclosure rules, these groups move large sums with little transparency and have helped turn state-by-state redistricting battles into nationalized, big-dollar fights bankrolled by tight networks of high spenders.
“It’s a perfect example of where money is trying to influence policy outcomes, and redistricting is so high-stakes that now it’s just part of the process,” said Alex Keena, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University who has co-authored two books about redistricting.
What began last year with President Donald Trump urging Texas to redraw its map has now gone national, fueled by a surge in dark money that “perfectly encapsulates what’s happening here,” said Doug Spencer, a law professor at the University of Colorado.
“Every single story really feels like a domino in a long chain of events that goes back to President Trump’s cajoling of Texas to start this,” Spencer told OpenSecrets.
‘A tsunami of money’
The latest epicenter of the redistricting fight was Virginia, where voters in April approved a mid-decade redistricting plan that could have helped Democrats win four additional House seats in November. The measure would have bypassed a bipartisan redistricting commission and allowed the state to use new districts drawn by the Democratic-led General Assembly. The state Supreme Courtblocked it on May 8, declaring it unconstitutional because of a procedural timing dispute. Democrats filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on May 11.
Virginia, which has no limit on campaign donations, is “basically the wild, wild west in terms of campaign finance,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter run out of the University of Virginia. The three key players in this ballot measure fight combined to raise nearly $100 million since February in large cash contributions alone. The Virginia Public Access Project found it to be the most expensive referendum in state history.
“This was the confluence of all of these variables that resulted in just a tsunami of money in a state with lax regulation, high stakes, a single vote involving redistricting that could lead to four or even five new members of Congress,” Keena told OpenSecrets. “And we just had a ton of money flow into the state in a relatively short amount of time, and the result of all that money was just a blitz coming from every medium.”
And on both sides of the debate, the vast majority of that money came from a handful of dark money groups. window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}});
Virginians for Fair Elections, the main organization backing the redistricting effort, reported $63.2 million in large cash contributions, defined as any single contribution or loan of at least $10,000, between Feb. 6 and April 24. Nearly 97% of that total came from five 501(c)(4)s:
House Majority Forward, which is aligned with Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives, contributed $39.3 million across 10 installments from Feb. 6 to April 10, the largest of which was $9.3 million on March 30.
The Fairness Project, founded by a California-based healthcare workers union, contributed $11.7 million across five payments from Feb. 18 to April 9, including a $5 million contribution Feb. 18, in addition to $22,950 in in-kind contributions.
The Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, the 501(c)(4) arm of philanthropic organization Global Impact Ventures, donated $1.5 million across two contributions.
The same structure appeared on the opposition side. window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}});
The Virginians for Fair Maps Referendum Committee, which formed Feb. 9, reported $24.1 million in large contributions between March 2 and May 1. One organization – Virginians for Fair Maps, which shares a post office box in Alexandria with the committee – accounted for 98% of it. State records identify the group as a tax-exempt organization, but there is no corresponding listing for it or its classification in the IRS online database. Co-chaired by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), it donated $23.5 million across nine contributions from March 6 to May 1, a sum that includes $5 million contributions on both March 31 and April 7 along with $4 million on April 6.
“There’s a real question. … Who’s actually trying to influence our election, and to what end?” Keena said. “What are they hoping to get out of it and whose interests are hanging in the balance?”
Donor networks in multiple states
Some of those groups also spent big on similar efforts in other states.
Coloradans For a Level Playing Field wants a new House map for the 2028 and 2030 elections before allowing the state’s independent congressional redistricting commission to draw another one for 2032 based on the 2030 census. Under the plan, Democrats would be favored to win seven of the state’s eight House seats.
According to its May 4 report, the organization raised $246,747 between Feb. 18 and April 29. Two of the key donors in Virginia also supplied more than 97% of the Colorado group’s total: House Majority Forward contributed $150,000 on Feb. 25, and the Fairness Project provided $90,000 on April 29. Of the 149 other cash donations made during that time, 148 averaged just $32.
