theintercept--2020-07-16--New York Could Throw Out 1 in 5 Mail-in Ballots in One District, Disproportionately Hitting Brooklyn

the effort to mitigate the exploding pandemic in New York , Gov .
Andrew Cuomo pushed voters toward casting their ballots by mail , which New Yorkers did in record numbers .
But while hundreds of thousands of ballots were cast , there has been significantly less energy invested in counting those votes .
The election was held on June 23 , but more than three weeks later the state is nowhere near a final tally and is disenfranchising an extraordinary number of voters along the way .
The fate of several critical elections hangs in the balance .
Board @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show that in New York ’ s 12th Congressional District , which covers Manhattan , Queens , and Brooklyn , 20 percent of mail-in ballots will be thrown out for a variety of reasons .
The documents represent a “ preliminary staff review ” of ballots , and official decisions are ongoing .
A 1-in-5 disenfranchisement rate is far too high for a developed democracy , but the rate was worse in the Brooklyn part of the district , where the rejection rate in the staff review was a staggering 28 percent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Across the city , nearly 400,000 absentee ballots were cast , meaning Cuomo ’ s handling of the election could throw out some 100,000 votes .
That ’ s roughly the number California disqualified , a number considered scandalously high though it represented just 1.5 percent of mail ballots .
Good government groups have called on Cuomo to step in and treat the vote-by-mail he ordered as more than just a public relations victory he quickly put behind himself .
But Cuomo has so far declined to do so .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precedent for President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Supreme Court to use in the fall to similarly invalidate absentee ballots .
The crisis could easily intersect with the new directive the Trump administration sent to the postal service to delay first-class mail rather than deliver it if doing so required working overtime .
Unless it ’ s reversed , the order will lead to a delay in voters receiving mail-in ballots and a delay in getting them returned .
If they come in late , the Court could use Cuomo ’ s precedent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the election , Cuomo touted a change in the law that allowed absentee ballots to be dropped in the mail in New York as late as Election Day , June 23 .
Now those ballots are the ones least likely to be counted ; a major reason the Cuomo-run Board of Elections is using to invalidate ballots is a lack of a postmark if the ballot arrived at the BoE after that date .
Cuomo could fix this issue easily by issuing an executive order accepting all signed ballots that come in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Return mail that is postage-paid , like a ballot , is generally not postmarked — the mark is used to make sure a stamp isn ’ t re-used , but since there ’ s no stamp , the postal service doesn ’ t need to mark it — but postal service employees are instructed to postmark ballots so that they can comply with the state rules .
Still , sometimes a clerk forgets , and sometimes an entire post office forgets for days .
Something like that appears to have happened in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Manhattan voters requested 77,453 ballots and returned 47,365 : a 61 percent rate of return .
( Many of the ballots requested simply never arrived at people ’ s homes . )
Of those that were mailed in by Manhattan voters , 8,939 ballots were invalidated for a variety of reasons by the staff review .
That represents a 19 percent rejection rate .
The leading cause of invalidations appears to be a failure by the voter to have signed and dated the ballot , according to several campaigns who have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fix that problem next election by making it clear where it needs to be signed , but for this primary , there ’ s little that can be done .
That same 19 percent rate prevailed in Queens , where 16,639 ballots were requested , 9,631 were returned , and 1,831 were rejected .
It was worse in Brooklyn , where 13,494 ballots were requested , 8,285 were returned , and 2,284 were invalidated : a rejection rate of 28 percent .
Something structural must have driven such a large disparity .
Valerie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Board of Election , declined to comment on the staff documents , saying “ we don ’ t release numbers until we certify the election.
” If a major Brooklyn post office was not postmarking ballots , that means voters who cast legitimate , timely ballots won ’ t have theirs count through no fault of their own .
Invalidating a ballot because it has no signature may do a disservice to democracy , but at least the rule is applied uniformly across the city .
Punishing a borough because of its post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could serve as de facto suppression of minority votes .
It also raises the question of why a postmark is preferable to extending the date by which a ballot must be received .
If a ballot is received by the Board of Elections on or before June 23 , there is no question that the voter sent it in on or before June 23 .
And , indeed , Cuomo recognizes that reality .
Vazquez-Diaz , said that any ballot received by June 23 , whether postmarked or not , is considered valid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to determine timeliness is the postmark , ” Vazquez-Diaz said — unless an executive or judicial order changed the criteria for timeliness to make votes received within reasonable mail delivery valid .
But if a ballot was dropped in the mail on June 23 , an option that was repeatedly trumpeted by Cuomo , it likely wouldn ’ t arrive at the BoE until several days later .
An order that deemed any ballot received by , say , the end of the week , June 26 , might make valid a handful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail the day after the scheduled election .
But not accepting any ballots that arrived after June 23 without a postmark necessarily disenfranchises thousands of voters who did cast their ballots on time .
And a ballot dropped in a mailbox on June 23 might not have been picked up by a letter carrier until the next day , giving it a postmark of June 24 , but it should be no less of a legal vote than one marked with a 23 .
Cuomo is within his power to reenfranchise tens of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballot received within a second-class-mail window of June 23 to be valid .
That ’ s an argument being made by the campaign of Emily Gallagher , who challenged 48-year incumbent Joseph Lentol for a Brooklyn-based State Assembly seat .
Gallagher was trailing by nearly 2,000 votes after Election Day , but is within striking distance depending on how absentees go , and how many are counted .
Andrew Epstein , Gallagher ’ s campaign manager , said that the campaign is working with attorneys to file an injunction that would block the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that arrived close to the election .
Like other insurgent candidates with a strong grassroots organizing component , Gallagher appears to have done significantly better with absentee ballots than on Election Day .
Indeed , her campaign ’ s analysis found that neighborhoods she won on Election Day — her strongholds — were also the neighborhoods where the most mail ballots were requested .
Where Gallagher lost , very few ballots were requested .
She trails after Election Day by roughly 1,800 votes , which is a number Epstein thinks they can make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dependent on a sufficient number of these ballots actually being counted , ” he said .
In Gallagher ’ s district , 17,023 ballots were requested , and 9,689 were returned .
If Gallagher wins 60 percent of those votes , she ’ ll win .
But if the BoE tosses one of every three in the trash , she ’ ll lose .
could even affect the largest federal race left on the ballot , between incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney and her closest challenger , Suraj Patel .
Because Maloney ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brooklyn ( most of the district ’ s voters are in Manhattan and Queens ) , the disparate disenfranchisement may not have ordinarily made much of a difference .
But the race is extremely close , so it might .
On Election Day , Maloney secured 41.7 percent of the vote in the 12th Congressional District primary , with 16,473 ballots cast in her favor .
Patel was just behind , with 15,825 , a gap of 648 votes .
Two other progressive candidates won just over 7,000 votes between them .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff still to be counted and , even with Cuomo ’ s BoE rejecting so many ballots , there ’ s reason to believe the remaining ones lean toward Patel .
