The republican’s know their policies and ideas are very, very unpopular. They can’t win on them, so they are forced to cheat and drum up fake fears to scare voters to vote for them. Hugs. Scottie
‘Congratulations’ the fake letter reads, ‘you have been selected as a Wayward Steward exchange home for homeless immigrants and victims of foreign wars.’
A Bala Cynwyd couple received a fraudulent letter from the Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs this week informing her that she’d been selected as a “wayward steward” to house five refugees. The office does not exist, nor does the program. Elizabeth Bennett holds the letter on Sept. 27, 2024.Read moreCharles Fox / Staff Photographer
A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees.
No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.
“I’m concerned to find out how many people might have actually gotten it and to make sure the record’s set straight so people aren’t getting fearful or angry and deciding to vote another way,” Elizabeth Bennett, 62, said.
The letter says Bennett was selected as a “wayward steward” as part of “US5Ca12-B … written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” No such law exists.
It advised Bennett she’d been selected based on property and income records and would receive an $80 weekly stipend for food costs. The letter suggested a “minimum of one bedroom be prepared with a minimum of 5 beds,” with a link to “government-approved” bunk beds.
The return address listed is for an intersection in front of the Capitol building in Harrisburg.
Neither the governor’s office nor the department of state immediately returned a request for comment.
Bennett is unsure why she was targeted. She has a large Harris/Walz sign in her front yard. Ironically, she’s also done volunteer resettlement work with immigrants for the last 30 years but she assumes that was just a coincidence.
“Of all the people they could send this to, I would be the one who is like, ‘OK let’s get the room set up, we gotta take care of these people,’” she said. But as she read on, she realized the program was fake and intended to scare people.
“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.
It’s unclear if other Pennsylvanians received the letter. Bennett posted about it in small Facebook groups but hasn’t heard from others who received it.
But whoever created the letter took time to make it look like an official document, including an imprint of a fake Pennsylvania seal on the letterhead and a stamped date informing Bennett when to expect the migrants.
A listed phone number for the fake office, with a Harrisburg area code, goes to a voicemail for the named office where a messaging service invites the caller to press one for housing vouchers, two for reimbursements, and three to “expand your footprint to help more people.”
The letter Bennett received went on to specify garages or sheds without electricity and running water could not be used.
“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” it concluded.
Misinformation about migrant resettlement and illegal immigration has been rampant in the campaign. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have made it a focus of their bid for the White House claiming that migrant resettlement has drained resources from small towns and that illegal immigration has driven crime and economic hardship, with little evidence.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement does invite people to be part of a government hosting program but participation is entirely optional.
State Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D., Philadelphia) is an immigration attorney who called the letter “a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country.”
“It’s definitely designed to make people think that there’s a broader government program to resettle refugees and my guess is that the intention is to stir up fear of immigrants and refugees,” he said. “That’s reprehensible It’s a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country of being a welcoming beacon to people who are seeking freedom.”
In the next week, Hohenstein is cosponsoring a bill to establish an Office of New Pennsylvanians, which would help provide support services for refugee businesses and migrants fleeing persecution in Pennsylvania.
“This would provide help to people who need it,” he said. “It would not be a mandate to anyone.”
New: the latest Bloomberg / Morning Consult poll has Harris separating a bit from Trump — she’s up 50-47 across seven swing states (leading in six, tied in the seventh). https://t.co/pHUt7gY2yIpic.twitter.com/qmR55DuiOV
Instead of a rally, Trump spoke at a Charlotte-area warehouse in North Carolina. During his speech he rambled out of the blue about the 2020 election results, admitting he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump was bragging that he received more votes than any sitting president before him which is meaningless and ridiculous since he got trounced by almost 8 million votes. I guess his addled brain transitioned into the making an explosive statement to his MAGA cult.
TRUMP: We were getting ready to do it, and then a lot of bad things happened. We did much better, by the way, in the election of 2020 than we did in 2016.
Just remember that. Millions and millions of votes more. More votes than any sitting president in the history of our country.
But they beat us by a whisker. They beat us just by a little whisker.
He beat us from the basement.
If you’re a MAGAt, I hope you heard this and heard it good.
Trump played you all for fools.
He played you for fkn idiots.
Police were killed during the insurrection.
January 6th defendants, I hope you rot in jail.