That breakdown reflects the uneven appetite for redistricting in the state, Spencer said. Sometimes, it draws attention; other times, he said, “it really feels like it’s gone by the wayside – or, at least when you dig underneath, you don’t see a big push or a lot of local money.”
And in Missouri, the Democratic-supported group People Not Politicians, which opposes the state’s new GOP-drawn map, in December submitted more than 300,000 signatures for a petition seeking to block the map from being used. In its April 14 campaign finance report, it reported raising $6.1 million during the cycle. Of that total, $1.7 million came from American Opportunity Action, a Democratic-aligned dark money group supporting ballot measures. Additionally, the Fairness Project donated $250,000 on Nov. 17, 2025, along with four $1,000 payments in late 2025 and early 2026 for “strategic guidance.”
“I think, to the layperson, this all just looks like gerrymandering,” Spencer said. “But up close, every state’s doing this slightly differently.”
Massive spending around California’s Prop 50 fight
The biggest spending took place in California – where more than a quarter of a billion dollars was poured into its redistricting measure.
Voters in a November 2025 special election passed Proposition 50, which responded to the Texas redistricting push by redrawing the map used in the 2026 midterms and in 2028 and 2030. It generated more than $256 million in fundraising from both sides combined. Roughly two-thirds came from groups supporting the measure, and 87% of that $171 million came from two organizations, both of which have received noteworthy contributions from dark money groups:
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Ballot Measure Committee raised more than $102 million through Nov. 3, 2025. The Fund For Policy Reform provided its largest single contribution, $10 million on Sept. 18, 2025..
HMP for Prop 50, the House Majority PAC, raised $46 million. That group’s largest single contribution in 2024 ($34 million) came from House Majority Forward, which also contributed $11.2 million in late 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
On the opposition side, two organizations combined for an even higher share of the spending – 92% of the $84 million that flowed into the race.
The No on Prop 50 Congressional Leadership Fund raised $44.3 million. That group received four separate $10 million donations in 2024, from hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, Aon founder Patrick Ryan, Mellon banking heir Timothy Mellon and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman. Billionaire megadonor Miriam Adelson donated $10 million on March 11, according to the FEC.
Protect Voters First reported $32.8 million, with Charles Munger Jr. – a physicist and the son of a late billionaire – loaning the organization nearly the full amount.
“It does not seem like the states themselves have been going out of their way to clamor for this,” Spencer said. “California responded to Texas. Texas was responding to Trump.”
How dark money fuels the legal fights
While some states decided redistricting questions in the voting booth, others are fighting the same battles in courthouses – and some groups funding those fights are just as nationalized, donor-driven and opaque.
The National Redistricting Foundation has partnered with the left-leaning Elias Law Group in suing to challenge Florida’s new map. It filed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to reject Alabama’s request to fast-track its redistricting case and filed a motion to intervene in Utah’s.
The foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. As a 527 organization, it is tax‑exempt and may spend unlimited amounts on issue advocacy. It is chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder, and in 2018 it received $2.6 million from Soros. Its largest contribution in the 2024 election cycle, the most recent available to OpenSecrets, was $500,000 from PAC to the Future, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership PAC. The committee also provided nearly $20,000 in in-kind contributions to the pro-redistricting group in Virginia.
The foundation makes up one part of an apparatus that also includes the National Democratic Redistricting PAC and a 501(c)(4), the National Redistricting Action Fund. The PAC raised $423,000 in the first quarter of 2026, has raised $2 million during the current election cycle and had $250,000 in cash on hand, according to FEC documents. The 501(c)(3) foundation reported $9.7 million in contributions and grants in 2023, according to its most recent IRS filings, but does not identify those donors. Neither does the action fund, whose latest IRS filing shows $5.2 million in total revenue in 2023 – and the same Washington address as the foundation.
A similar structure is in place at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that on May 4 joined the UCLA Voting Rights Project in suing Florida over its redistricting plan. It has also moved to intervene in the Utah case. It shares a Washington address with Campaign Legal Center Action, a 501(c)(4) dark money nonprofit.