According to Patel , his campaign requested a list of the 100,000-plus voters who requested ballots , and ran it through a voter database , finding that 51 percent of the ballot requests came from voters under the age of 45 : not a favorable demographic for Maloney , based on Patel ’ s analysis of the electorate as well as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to more moderate incumbents .
The campaign worked intentionally to chase those voters and get them to return ballots , an effort that included a million calls and 400,000 text messages , his campaign spokesperson said .
Patel said that he was hoping to be within at least 4,000 votes on Election Day , a gap he hoped to make up with mail-in ballots .
Maloney has said she is confident her lead will grow when all the votes are counted , particularly in her stronghold of Manhattan .
Ballots are just now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and in the first batch , 174 were tossed for not having a postmark , suggesting the preliminary staff analysis will hew closely to the final decisions .
Patel said that 110 of those arrived on June 24 , meaning they certainly were mailed on time .
He said that their review of ballots suggests about 800 in their sliver of Brooklyn alone will be thrown out over the postmark issue .
Marcela Mitaynes , a housing activist and democratic socialist with the backing of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , was , like Gallagher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York State Assembly on Election Day , behind by nearly 500 votes , but absentees pushed her over the edge .
( She told The Intercept her team had not yet determined how many are being rejected . )
On Wednesday afternoon , after the BoE tabulated around 4,000 mail-in votes , the 26-year incumbent Felix Ortiz conceded the race .
Similarly Walter Mosley , a machine-backed candidate for state Assembly and a close ally of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries , ended Election Day up roughly 600 votes over DSA and AOC-backed Phara @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Souffrant Forrest said it was so far unclear how many ballots Cuomo ’ s election board would reject .
Cuomo can not claim to have been caught off guard by the problem .
On June 22 , election reform groups sent him a letter warning that a combination of postal service neglect and his urging people to vote by mail on Election Day would lead to mass disenfranchisement if he didn ’ t act to correct it .
“ We urge you to issue an Executive Order to avoid disenfranchising voters who , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond the control of any one entity , may have their absentee ballots returned to the Board of Elections with postmarks where the date is illegible or missing , ” the groups wrote .
“ Ordering that any mailed primary ballot received by the Boards of Elections by June 30 that is missing or has an illegible dated postmark be presumed to have been timely mailed is critical to protecting the fundamental voting rights of New Yorkers.
” Update : July 16 , 2020 , 2:50 p.m .
ET This story has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz conceded the race to Marcela Mitaynes after absentee ballots were counted .

As part of the effort to mitigate the exploding pandemic in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed voters toward casting their ballots by mail, which New Yorkers did in record numbers. But while hundreds of thousands of ballots were cast, there has been significantly less energy invested in counting those votes. The election was held on June 23, but more than three weeks later the state is nowhere near a final tally and is disenfranchising an extraordinary number of voters along the way.
The fate of several critical elections hangs in the balance. Board of Election documents obtained by The Intercept show that in New York’s 12th Congressional District, which covers Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, 20 percent of mail-in ballots will be thrown out for a variety of reasons. The documents represent a “preliminary staff review” of ballots, and official decisions are ongoing.
A 1-in-5 disenfranchisement rate is far too high for a developed democracy, but the rate was worse in the Brooklyn part of the district, where the rejection rate in the staff review was a staggering 28 percent, according to an analysis of the documents. Across the city, nearly 400,000 absentee ballots were cast, meaning Cuomo’s handling of the election could throw out some 100,000 votes. That’s roughly the number California disqualified, a number considered scandalously high though it represented just 1.5 percent of mail ballots.
Good government groups have called on Cuomo to step in and treat the vote-by-mail he ordered as more than just a public relations victory he quickly put behind himself. But Cuomo has so far declined to do so. In the process, he could be establishing a precedent for President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Supreme Court to use in the fall to similarly invalidate absentee ballots. The crisis could easily intersect with the new directive the Trump administration sent to the postal service to delay first-class mail rather than deliver it if doing so required working overtime. Unless it’s reversed, the order will lead to a delay in voters receiving mail-in ballots and a delay in getting them returned. If they come in late, the Court could use Cuomo’s precedent to throw out millions of ballots.
In the lead-up to the election, Cuomo touted a change in the law that allowed absentee ballots to be dropped in the mail in New York as late as Election Day, June 23. Now those ballots are the ones least likely to be counted; a major reason the Cuomo-run Board of Elections is using to invalidate ballots is a lack of a postmark if the ballot arrived at the BoE after that date. Cuomo could fix this issue easily by issuing an executive order accepting all signed ballots that come in within a few days of the deadline.
If a major Brooklyn post office was not postmarking ballots, that means voters who cast legitimate, timely ballots won’t have theirs count through no fault of their own.
Return mail that is postage-paid, like a ballot, is generally not postmarked — the mark is used to make sure a stamp isn’t re-used, but since there’s no stamp, the postal service doesn’t need to mark it — but postal service employees are instructed to postmark ballots so that they can comply with the state rules. Still, sometimes a clerk forgets, and sometimes an entire post office forgets for days. Something like that appears to have happened in Brooklyn.
In the 12th Congressional District, Manhattan voters requested 77,453 ballots and returned 47,365: a 61 percent rate of return. (Many of the ballots requested simply never arrived at people’s homes.)
Of those that were mailed in by Manhattan voters, 8,939 ballots were invalidated for a variety of reasons by the staff review. That represents a 19 percent rejection rate. The leading cause of invalidations appears to be a failure by the voter to have signed and dated the ballot, according to several campaigns who have been monitoring the process. Election officials can fix that problem next election by making it clear where it needs to be signed, but for this primary, there’s little that can be done.
Left/Top: Ballot from NY, Right/Bottom: Ballot from CA. Photos: Provided to The Intercept
That same 19 percent rate prevailed in Queens, where 16,639 ballots were requested, 9,631 were returned, and 1,831 were rejected. It was worse in Brooklyn, where 13,494 ballots were requested, 8,285 were returned, and 2,284 were invalidated: a rejection rate of 28 percent. Something structural must have driven such a large disparity.
Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokesperson for the NYC Board of Election, declined to comment on the staff documents, saying “we don’t release numbers until we certify the election.”
If a major Brooklyn post office was not postmarking ballots, that means voters who cast legitimate, timely ballots won’t have theirs count through no fault of their own. Invalidating a ballot because it has no signature may do a disservice to democracy, but at least the rule is applied uniformly across the city. Punishing a borough because of its post office is a different matter, and could serve as de facto suppression of minority votes.
It also raises the question of why a postmark is preferable to extending the date by which a ballot must be received. If a ballot is received by the Board of Elections on or before June 23, there is no question that the voter sent it in on or before June 23. And, indeed, Cuomo recognizes that reality. Vazquez-Diaz, said that any ballot received by June 23, whether postmarked or not, is considered valid. “The only way for us to determine timeliness is the postmark,” Vazquez-Diaz said — unless an executive or judicial order changed the criteria for timeliness to make votes received within reasonable mail delivery valid.