And you all deserved it
Hey Donald Dump, Ashli Babbitt will still be alive if you admitted you lost on Nov 6th, 2020 instead of on Sept 25, 2024.
Trump didn’t lose ‘by a whisker.’ Biden received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s received 232 and Biden received the most votes in the history of the country with 81,283,501, dwarfing Trump’s meager 74 million.
Trump’s lies tore the country apart and are still doing it.
This is totally illegal. It is voting interference that tRump keep claiming the democrats are doing. Yet we see which party is purging voter rolls, doing over the top gerrymandering to make sure only they can win, restricting early voting, restricting mail in ballots, making voting in person harder with aggressive poll watchers challenging any person of color who goes to vote. This man doesn’t like drop boxes and even though the supreme court of the state made it legal he just decided to steal the box before it could be locked down. Even though the elections supervisor’s office is the one with the authority to approve their use and had done so. Another republican who thinks the laws and rules do not apply to them. This is such preformative for the camera / clicks action. Notice how he dressed up for it. Also note he is holding the box hostage in his office. Plus no one had put ballots in it because it was closed and locked and due to be locked down that very morning. Hugs. Scottie
A years-long fight over voting rules in the swing state of Wisconsin sparked a criminal investigation this week after a mayor — wearing a hard hat and Department of Public Works jacket — carted off a ballot drop box the city clerk was about to make available to voters.
The mayor, who was elected in the spring with the help of the Republican Party, said he moved the drop box to his office Sunday because he believed the city council should decide whether the city should use it.
The Wausau drop box was placed outside of city hall late last week, and the clerk planned to have it secured to the ground so that it could be used starting Monday, according to city officials. It was locked, and voters could not place ballots inside while it was awaiting installation, City Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde said.
City Council President Lisa Rasmussen had sharp words for the mayor and is now asking for a public apology. She also suggested Diny could face significant consequences for his actions and said she is not aware of “issues” that would explain the removal.
“I have huge concerns about this behavior, as there is no place for elected officials to manage, alter or tamper with drop boxes, whether they agree with their use or not,” Rasmussen told Wausau Pilot.
“I have voiced my concerns to the mayor about his conduct, and requested he return the box and issue a public apology to the clerk and the community, as his actions violate the public trust and likely also the law.”
We’re going to see a lot more of this.
This is wild. In Wausau, the clerk decided to use drop boxes. Then the mayor, sporting a Department of Public Works vest, got caught on video carting the drop box inside to his office, *after the city attorney said he didn’t have the right to move it*https://t.co/ys5oTEhHCF
They don’t even hide the hatred of fellow citizens and the blatant voter suppression anymore, they make a public spectacle out of it. Makes me really hate people.My sister is one of those people and we haven’t spoken since she first cast her vote for Trump and then in the same breath told me she voted for gay marriage in our state (MN) as if it was a get out jail free card and that I should be appeased since she gave me a crumb.
I have never understood the concern about drop boxes at all. If voters don’t use a ballot drop box, they will just use a postal mail box which is no more or less secure. Why do they think (without evidence) that you can “stuff” a drop box but couldn’t also “stuff” a mail box? They are crazy. I think they just hope that with a mail box, Louis DeJoy can fck up the delivery and make them late
September 25, 1789 The first U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and sent them on to the states for ratification. See the actual document and learn more
September 25, 1957 Nine African-American children, protected by 300 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets, entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.The troops were there to escort the children past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National Guard) thatArkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. The troops remained for the entire school term.
September 25, 1961 Herbert Lee, a farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H. Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner’s jury the same day as the killing. Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and was himself murdered two years later. Herbert Lee
September 25, 2002 Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz musicians in concert for an international audience. Jazz for Peace continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit organizations. Rick DellaRatta
September 24, 1968 10,000 draft files were destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists with homemade napalm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee 14 home Watch a video of the event
September 24, 1969 The Chicago 8 trial opened in Chicago. It was the prosecution of eight anti-war activists charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two lesser-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. The Chicago 8 minus Bobby Seale Chicago 8 background Bobby Seale, after repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself, was bound and gagged in the courtroom and his trial was severed from the rest on November 5th. The group then became known as the Chicago 7. About Bobby Seale
September 24, 1976 Ian Smith, leader of the whites-only government of Rhodesia, a former British colony, agreed to introduce black majority rule to the country within two years. He was under pressure from the United States through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and from British Prime Minister James Callaghan.
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