Campaign Legal Center’s most recent IRS documents show $13.9 million in total revenue in 2024, with most coming from contributions and grants, and $36.7 million in net assets. But its donors are not identified. Campaign Legal Center Action also does not disclose donor names on its IRS filings.
On the Republican side, the American Redistricting Project – a 501(c)(3) also known as Fair Lines America Foundation Inc. – has been active in redistricting debates in recent years. Its most recent IRS filing shows roughly $1.9 million in both revenue and expenses in 2024. It maintains an online repository tracking redistricting legislation, but it is unclear whether the organization is providing financial support or filing motions in the current legal fights. OpenSecrets reached out to the group but did not immediately receive a response.
This article was originally published by OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. View the original article.
Last summer, journalist turned comedian Charlie Berens started getting social media messages from concerned Wisconsin residents about plans for a massive datacenter campus in their state.
The developer, Vantage Data Centers, claimed the $8 bn project would largely run on zero-emission energy resources like solar, wind and battery storage. The company said the campus would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and potentially more than 1,000 permanent jobs to Port Washington, a city of 13,000 people about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. Residents opposed the project for what they said was lack of transparency and criticized the lucrative tax incentives offered to Vantage. They worried about the strain on local water and energy sources from an enormous 1.3-gigawatt project that could ultimately span 1,900 acres.
Berens, who shot to internet fame with his “Manitowoc Minute” videos that play on midwestern quirks and stereotypes, had his own reservations about the artificial intelligence datacenter boom. A Milwaukee-area native who still lives in the city, he’d heard about the potential environmental hazards, the steep rise in energy costs for neighbors and noise pollution, among other risks.
When he Googled, he found that lawmakers in his state had paved the way to make the Port Washington project a reality. The deal between Port Washington and Vantage gave an estimated $458m in tax breaks to the developer over 20 years to fund infrastructure for the project,with the city not seeing any of that tax revenue during that period.
“It was shocking,” Berens said.
That’s when he decided to do something he had rarely done before: discuss politics in his videos. He used his platform to address one of the more polarizing issues in contemporary life: what AI portends for Americans.
In August 2025,Berens published his first “Manitowoc Minute” video on AI datacenters.The two-minute skit matched the typical style of Berens’s videos, where he intersperses facts with humor in the style of a TV news report. But he was remarkably direct in his critique of big tech. Sporting a Green Bay Packers tie, he lambasted Silicon Valley CEOs, accusing them of using Wisconsin as a “dumping ground” for datacenters at the expense of the state’s cherished natural resources while evading any type of public scrutiny.
“It is our civic duty to make sure the billionaires become trillionaires,” said Berens in a satiric bit.
He channelled his outrage at lawmakers in Port Washington, a historic city on the banks of Lake Michigan and once home to thriving fishing and shipping industries. In a contentious vote last August, officials there approved the initial $8bn datacenter campus despite strong resistance from residents. (The project later expanded to a $15bn joint venture with OpenAI and Oracle, one of the Trump administration’s showcase “Stargate” megaprojects.)
“I was shocked at how many people I saw speak against this [at public meetings he watched online] and then to see a unanimous vote for it,” Berens said. “It just felt like an imbalance of democracy.”
The video went viral, garnering more than 2.5m views on YouTube alone. Berens’s inbox was soon flooded with messages of support from Wisconsinites of all political stripes – self-declared Maga supporters, avowed socialists and everyone in between – sounding the alarm on datacenters.
“It was 99% positive comments, which doesn’t happen on anything these days,” said Berens. “From that point, I decided that I should do more because nobody’s negotiating for the people here.”
Berens has since thrown himself into the cause, routinely publishing videos and headlining well-attended events with field experts and anti-datacenter activists. He has quickly become the most famous face of a burgeoning movement in Wisconsin, where resistance to these projects – Port Washington is just one of seven hyperscale datacenter projects across the state– has risen dramatically in the last year. A March survey from Marquette University Law School found that nearly 70% of registered voters in Wisconsin say the costs of large datacenters outweigh the benefits they provide, a remarkable shift from last October when that figure stood at 55%.