Do you have a story about mail-in ballots you want to share? Email us at tips@theintercept.com or use one of these secure methods to contact a reporter.
But if a ballot was dropped in the mail on June 23, an option that was repeatedly trumpeted by Cuomo, it likely wouldn’t arrive at the BoE until several days later. An order that deemed any ballot received by, say, the end of the week, June 26, might make valid a handful of ballots that were dropped in the mail the day after the scheduled election. But not accepting any ballots that arrived after June 23 without a postmark necessarily disenfranchises thousands of voters who did cast their ballots on time. And a ballot dropped in a mailbox on June 23 might not have been picked up by a letter carrier until the next day, giving it a postmark of June 24, but it should be no less of a legal vote than one marked with a 23. Cuomo is within his power to reenfranchise tens of thousands of New Yorkers by deeming any ballot received within a second-class-mail window of June 23 to be valid.
That’s an argument being made by the campaign of Emily Gallagher, who challenged 48-year incumbent Joseph Lentol for a Brooklyn-based State Assembly seat. Gallagher was trailing by nearly 2,000 votes after Election Day, but is within striking distance depending on how absentees go, and how many are counted. Andrew Epstein, Gallagher’s campaign manager, said that the campaign is working with attorneys to file an injunction that would block the BoE from invalidating ballots without a postmark that arrived close to the election.
Like other insurgent candidates with a strong grassroots organizing component, Gallagher appears to have done significantly better with absentee ballots than on Election Day. Indeed, her campaign’s analysis found that neighborhoods she won on Election Day — her strongholds — were also the neighborhoods where the most mail ballots were requested. Where Gallagher lost, very few ballots were requested. She trails after Election Day by roughly 1,800 votes, which is a number Epstein thinks they can make up. “But that’s dependent on a sufficient number of these ballots actually being counted,” he said.
In Gallagher’s district, 17,023 ballots were requested, and 9,689 were returned. If Gallagher wins 60 percent of those votes, she’ll win. But if the BoE tosses one of every three in the trash, she’ll lose.
The postmark issue could even affect the largest federal race left on the ballot, between incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney and her closest challenger, Suraj Patel.
Because Maloney’s district covers such a small sliver of Brooklyn (most of the district’s voters are in Manhattan and Queens), the disparate disenfranchisement may not have ordinarily made much of a difference. But the race is extremely close, so it might.
On Election Day, Maloney secured 41.7 percent of the vote in the 12th Congressional District primary, with 16,473 ballots cast in her favor. Patel was just behind, with 15,825, a gap of 648 votes. Two other progressive candidates won just over 7,000 votes between them.
There are some 52,054 ballots deemed valid by staff still to be counted and, even with Cuomo’s BoE rejecting so many ballots, there’s reason to believe the remaining ones lean toward Patel. According to Patel, his campaign requested a list of the 100,000-plus voters who requested ballots, and ran it through a voter database, finding that 51 percent of the ballot requests came from voters under the age of 45: not a favorable demographic for Maloney, based on Patel’s analysis of the electorate as well as the pattern of younger voters favoring progressive challengers to more moderate incumbents. The campaign worked intentionally to chase those voters and get them to return ballots, an effort that included a million calls and 400,000 text messages, his campaign spokesperson said. Patel said that he was hoping to be within at least 4,000 votes on Election Day, a gap he hoped to make up with mail-in ballots. Maloney has said she is confident her lead will grow when all the votes are counted, particularly in her stronghold of Manhattan.
Ballots are just now being counted officially in the Patel-Maloney race, and in the first batch, 174 were tossed for not having a postmark, suggesting the preliminary staff analysis will hew closely to the final decisions. Patel said that 110 of those arrived on June 24, meaning they certainly were mailed on time. He said that their review of ballots suggests about 800 in their sliver of Brooklyn alone will be thrown out over the postmark issue.
Marcela Mitaynes, a housing activist and democratic socialist with the backing of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was, like Gallagher, trailing for a seat in the New York State Assembly on Election Day, behind by nearly 500 votes, but absentees pushed her over the edge. (She told The Intercept her team had not yet determined how many are being rejected.) On Wednesday afternoon, after the BoE tabulated around 4,000 mail-in votes, the 26-year incumbent Felix Ortiz conceded the race.
wow. source just shared this – @FelixWOrtiz concedes on his FB page, @marcelaforny likely headed to Albany pic.twitter.com/UlPE7UEohR — Emma Whitford (@emma_a_whitford) July 16, 2020
Similarly Walter Mosley, a machine-backed candidate for state Assembly and a close ally of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, ended Election Day up roughly 600 votes over DSA and AOC-backed Phara Souffrant Forrest, a union nurse. Souffrant Forrest said it was so far unclear how many ballots Cuomo’s election board would reject.
Cuomo cannot claim to have been caught off guard by the problem. On June 22, election reform groups sent him a letter warning that a combination of postal service neglect and his urging people to vote by mail on Election Day would lead to mass disenfranchisement if he didn’t act to correct it. “We urge you to issue an Executive Order to avoid disenfranchising voters who, because of a perfect storm of circumstances beyond the control of any one entity, may have their absentee ballots returned to the Board of Elections with postmarks where the date is illegible or missing,” the groups wrote. “Ordering that any mailed primary ballot received by the Boards of Elections by June 30 that is missing or has an illegible dated postmark be presumed to have been timely mailed is critical to protecting the fundamental voting rights of New Yorkers.”
Update: July 16, 2020, 2:50 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to reflect the fact that New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz conceded the race to Marcela Mitaynes after absentee ballots were counted.


theintercept--2020-07-17--Masks Off: How the Brothers Who Fueled the Reopen Protests Built a Volatile Far-Right Network

to fear .
“ Entire police departments are being overwhelmed by mobs of criminals bent on violence , robbery , arson , and more , ” read one sent in June , as demonstrations against police brutality rocked the country .
“ Minnesotans have seen our peaceful streets turn violent overnight with riotous mobs , ” read another , sent not long after the burning of Minneapolis ’ s Third Precinct .
“ Radical leftists … are looting in our streets , lighting buildings on fire , terrifying citizens , and murdering cops , ” intoned a third .
Antifa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your guns , and did you know that Nickelodeon is removing the police dog character from the hit toddler show “ Paw Patrol ?
” ( It isn ’ t . )
For right-wing fringe activist Ben Dorr , who sent the emails , outrage about Black Lives Matter was an easy pivot from another cause he ’ d been promoting .
With his brothers Aaron , Chris , and Matthew , Ben Dorr helped launch protests to reopen states across the country shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic this spring .
Alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ started a slew of Facebook groups , joined by hundreds of thousands of members , that have helped to fuel skepticism about health precautions and pushed for states to open prematurely .
In a country where the simple act of wearing a mask has become a political statement , the people who organize against masks are worth watching .