The attention has placed the comedian in the crosshairs of most of the state’s labor unions, pro-business groups and much of its political establishment, who argue the badger state cannot afford to be left behind in the AI arms race.
In a series of interviews, Berens laid out why he decided to jump head-first into the movement; his case for how big tech destroyed public trust through hard-armed, often secretive tactics to push forward datacenters; and what he has learned as he has crisscrossed the state and toured the country.
“Every step of the way, the more people look, they’re seeing that this is not really a fair fight here,” said Berens.
‘Protecting the people’
On a late winter evening in March, hundreds of people packed a community center in Juneau, a tiny rural town about 45 miles north-east of the state capital, Madison.
The crowd had assembled for a “people’s town hall” to address a $1bn Meta datacenter that has pitted residents of nearby Beaver Dam against their elected officials. The featured speakers ranged from community activists to a former Meta employee. The main act was Berens, who squeezed in the appearance between stops in Iowa and Vermont on his standup comedy tour.
“This is the most bipartisan issue since beer,” he said in opening remarks.
Construction is ongoing at the Beaver Dam Commerce Park where a new Meta datacenter is being built on 2 February 2026 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Photograph: Wisconsin Watch/Getty Images
In his roughly 15-minute speech, he called for more regulation of AI, pointing out that a beloved Wisconsin staple, bratwurst, was more heavily regulated than the trillion-dollar industry. Berens warned the audience of the risks of AI technology, running through a slideshow of news headlines that highlighted the potential, and very real, harm to children. He also addressed his critics.
“I will stick to comedy when our politicians stick to policy and stop protecting big tech and start protecting the people that put them into office,” said Berens, to applause.
As he turned his attention to the project in Beaver Dam, he attacked Meta’s use of a shell company and nondisclosure disagreements (NDAs) that required secrecy from some public officials in the process of getting to an approval. In April 2025, a report found Meta was the mystery tech company behind Degas LLC, the listed corporation on the development. By November, the company acknowledged they were behind the project.
Meta’s practices in Beaver Dam are part of a larger pattern across the state, where datacenter projects have often been developed in secrecy despite their huge price tags and massive footprint on communities. A recent investigation from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit news site, found that NDAs have been signed in at least five cities in Wisconsin where AI datacenters are proposed or under construction.
Another panel speaker that night was Maily Kocinski, a lifelong Beaver Dam resident whose farm lies less than 2 miles from the 700,000 sq ft datacenter campus construction site. Last June, she posted a TikTok video after a creek that runs on her property had gone dry one morning. The water came back, but occasionally appeared milky white and gave off a toxic smell. Kocinski said she contacted the state’s department of natural resources on several occasions and was told the agency collected water samples but were not always able to reach her property in time before the water cleared up again.
She personally commissioned a water analysisin February from a lab at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which found metal levels in her well water above what was considered safe to drink, per recommendations from the Wisconsin department of health services. She questions whether the daily controlled blasts on the construction site led to disruptions in her water supply. Meta commissioned its own study in response, denying any link.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin department of natural resources confirmed that the department collected a water sample at Kocinski’s creek last November. The results, shared with the Guardian, show elevated metal levels but the department did not speculate as to the potential cause.
“Without a site specific review, the DNR cannot speculate on the role of the blasting on the aquifer and Ms. Kocinski’s private water supply,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Protesters gather for a statewide datacenter day of action at the Wisconsin state capitol on 12 February 2026 in Madison, Wisconsin. Photograph: Wisconsin Watch/Getty Images
Kocinski, an elementary school teacher, saidsince last fall, she has spent up to 15 hours a week researching the large-scale construction of datacenters and the potential environmental harms they can wreak in a community. In March, she testified in the Wisconsin senate in favor of a datacenter oversight bill that ultimately failed to reach a vote.
She said she had never met Berens before the event in Juneau but the two had been in regular contact for months after she cold-emailed him her story.
“Charlie has really put in the work to understand this issue,” said Kocinski. “Most people came to Juneau probably because he was there, but they stayed and maybe learned a bit about these things [datacenters] … That kind of education leads to action.”
The risks of speaking out
As Berens’s critiques of datacenter projects in Wisconsin have gained traction with the public, he has faced pushback from the state’s trade unions, who welcome the thousands of temporary construction jobs that typically come with a project.
A major Wisconsin labor leader called out Berens in a December op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “For us in the building trades, data centers aren’t some big, scary mystery,” wrote Emily Pritzkow, head of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council that represents nearly 50,000 workers in the state. “They’re high-skill, long-term work. The kind of work that feeds families, pays mortgages, and sends kids to college.”
Local governments have weighed in too. In Port Washington, city officials posted a “fact sheet” online to “clarify some lingering misconceptions” after Berens posted a second video urging residents to question officials about the datacenter project at an October council meeting.
Ted Neitzke, Port Washington’s mayor, expressed frustration with the attention that Berens’s videos had brought his city. He noted that more than 100 people began showing up at council meetings after the comedian published his first video last August, forcing the city to move them to a hotel conference center with an added police presence.
“After Charlie Berens’s video, things escalated very rapidly, very contentiously, and our city was besieged with people from outside of our town,” said Neitzke. “Charlie Berens created chaos for us.”
Neitzke also challenged some claims Berens has made in his videos, including those about the amount of jobs the project would create, its environmental impact and whether residents’ power bills would increase.
“I don’t know where the line gets drawn between factual and embellishment for him,” said Neitzke. “There’s a very gray area between the entertainment and the facts.”
Berens defended his videos and the people who showed up to council meetings in response, noting that a hyperscale datacenter affects not just one city but the surrounding communities and “they deserve a say too”. He maintained that his videos were well-researched and cited news articles to back up his claims.
“I informed people about a massive AI datacenter going up by adding some punchlines,” said Berens. “If the truth brings chaos, that seems like something the mayor would want to take accountability for.”
Neitzke met with Berens last fall in an attempt to find common ground. The mayor described the two-hour meeting as cordial but both left in disagreement. He has been the project’s greatest champion, referring to it as a “transformative” development for the Rust Belt city, one that has the potential to once again make Port Washington a hub in the midwest.
That stance has drawn some fierce public opposition, even leading to an attempted recall effort over the $458m tax incremental finance, or TIF, district with Vantage. Under the deal, Vantage will pay upfront costs for the development and the city will reimburse the company with new property tax revenues over a period up to 20 years. Neitzke said he was no fan of TIFs but called them a “necessary evil” in negotiations to win the contract over other cities chasing major developments to boost revenue.
“This is a save our city strategy,” said Neitzke. “[Berens is] doing what he does, and we’re going to do what we’re doing.”
Berens has also faced criticism online from those who say the comedianhas built his career on tech platforms, while looking to close the door to their projects in Wisconsin. He said he “understands the irony” but wants to use his sizable platform to educate his audience on these types of developments that could remake their communities.
Berens engaging with his audience on stage. Photograph: Todd Rosenberg
Advertisers, too, have noticed his shift to politics. Berens acknowledged that he lost a major brand deal with a company that did not want to appear alongside his anti-datacenter content, though he declined to name the business.
“I’m asking for transparency. I’m asking for honesty. I’m asking for people to get informed,” said Berens. “I’m trying to facilitate that and if that at the end of the day means I lose everything, then so be it.”
A personal evolution on AI
Berens was not always an AI pessimist.
A few years ago, he believed the utopian vision laid out by AI luminaries like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who spoke of how the technology could be used to cure social ills, even to treat intractable diseases. Berens thought maybe it could also help Wisconsin deal with its Pfas contamination issue. “My interest in AI started with a lot of hope and optimism actually,” he said.
That sentiment eventually turned to cynicism as, he claims, the industry’s billionaire CEOs dispelled any virtuous use of the technology for the social good in favor of enriching themselves and their investors. He cited Altman’s recent efforts to create an Erotica feature in OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, despite concerns even from the company’s advisers that such a tool could create a “sexy suicide coach”, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“I thought this thing was supposed to cure cancer,” Berens said, referencing Altman’s past statements. “Is this what we’re giving our land for? Is that what we’re giving our water for? Is this what you’re asking to change our communities for?”