By the institute ’ s count , Facebook groups promoting the reopen cause have 2.7 million members .
At least 325,000 of those users belong to Dorr-affiliated groups .
“ My suspicion is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media and whatever it is that makes people both trusting and suspicious , ” said Sally Jo Sorenson , a South Dakota-based blogger who has tracked the Dorr family for decades .
“ These guys have flourished because of people ’ s willingness to believe someone is out to harm them.
” The paranoid atmosphere around reopen protests has , in some cases , led to attempts at violence .
In May , a reopen protester in Colorado was arrested after investigators found four pipe bombs in his home .
In June , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspiring to blow up or set fire to U.S. government buildings during Black Lives Matter protests in Las Vegas .
Their plot had taken shape in April , in connection with anti-lockdown demonstrations in Nevada .
While the Dorr brothers have not been directly tied to particular violent incidents , they are adept at inciting rage and collecting donations with petty insults , racist dog-whistling , and silly stunts .
They have made a career out of skewering mainstream Republicans .
They are , in short , the perfect people to stoke hate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic .
And in true Trumpian fashion , by paying themselves and promoting hate they may end up spawning a movement .
grew up in a family of 11 children in the small northwestern Iowa town of Ocheyedan .
The town belongs to the district that elected notorious racist grew up in a family of 11 children in the small northwestern Iowa town of Ocheyedan .
The town belongs to the district that elected notorious racist Rep. Steve King , and the brothers were immersed in conservative politics from an early age .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ran an anti-abortion group that organized boycotts of Midwestern towns where doctors performed abortions .
It wasn ’ t enough to picket a clinic ; he advocating punishing entire commercial districts .
Paul Dorr told The Intercept in an email that Aaron and Chris , his two oldest sons , were sent to juvenile detention at the ages of 12 and 14 “ for helping rescue babies from being butchered.
” ( The brothers did not respond to requests to comment on this claim , and juvenile court records are typically not obtainable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shifted with the times .
As the year 2000 approached , he became a Y2K prepper , stockpiling goods in an Ocheyedan store he called the Back Dorr Friends Pantry .
And more recently , in 2018 , he checked out books on LGBTQ issues from the public library in Orange City , Iowa , then lit them on fire on Facebook Live .
Between Y2K and book burnings , Paul Dorr focused on defunding public schools .
He and his wife homeschooled their children , a decision that he described in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biblical duty , ” and he felt that other parents should do the same .
He hired himself out as a consultant to Midwestern towns that had school district bond referenda on the ballot , working with the large landowners in the area to defeat any increases in funding for education .
According to Board & Administrator , a newsletter for school superintendents , his tactics included running emotional radio advertisements , arranging “ ghostwritten letters to the editor , ” and placing public records requests , then accusing officials of hiding records @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The newsletter also accused him of using his children in ads .
Dorr responded , in an interview with the newsletter , that he used “ paid actors whose identities , as minors , I will not disclose.
” Dorr told The Intercept that the claim about fictitious letter writers was false , though he said he had reviewed letters written by others .
The Dorr brothers learned from their father about the politics of outrage .
They also got a taste of national politics in 2005 when George W. Bush appointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thomas Dorr , as undersecretary for agriculture despite accusations of improperly obtaining farm subsidies and making racist remarks .
In 2007 , Paul Dorr became the Iowa field director for the Ron Paul campaign , which had strong ties to the conservative direct mail movement .
That movement was sparked in the 1960s , when conservative activist Richard Viguerie copied by hand from House of Representatives records the names and addresses of 12,500 early donors to Barry Goldwater ’ s presidential campaign .
Viguerie realized that the names represented a particularly impassioned voter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he could both mobilize people and line his pockets .
As he wrote in his 2004 book “ America ’ s Right Turn : How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Over America ” : “ That list was my treasure trove , as good as the gold bricks deposited at Fort Knox.
” By 1980 , Viguerie purportedly had 25 million names .
According to historian Rick Perlstein , only 10 to 15 percent of what Viguerie collected from his mailing lists went to the purported beneficiaries .
( Viguerie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comment for this article . )
He also trafficked in fear — of communists , anarchists , integrated schools .
The Dorrs would later follow this example .
“ Unless you are politically feared , you will not be politically respected , ” reads the description for a 2017 political leadership seminar given by Aaron Dorr .
As their father got to work organizing for the libertarian candidate , the younger Dorrs pitched in to help .
The campaign ’ s mailings were overseen by Mike Rothfeld , a direct-mail veteran who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been a crucial influence on the Dorrs .
His organization National Association for Gun Rights would go on to work with Iowa Gun Owners , the Dorr brothers outfit .
Aaron Dorr later boasted that he and his brother Chris were “ ‘ graduates ’ of numerous Rothfeld schools.
” Through an intermediary , Rothfeld declined to comment for this article .
In an hourlong video about their work , the Dorrs explain that they initially stuffed envelopes for their organizations over pizza and soda with other home-schooling families .
Then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they could save money by keeping their mailing expenses in-house and created their own direct-mail company , Midwest Freedom Enterprises , registering it as an LLC in Carroll , Iowa .
( The Dorr brothers are now scattered throughout the Midwest .
Ben Dorr set up in Northfield , Minnesota , which happens to be my hometown . )
According to election filings , Midwest Freedom Enterprises has done mailings for both national and state campaigns .
In 2012 , Liberty for All , a libertarian-leaning Super PAC , According to election filings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for both national and state campaigns .
In 2012 , Liberty for All , a libertarian-leaning Super PAC , paid Midwest Freedom Enterprises nearly $ 10,000 for mailing fees .
But the company appears to have primarily served the Dorrs ’ own advocacy organizations , which are registered as tax-exempt 501 ( c ) ( 4 ) s. From 2016 to 2018 , Iowa Gun Owners spent $ 167,235 on management fees paid to Midwest Freedom Enterprises and $ 187,040 on direct-mail expenses paid to an undisclosed vendor .
The two sums together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the organization generated over that period .
( A recent investigation by The Trace and the Daily Beast detailing the Dorrs ’ controversial role in the gun rights movement arrived at a similar conclusion . )
The flow of nonprofit funds to a for-profit organization controlled by the Dorrs is unusual , said Scott Hubay , an attorney in Cleveland who specializes in campaign finance law .
“ They set up their own business , and their nonprofit funds goes to that business , which seems like a clear conflict of interest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s something I ’ d expect the IRS to take a look at.
” Tax returns for other Dorr organizations show no payments to Midwest Freedom Enterprises but raise other red flags .
Hubay examined 990 tax filings from Dorr organizations registered in Iowa , Minnesota , and Ohio for The Intercept .
Minnesota Gun Rights amended three years of 990s earlier this year , after a report from Cleveland.com highlighted an abnormally high proportion of revenue spent on fundraising .