For him, the “tip of the iceberg” was the gold rush to build hyperscale datacenters in his state through secretive tactics and potentially exploitative agreements in post-industrial cities longing for an economic revival.
“Wisconsin created an environment that would please the billionaire tech companies,” said Berens of the tax incentives. “Billionaire tech companies took full advantage of that.”
Prescott Balch knows a bit about those types of corporate tactics. A former technology executive at US Bank turned anti-datacenter activist in retirement, Balch was on the frontlines of the successful effort to stop a major Microsoft AI datacenter project last fall in the picturesque eastern Wisconsin village of Caledonia, where he lives. In April, he won a seat on the town’s village board, beating an incumbent who supported the datacenter. He views the AI datacenter boom as akin to the dot-com bubble crash of the early 2000s, another chapter in the boom-and-bust cycles of the volatile tech industry.
“We got irrationally exuberant and built too much stuff,” Balch said of the dot-com period. “Maybe the company running your datacenter will go bankrupt. This big dollar amount that you’re chasing comes with significant risk.”
Balch’s insider expertise in the wonky world of municipal subsidies has been fundamental for Berens. Balch factchecked many of Berens’ videos on the issue, even appearing in one where he methodically crunched the numbers on thesedevelopments, referring to the Port Washington project as “up and down a horrible deal”.
The 62-year-old is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Berens. He is professorial in demeanor and careful to point out that he is not an AI alarmist. Where the two agree is a belief that there’s been an information vacuum around these projects, leaving the public largely uninformed abouttheir size and scope. That’s part of the message they have taken on the road, appearing together at events in Wisconsin and Illinois. Berens’s celebrity has been the draw for people to turn out.
“[He] gets people interested in the topic and warms them up,” Balch said. “And I get to do the dry delivery of the financial perspective.”
Port Washington vote
On 7 April, Port Washington residents passed the nation’s first anti-datacenter referendum. By a roughly 2-1 margin, voters approved a measure that would require city officials to get approval from voters before approving tax incremental districts of more than $10m.
An aerial view of Port Washington, Wisconsin. Photograph: Lena Platonova/Shutterstock
The effort came together after a group of residents called Great Lakes Neighbors United gathered more than 1,000 signatures in less than two weeks to get it on the ballot. The referendum does not stop the $15bn datacenter campus under construction, but would apply to all future projects above that $10m threshold. Industry advocates have warned the vote could set a dangerous precedent for municipalities across the country, potentially paralyzing AI datacenter developments.
Mayor Neitzke said the referendum makes the city less competitive and puts it at a disadvantage to vie for future projects. For Berens, the vote reflected the energy he has seen on the ground in Port Washington and in every corner of the state.
“The people who are the heartbeat of this movement are like people in Great Lakes Neighbors United,” said Berens. “These are people from all different walks and all different political stripes, but they all care about the same thing: [that] their community should have a voice.”
We were eight, nine, ten-years-old, and we called it “Smear the Queer.”
The game went like this: there were a group of kids—nearly always all boys—and a football. The pigskin got tossed up, a boy would grab it, the rest of us would chase and tackle him, and either he would surrender the ball or one of us would take it, and the chasing and tackling would start all over again.
That was the whole game. It was basically freeform rugby with no points, but this was Central Texas in the mid-90s and none of us were aware of rugby, so we thought of it as reverse tag with violence.
We called it “Smear the Queer” because that’s what the older boys called it. They called it that because the boys older than them called it that. Or that’s what their older brothers called it. Or that’s what their fathers and uncles called it.
At that age, I don’t think there was any discussion on the etymology of the word “queer” or why the ball carrier was called “the queer.” That was just the name of the game, and if you had a group of young boys and a football and enough interest, a kid might say “Smear the Queer?” and the game would start.
We were conditioned to think of being gay as a bad thing before we knew what it meant to be gay. By the time we got to middle school, it was made crystal clear to us that there were two things it was absolutely wrong for a boy to be: either gay or a girl.