“ They were spending 90 percent on fundraising , ” Hubay added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The amended returns show significantly lower fundraising expenditures but raise the question of why the forms were corrected , he said .
On behalf of his brothers , Ben Dorr declined to comment on their organizations ’ finances or political tactics , instead sending a statement that they had previously sent to The Trace .
“ We apologize for nothing , and to be attacked by the same socialist , fake-news blogs that hate President Trump means we are doing our jobs fabulously , ” it read .
( A sign on Ben @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Members of the media are not allowed to enter this premises without prior permission.
” ) For a while , the brothers were deeply involved with tea party candidate activities .
Chris Dorr worked on Michele Bachmann ’ s 2012 presidential campaign , while his brother Aaron maintained ties with Ron Paul ’ s outfit .
The brothers ’ campaign work almost landed them in hot water .
In October 2011 , Aaron Dorr allegedly wrote a lengthy memo in which he proposed that an Iowa state senator , Kent Sorenson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paul in exchange for monthly salaries for Sorenson and for Chris Dorr , as well as a $ 100,000 donation to a political action committee that the Dorr brothers would administer .
Sorenson made the switch just before the 2012 Iowa caucuses , and Bachmann cried foul .
In 2013 , Aaron Dorr ’ s memo and several incriminating emails were obtained by Open Secrets , which tracks campaign contributions , and the Iowa Republican , a political blog .
An independent counsel retained by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee concluded in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authenticity of the memo .
But he added that Chris Dorr did not deny its authenticity in an interview .
In typical Dorr fashion , part of the drama centered on a mailing list .
A Bachmann campaign staffer accused Chris Dorr of downloading a list of homeschooling families from her computer without permission .
Chris Dorr claimed to an independent investigator hired by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee that he had downloaded the list accidentally .
Sorenson ( no relation to the blogger Sally Jo Sorenson ) resigned from office and pleaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election law in connection with the scheme to receive compensation from the Paul campaign .
Aaron and Chris Dorr were not charged — and for the most part retreated from national political work .
Instead they focused on expanding the reach of their advocacy organizations .
In early 2020 , the brothers ramped up their anti-abortion work — to questionable effect .
This past February , Minnesota Right to Life sent out an incendiary letter to conservatives around the state .
The move so angered organizers at Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group posted a page warning donors off the Dorrs , calling them “ well-known scammers.
” “ The concern is that this is not a legitimate group , ” said Paul Stark , communications director for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life .
“ They ’ re misleading people and taking their money and not doing anything.
” The state Republican Party joined in the effort with the website mnscammersexposed.com , which cautioned people about Minnesota Gun Rights and Minnesota Right to Life .
“ There are groups out there that just have their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to raise money , and they deceive people , ” state Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a video posted on Facebook .
“ And we eventually had enough.
” The two pages brought the total number of websites devoted to outing the Dorrs as scammers to three — four if you count a Facebook page .
The brothers needed a new cause .
Then came the coronavirus .
April 8 , as much of the United States hunkered down at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19 , the Dorr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including April 8 , as much of the United States hunkered down at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19 , the Dorr brothers started Facebook groups and registered domains , including reopenmn.com reopentexasnow.com , and reopenwi.com , in multiple states .
“ It ’ s time to OPEN UP PENNSYLVANIA and STOP Gov Wolf ’ s Excessive Quarantine !
” proclaimed the Facebook group Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine The effort appears to have been designed primarily to expand their mailing lists .
Reopeniowa.com , for example , redirects to a page @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Facebook groups bar members from posting other petitions .
But many people who joined the groups were genuinely angry over Covid-19-related closures — and felt that the United States needed to be liberated from public health measures .
Throughout April and May , this new constituency blocked roads and staked out its State Capitol buildings .
The protesters were overwhelmingly white .
They bore American flags and signs that read “ SACRIFICE THE WEAK ” and “ WAKE UP SHEEP.
” Some brought their children .
Others carried assault weapons .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ gave the Dorrs new momentum .
They reportedly talked with well-connected organizers of other reopen protests .
On his personal Facebook page , Ben Dorr posted increasingly strident diatribes , at one point railing against immunocompromised people .
“ When people tell you to ‘ Stay Safe , ’ just reply with ‘ Stay Free , ’ ” he wrote .
Aaron Dorr , meanwhile , hinted at a larger purpose .
“ Just bought 2 more web domains that I can ’ t wait to use in the general election !
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups that appear to be unaffiliated with the campaign .
In late April , after Redditors noticed the slew of domain names tracing to a single source , the Dorrs were thrust into the national spotlight , with commentators on the left accusing them of astroturfing .
Glenn Beck invited Ben Dorr as a guest on his podcast , asking him , “ Are you George Soros ?
” “ That ’ s been the question we ’ ve been getting from frankly left-wing media for the last 48 hours , ” Dorr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this big cabal ?
What puppet masters are behind this ?
Is President Trump paying you to putting on these protests ?
Who ’ s doing this ?
” When tea party supporters burst onto the scene in 2009 wearing Uncle Sam hats and waving the Gadsden flag , commentators on the left were quick to dismiss the protests as astroturfed spectacles .
There was truth to this interpretation .
Local activists received money and significant other support from Americans for Prosperity , an advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ground-level outrage — economic populism , as well as anti-immigrant sentiment and racist backlash against the Obama administration — and had a real impact on the political process .
“ They were able to build up a massive grassroots army that impacted not only federal politics , but state legislatures around the country , ” said Burghart , who has studied the tea party .
In some instances , tea party activists drew on tactics that had been pioneered by the progressive organization MoveOn .
What made the tea party a potent political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but also the emergence of a new constituency that had previously been left out of the electoral process .
The anti-lockdown protests have clear parallels to that earlier movement .
Tea party funder FreedomWorks has backed the demonstrations , placing a $ 50,000 digital ad buy in May .
( Americans for Prosperity declined to openly support the protests . )
But as with the tea party , the anti-lockdown effort draws from a group with real energy , whether driven by job losses or blatant nativism .
The risk of repeating the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the Dorrs is “ tremendous , ” said Burghart , noting that leaders of the decentralized reopen movement tend to focus on state and local political races where they can actually make a difference .
“ For progressives , that continued miscalculation led to a decade of tea party dominance in our political discourse and our political trajectory.
” And the Dorrs have Facebook on their side .
Chris Dorr once claimed that the brothers relied on direct mail in order to work around the restrictions of social media sites .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the video about Midwest Freedom Enterprises , is that , “ Facebook can ’ t censor it .
Twitter can ’ t censor it .
We ’ re not getting shadow-banned .
We ’ re not getting our posts hid because we ’ re talking about American freedom.
” But Facebook , which has cozied up to hard-right media figures and done little to block disinformation from right-wing groups , has in fact only amplified the Dorrs ’ reach .
By July , the Dorrs ’ reopen crusade had taken on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were now only sometimes the focus .
As Black Lives Matter demonstrations swept the country , dwarfing the reopen protests , many anti-lockdown activists had shifted to overt racism .
In the Dorrs ’ Facebook groups , members called for law enforcement to use lethal force and water cannons against protesters .
They branded Black Lives Matter a terrorist group , extolled the significance of statues of Confederate generals , and pilloried NFL player Colin Kaepernick .
In a group called Reopen MN , one member claimed that George Floyd had not actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own funeral , ” the person wrote .
The Dorrs declined to comment on the groups ’ evolution , but the statement sent by Ben Dorr echoed members ’ racism and intolerance .
“ At a time when armed thugs are rioting in our streets , murdering police officers , looting stores and burning down private businesses , we Dorr brothers could not be more proud of the aggressive , vicious fighting we do for law-abiding gun owners and pro-lifers all across America , ” it reads .
Their groups now see dozens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , plugging political gatherings , and organizing maskless gatherings .
More broadly , pro-reopen groups have provided a forum for far-right actors to organize counterdemonstrations , including some violent ones .
What the movement has not done is disappear .

The emails played to fear. “Entire police departments are being overwhelmed by mobs of criminals bent on violence, robbery, arson, and more,” read one sent in June, as demonstrations against police brutality rocked the country. “Minnesotans have seen our peaceful streets turn violent overnight with riotous mobs,” read another, sent not long after the burning of Minneapolis’s Third Precinct. “Radical leftists … are looting in our streets, lighting buildings on fire, terrifying citizens, and murdering cops,” intoned a third. Antifa is in the streets, coming for your guns, and did you know that Nickelodeon is removing the police dog character from the hit toddler show “Paw Patrol?” (It isn’t.)
For right-wing fringe activist Ben Dorr, who sent the emails, outrage about Black Lives Matter was an easy pivot from another cause he’d been promoting. With his brothers Aaron, Chris, and Matthew, Ben Dorr helped launch protests to reopen states across the country shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic this spring. Alone or together, the four Dorr brothers started a slew of Facebook groups, joined by hundreds of thousands of members, that have helped to fuel skepticism about health precautions and pushed for states to open prematurely. In a country where the simple act of wearing a mask has become a political statement, the people who organize against masks are worth watching.
The Dorr brothers, who range in age from 29 to 40, have ties to tea party figures like Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul and have been dismissed by people on both the right and the left as astroturfing hucksters who are more interested in profit than policy. Even the National Rifle Association has denounced them as scammers. Before they began railing against public health measures, the brothers started gun rights and anti-abortion groups in multiple states, registering them as nonprofits and then paying out some of the money that they raise from donations to a for-profit direct mail company that they themselves control, according to IRS tax forms required to be filed by nonprofits.
Illustration: Adam Maida for The Intercept
The Dorrs administer or are affiliated with roughly two dozen nonprofits and Facebook groups across 11 states, including the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance Iowa Pro Life Action , and the Trump Club of Ohio . Often, their tactics are crude. Many of their organizations lack offices. The New York State Firearms Association and Pennsylvania Firearms Association are registered to UPS Stores. Iowa Pro Life Action and Iowa Gun Owners are listed at P.O. boxes. Many of the groups have nearly identical logos and web design. The Dorrs film similar videos for the different groups, often wearing the same outfit. In addition to asking for money, their emails typically link to ostensible petitions that collect names and physical addresses to feed back into the mailing lists.
But the Dorrs’ network shouldn’t be discounted. At a moment when the Republican Party is struggling to deal with President Donald Trump’s declining poll numbers and the unchecked spread of Covid-19, the reopen activists offer conservatives new energy, as tea party supporters once did. “The Dorrs are really important because they have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the conservative grassroots,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks right-wing extremists. “The hope among conservatives now is that they can somehow shape that into a mobilizing force.”
“The Dorrs are really important because they have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the conservative grassroots.”
By the institute’s count, Facebook groups promoting the reopen cause have 2.7 million members. At least 325,000 of those users belong to Dorr-affiliated groups. “My suspicion is that the Dorrs have flourished because of social media and whatever it is that makes people both trusting and suspicious,” said Sally Jo Sorensen, a South Dakota-based blogger who has tracked the Dorr family for decades. “These guys have flourished because of people’s willingness to believe someone is out to harm them.” The paranoid atmosphere around reopen protests has, in some cases, led to attempts at violence. In May, a reopen protester in Colorado was arrested after investigators found four pipe bombs in his home. In June, federal prosecutors charged three Nevada men for conspiring to blow up or set fire to U.S. government buildings during Black Lives Matter protests in Las Vegas. Their plot had taken shape in April, in connection with anti-lockdown demonstrations in Nevada.
While the Dorr brothers have not been directly tied to particular violent incidents, they are adept at inciting rage and collecting donations with petty insults, racist dog-whistling, and silly stunts. They have made a career out of skewering mainstream Republicans. They are, in short, the perfect people to stoke hate in a Trump presidency during a global pandemic. And in true Trumpian fashion, by paying themselves and promoting hate they may end up spawning a movement.
The Dorr brothers grew up in a family of 11 children in the small northwestern Iowa town of Ocheyedan. The town belongs to the district that elected notorious racist Rep. Steve King, and the brothers were immersed in conservative politics from an early age. In the 1990s, their father Paul ran an anti-abortion group that organized boycotts of Midwestern towns where doctors performed abortions. It wasn’t enough to picket a clinic; he advocating punishing entire commercial districts. Paul Dorr told The Intercept in an email that Aaron and Chris, his two oldest sons, were sent to juvenile detention at the ages of 12 and 14 “for helping rescue babies from being butchered.” (The brothers did not respond to requests to comment on this claim, and juvenile court records are typically not obtainable.)
Paul Dorr’s activism shifted with the times. As the year 2000 approached, he became a Y2K prepper, stockpiling goods in an Ocheyedan store he called the Back Dorr Friends Pantry. And more recently, in 2018, he checked out books on LGBTQ issues from the public library in Orange City, Iowa, then lit them on fire on Facebook Live.
Between Y2K and book burnings, Paul Dorr focused on defunding public schools. He and his wife homeschooled their children, a decision that he described in the email to The Intercept as a “Biblical duty,” and he felt that other parents should do the same. He hired himself out as a consultant to Midwestern towns that had school district bond referenda on the ballot, working with the large landowners in the area to defeat any increases in funding for education. According to Board & Administrator, a newsletter for school superintendents, his tactics included running emotional radio advertisements, arranging “ghostwritten letters to the editor,” and placing public records requests, then accusing officials of hiding records when they didn’t swiftly respond. The newsletter also accused him of using his children in ads. Dorr responded, in an interview with the newsletter, that he used “paid actors whose identities, as minors, I will not disclose.” Dorr told The Intercept that the claim about fictitious letter writers was false, though he said he had reviewed letters written by others.
The Dorr brothers learned from their father about the politics of outrage. They also got a taste of national politics in 2005 when George W. Bush appointed their uncle, Paul’s brother Thomas Dorr, as undersecretary for agriculture despite accusations of improperly obtaining farm subsidies and making racist remarks.