If another boy called you gay or a girl, it was either because they were being “friendly” (or what passed for “friendly” among boys then) and playfully teasing you with the easiest insult — or they really didn’t like you and were going for the jugular with the worst insult. The intent was based on context, but at the end of the day, being gay or being a girl were not good things.
By that age, homophobic and sexist language had seeped into casual conversations among most of our peers. “That’s gay” was the most common way of saying a situation sucked.
“Wanna come over and play video games after school?”
“Can’t. Got detention.”
“That’s gay.”
“Yeah.”
At the close of the ‘90s, the words “faggot” and “pussy” were at the center of teenage boy lexicon. And a lot of the teenage girls used them, too. These terms flew freely in the hallways of middle school and sometimes in the classroom. Some teachers and parents might put a stop to it, and some teachers and parents willfully ignored it.
I got called “faggot” so many times in those years that I was pretty much resigned to it long before high school.
I was called a faggot for being in choir. I was called a faggot for getting good grades. I was called a faggot for reading. I was called a faggot for listening to Mariah Carey. I was called a faggot for my girlish laugh. I was called a faggot for my mannerisms. I was called a faggot if I did something nice. I was called a faggot for being smaller than the other boys. I was called a faggot for not wearing the right clothing. I was called a faggot for the way I walked. I was called a faggot for the way I talked. I was called a faggot if I followed the rules. I was called a faggot because a boy just didn’t like me. I was called a faggot because a boy in my grade might just feel like saying “faggot” and I was conveniently there.
I never said “faggot” or “that’s gay” myself because it felt wrong. I had a gay uncle. He had a boyfriend. They would come over and hang out and drink and smoke with my mother and stepfather. They were always welcome. The four of them would have a grand ole time.
This did not stop my mother and stepfather from asking my uncle and his boyfriend to sit me down when I was nine or so and make it clear that I needed to act like a boy and never act like a girl because everyone could see the writing on the wall and they wanted to prevent me from getting my ass kicked by other boys.
I didn’t understand their intent at the time. I felt very confused. I thought I had been acting like a boy. Apparently not enough. I needed to try harder. I had no idea what “try harder” meant.
What I remember most is my uncle’s boyfriend giving me a serious look and saying the following: “Don’t be a faggot, kid.”
The world that was supposedly the opposite of “being gay” was professional sports. Football, basketball, baseball. Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, etc.
These men were considered the opposite of gay. They were big and strong and famous and talented and handsome and all the girls loved them and all the boys wanted to be them.
At least where I grew up, the thought of gay men in professional sports was so far removed from rationality that it never came up in conversation. Male celebrities in music, film, and television? All fair game for speculation. But not sports. There was no way a man could be gay if he were a pro athlete. Impossible.
When Jason Collins came out 13 years ago this spring, you could have knocked me over with a feather. My peers and I had grown up, and the world had rapidly changed in such a short time. And yet, it was still a jarring, welcome surprise.
By then, homophobic language was largely frowned upon, even by many conservatives who opposed LGBTQ rights. It felt like everyone personally knew someone in their lives who were openly gay. And the vast majority of folks, regardless of politics, were then enjoying entertainment made by openly-gay celebs.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had recently been repealed, which meant gay, lesbian, and bisexual folks could serve openly in the military. Tammy Baldwin had recently become the first openly-LGBTQ person elected to the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, and she had seven openly-LGBTQ colleagues in the House, not including Barney Frank, who had retired from Congress on the same day she was sworn-in.
It felt at the time like same-sex marriage could possibly be legalized nationwide within the decade but maybe not. It wasn’t anywhere near certain. Possible, yes, but no guarantee. Yet, just that it was possible felt incredible.
But male sports? Many years away, it was assumed. Americans could accept gay and bisexual male soldiers dying on their behalf but openly-gay men in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL? Not for a long time to come.
It wasn’t that most of us thought there weren’t closeted gay men in the leagues. We assumed there were. Statistically, how could there not be closeted gay men playing pro sports?