The Dorr brothers learned from their father about the politics of outrage.
In 2007, Paul Dorr became the Iowa field director for the Ron Paul campaign, which had strong ties to the conservative direct mail movement. That movement was sparked in the 1960s, when conservative activist Richard Viguerie copied by hand from House of Representatives records the names and addresses of 12,500 early donors to Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. Viguerie realized that the names represented a particularly impassioned voter and that by reaching out directly, he could both mobilize people and line his pockets. As he wrote in his 2004 book “America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Over America”: “That list was my treasure trove, as good as the gold bricks deposited at Fort Knox.” By 1980, Viguerie purportedly had 25 million names. According to historian Rick Perlstein, only 10 to 15 percent of what Viguerie collected from his mailing lists went to the purported beneficiaries. (Viguerie did not respond to a request to comment for this article.) He also trafficked in fear — of communists, anarchists, integrated schools. The Dorrs would later follow this example. “Unless you are politically feared, you will not be politically respected,” reads the description for a 2017 political leadership seminar given by Aaron Dorr.
As their father got to work organizing for the libertarian candidate, the younger Dorrs pitched in to help. The campaign’s mailings were overseen by Mike Rothfeld, a direct-mail veteran who had worked with Viguerie and who appears to have been a crucial influence on the Dorrs. His organization National Association for Gun Rights would go on to work with Iowa Gun Owners, the Dorr brothers outfit. Aaron Dorr later boasted that he and his brother Chris were “‘graduates’ of numerous Rothfeld schools.” Through an intermediary, Rothfeld declined to comment for this article.
In an hourlong video about their work, the Dorrs explain that they initially stuffed envelopes for their organizations over pizza and soda with other home-schooling families. Then, Aaron Dorr said, they realized that they could save money by keeping their mailing expenses in-house and created their own direct-mail company, Midwest Freedom Enterprises, registering it as an LLC in Carroll, Iowa. (The Dorr brothers are now scattered throughout the Midwest. Ben Dorr set up in Northfield, Minnesota, which happens to be my hometown.)
According to election filings, Midwest Freedom Enterprises has done mailings for both national and state campaigns. In 2012, Liberty for All, a libertarian-leaning Super PAC, paid Midwest Freedom Enterprises nearly $10,000 for mailing fees. But the company appears to have primarily served the Dorrs’ own advocacy organizations, which are registered as tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s.
From 2016 to 2018, Iowa Gun Owners spent $167,235 on management fees paid to Midwest Freedom Enterprises and $187,040 on direct-mail expenses paid to an undisclosed vendor. The two sums together amount to over one-third of the revenue the organization generated over that period. (A recent investigation by The Trace and the Daily Beast detailing the Dorrs’ controversial role in the gun rights movement arrived at a similar conclusion.) The flow of nonprofit funds to a for-profit organization controlled by the Dorrs is unusual, said Scott Hubay, an attorney in Cleveland who specializes in campaign finance law. “They set up their own business, and their nonprofit funds goes to that business, which seems like a clear conflict of interest,” he said. “That’s something I’d expect the IRS to take a look at.”
Tax returns for other Dorr organizations show no payments to Midwest Freedom Enterprises but raise other red flags. Hubay examined 990 tax filings from Dorr organizations registered in Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio for The Intercept. Minnesota Gun Rights amended three years of 990s earlier this year, after a report from Cleveland.com highlighted an abnormally high proportion of revenue spent on fundraising. “They were spending 90 percent on fundraising,” Hubay added. “That’s insane.” The amended returns show significantly lower fundraising expenditures but raise the question of why the forms were corrected, he said.
On behalf of his brothers, Ben Dorr declined to comment on their organizations’ finances or political tactics, instead sending a statement that they had previously sent to The Trace. “We apologize for nothing, and to be attacked by the same socialist, fake-news blogs that hate President Trump means we are doing our jobs fabulously,” it read. (A sign on Ben Dorr’s office in Northfield says, “Members of the media are not allowed to enter this premises without prior permission.”)
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For a while, the brothers were deeply involved with tea party candidate activities. Chris Dorr worked on Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, while his brother Aaron maintained ties with Ron Paul’s outfit.
The brothers’ campaign work almost landed them in hot water. In October 2011, Aaron Dorr allegedly wrote a lengthy memo in which he proposed that an Iowa state senator, Kent Sorenson, switch his endorsement from Bachmann to Paul in exchange for monthly salaries for Sorenson and for Chris Dorr, as well as a $100,000 donation to a political action committee that the Dorr brothers would administer. Sorenson made the switch just before the 2012 Iowa caucuses, and Bachmann cried foul. In 2013, Aaron Dorr’s memo and several incriminating emails were obtained by Open Secrets, which tracks campaign contributions, and the Iowa Republican, a political blog. An independent counsel retained by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee concluded in a report that he could not verify the authenticity of the memo. But he added that Chris Dorr did not deny its authenticity in an interview.
In typical Dorr fashion, part of the drama centered on a mailing list. A Bachmann campaign staffer accused Chris Dorr of downloading a list of homeschooling families from her computer without permission. Chris Dorr claimed to an independent investigator hired by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee that he had downloaded the list accidentally. Sorenson resigned from office and pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and violating federal election law in connection with the scheme to receive compensation from the Paul campaign. Aaron and Chris Dorr were not charged — and for the most part retreated from national political work. Instead they focused on expanding the reach of their advocacy organizations.
“The concern is that this is not a legitimate group. They’re misleading people and taking their money and not doing anything.”
The Dorrs have lately ventured into new areas. In 2017, they raised $7,900 through GoFundMe to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Harvey. They subsequently launched Six Brothers Disaster Relief, claiming on their website that “every penny goes directly to relief efforts.” That statement is impossible to check; the organization is registered as a 501(c)(3) but has not yet filed 990 tax disclosures for 2019, its first year of existence. Ben Dorr also got involved with the Minnesota Natural Resources Coalition, which presents itself as pro-farmer and rails against “radical environmentalism.” (The website lists the president as Chad Lange, but an email obtained by The Intercept was signed by “executive director Ben Dorr.”)
Illustration: Adam Maida for The Intercept
In early 2020, the brothers ramped up their anti-abortion work — to questionable effect. This past February, Minnesota Right to Life sent out an incendiary letter to conservatives around the state. The move so angered organizers at Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a longstanding anti-abortion outfit, that the group posted a page warning donors off the Dorrs, calling them “well-known scammers.”
“The concern is that this is not a legitimate group,” said Paul Stark, communications director for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. “They’re misleading people and taking their money and not doing anything.” The state Republican Party joined in the effort with the website mnscammersexposed.com, which cautioned people about Minnesota Gun Rights and Minnesota Right to Life. “There are groups out there that just have their own interests in mind; they just want to raise money, and they deceive people,” state Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a video posted on Facebook. “And we eventually had enough.”