But they weren’t going to come out while still playing. Nope, not for a long time. Pro sports were (and remain) the last cultural bastion of American masculinity, the sole extracurricular distraction of tens of millions of American men who don’t want anything uncomfortable messing up their entertainment.
Make music. Make movies. Serve in the military. Run for office. Get married. Go be gay and live your life. Just stay away from male sports.
It mattered little to them that Sue Wicks and Sheryl Swoopes and other women had come out in the WNBA by then. It mattered little to them that lesbian and bisexual women were, by 2013, out in every major pro women’s sports league. All were courageous, all were leaders, all faced discrimination, and yet, a strange misogyny permitted Americans—particularly men—to have an uneasy, conditional acceptance of openly-gay women in major pro sports but not openly-gay men.
This was the environment in which Jason Collins came out. Everything about it astonished me. The cover of Sports Illustrated? Doing so while a free agent after the season had ended and making a huge gamble on his career? Doing so as a Black man in a country with a long history of diminishing and dehumanizing Black masculinity?
I was in awe of him. I remain in awe of him.
No teams signed him in the offseason. Maybe it was his production on the court. Maybe there were no teams who thought he’d be a good fit for their needs. Maybe—just maybe—even with the general support he received, it was because he was now an openly-gay man and no teams wanted that controversy.
Even with NBA superstars like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Steve Nash, and many others praising his courage and saying all that mattered was the game itself and meeting the standard of excellence, he still got passed over.
It was ten months later when, finally, the Brooklyn Nets signed Mr. Collins to a ten-day contract. February 23rd, 2014. Jason Kidd—the coach of the Nets and a former teammate and good friend of Mr. Collins—pushed for the contract. He played that night for 11 minutes against the Lakers. The first openly-gay man to compete in any of the four major male pro sports leagues in North America.
He would eventually be signed for the remainder of the season with the Nets and retired from pro basketball that November.
But here’s what really gets me about Jason Collins: he never rested on his laurels, nor did he decide coming out while an active gay male pro athlete was enough, even though, I would argue, he’d have been well within his right to do so.
Jason Collins had that quality inherent in all great leaders: a heart for service. He always thought about others. He always wanted to lift up others.
It was only revealed after he came out that he had worn No. 98 on his jersey while with the Celtics and Wizards—when he was still closeted—in honor of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old, openly-gay man who was beaten, tortured, and murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998.
He returned to No. 98 after coming out and signing with the Nets. It became the highest-selling jersey in the NBA for a time. He had that level of impact with his courage.
He consistently supported others in the broader LGBTQ community, even when he had no personal connection to us.
Several times over the years, Jason Collins—the retired NBA pro—reached out to me—a little-known trans woman political writer— over social media just to offer words of encouragement and make sure I felt supported and loved — because he saw the vile hatred trans folks were experiencing.
He would tell me he was proud of me. He would remind me that I should keep my chin up and be proud of myself. I remember one random occasion in 2020, as tired and stressed as I was during the presidential campaign, when I opened a DM from Jason that simply read: “Sending you a big hug today.”
Jason Collins went out of his way to be a big brother to queer folks he didn’t know just because he wanted to ensure we didn’t feel alone in tough moments. He felt protective of us because he knew, more than just about anyone, that sharp pang of loneliness in the public arena.
Many of us received an email this past Monday evening from Jason’s husband, Brunson Green, informing us that Jason was headed to hospice care and requesting we record a video offering words of love and what he means to us.
I cried after the reading the email and got to writing. It didn’t feel like enough. How do I tell this man how much he’s meant to me, meant to all of us? I decided to rewrite it (yet again) and film it and send it by the following evening. I wanted to do it right. He deserved at least that. He deserved way more than what I could offer.
Jason passed the next day before I could send it. I will forever regret not telling him all this, even though he likely wouldn’t have seen it in the mountain of videos his family received from countless people who loved and admired him.
What gives me comfort is knowing he was surrounded by those who loved him most, supported by millions who have thought about him this week, said a prayer for him, acknowledged his greatness and his humanity, given thanks for his selflessness and public service.
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