The two pages brought the total number of websites devoted to outing the Dorrs as scammers to three — four if you count a Facebook page.
The brothers needed a new cause. Then came the coronavirus.
Trump supporters and a man with an assault rifle join demonstrators outside the Pennsylvania Capitol Building to protest the continued closure of businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic on May 15, 2020 in Harrisburg, Pa. Photo: Mark Makela/Getty Images
Beginning on
April 8, as much of the United States hunkered down at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the Dorr brothers started Facebook groups and registered domains, including reopenmn.com reopentexasnow.com , and reopenwi.com , in multiple states. “It’s time to OPEN UP PENNSYLVANIA and STOP Gov Wolf’s Excessive Quarantine!” proclaimed the Facebook group Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine
The effort appears to have been designed primarily to expand their mailing lists. Reopeniowa.com, for example, redirects to a page that collects addresses for Iowa Gun Owners. The Facebook groups bar members from posting other petitions. But many people who joined the groups were genuinely angry over Covid-19-related closures — and felt that the United States needed to be liberated from public health measures.
Throughout April and May, this new constituency blocked roads and staked out its State Capitol buildings. The protesters were overwhelmingly white. They bore American flags and signs that read “SACRIFICE THE WEAK” and “WAKE UP SHEEP.” Some brought their children. Others carried assault weapons.
The chaos brought on by the pandemic gave the Dorrs new momentum. They reportedly talked with well-connected organizers of other reopen protests. On his personal Facebook page, Ben Dorr posted increasingly strident diatribes, at one point railing against immunocompromised people. “When people tell you to ‘Stay Safe,’ just reply with ‘Stay Free,’” he wrote. Aaron Dorr, meanwhile, hinted at a larger purpose. “Just bought 2 more web domains that I can’t wait to use in the general election!” he wrote. The Dorrs run pro-Trump groups that appear to be unaffiliated with the campaign.
Facebook, which has cozied up to hard-right media figures and done little to block disinformation from right-wing groups, has in fact only amplified the Dorrs’ reach.
In late April, after Redditors noticed the slew of domain names tracing to a single source, the Dorrs were thrust into the national spotlight, with commentators on the left accusing them of astroturfing. Glenn Beck invited Ben Dorr as a guest on his podcast, asking him, “Are you George Soros?”
“That’s been the question we’ve been getting from frankly left-wing media for the last 48 hours,” Dorr answered. “Who’s funding this big cabal? What puppet masters are behind this? Is President Trump paying you to putting on these protests? Who’s doing this?”
When tea party supporters burst onto the scene in 2009 wearing Uncle Sam hats and waving the Gadsden flag, commentators on the left were quick to dismiss the protests as astroturfed spectacles. There was truth to this interpretation. Local activists received money and significant other support from Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers. But the tea party also built on real ground-level outrage — economic populism, as well as anti-immigrant sentiment and racist backlash against the Obama administration — and had a real impact on the political process. “They were able to build up a massive grassroots army that impacted not only federal politics, but state legislatures around the country,” said Burghart, who has studied the tea party. In some instances, tea party activists drew on tactics that had been pioneered by the progressive organization MoveOn.
What made the tea party a potent political force was not just dark money, but also the emergence of a new constituency that had previously been left out of the electoral process. The anti-lockdown protests have clear parallels to that earlier movement. Tea party funder FreedomWorks has backed the demonstrations, placing a $50,000 digital ad buy in May. (Americans for Prosperity declined to openly support the protests.) But as with the tea party, the anti-lockdown effort draws from a group with real energy, whether driven by job losses or blatant nativism.
The risk of repeating the mistakes of the past and dismissing activists like the Dorrs is “tremendous,” said Burghart, noting that leaders of the decentralized reopen movement tend to focus on state and local political races where they can actually make a difference. “For progressives, that continued miscalculation led to a decade of tea party dominance in our political discourse and our political trajectory.”
Illustration: Adam Maida for The Intercept
And the Dorrs have Facebook on their side. Chris Dorr once claimed that the brothers relied on direct mail in order to work around the restrictions of social media sites. The beauty of direct mail, he said in the video about Midwest Freedom Enterprises, is that, “Facebook can’t censor it. Twitter can’t censor it. We’re not getting shadow-banned. We’re not getting our posts hid because we’re talking about American freedom.” But Facebook, which has cozied up to hard-right media figures and done little to block disinformation from right-wing groups, has in fact only amplified the Dorrs’ reach.
By July, the Dorrs’ reopen crusade had taken on a life of its own. Covid-19-related restrictions were now only sometimes the focus. As Black Lives Matter demonstrations swept the country, dwarfing the reopen protests, many anti-lockdown activists had shifted to overt racism. In the Dorrs’ Facebook groups, members called for law enforcement to use lethal force and water cannons against protesters. They branded Black Lives Matter a terrorist group, extolled the significance of statues of Confederate generals, and pilloried NFL player Colin Kaepernick. In a group called Reopen MN, one member claimed that George Floyd had not actually died. “He was at his own funeral,” the person wrote.
The Dorrs declined to comment on the groups’ evolution, but the statement sent by Ben Dorr echoed members’ racism and intolerance. “At a time when armed thugs are rioting in our streets, murdering police officers, looting stores and burning down private businesses, we Dorr brothers could not be more proud of the aggressive, vicious fighting we do for law-abiding gun owners and pro-lifers all across America,” it reads.
Their groups now see dozens of posts a day, pushing hoaxes, plugging political gatherings, and organizing maskless gatherings. More broadly, pro-reopen groups have provided a forum for far-right actors to organize counterdemonstrations, including some violent ones. What the movement has not done is disappear.
Correction: July 17, 2020, 1:20 p.m. ET
This story originally misspelled the last name of Sally Jo Sorensen.


theintercept--2020-07-17--Over 100 Houston Doctors Slam Rep. Dan Crenshaw for “Spreading Dangerous Disinformation” on Coronavi

Over 100 Houston Doctors Slam Rep. Dan Crenshaw for “Spreading Dangerous Disinformation” on Coronavirus

doctors , medical professionals , and emergency room physicians in the Houston area have signed their names to a letter condemning Republican Rep. Daniel Crenshaw for spreading misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic , which has been ravaging the Texas city hard in recent weeks .
“ The COVID-19 pandemic should not be a partisan issue — that ’ s why even Governor Abbott is finally stalling the reopening process and implementing the mask mandates that he unwisely blocked just two short months ago , ” the medical workers , who are primarily women , wrote in the letter , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intercept .
“ Dan Crenshaw , on the other hand , has spewed lies for the past four months — minimizing the threat we face and spreading dangerous disinformation for self-indulgent headlines.
” Doctors rarely ever make such pointed political statements , but the urgency of the coronavirus crisis — and the real harm caused by disinformation spread by elected officials — prompted the Houston-area physicians to speak up , especially as Republicans in the state continued to promote large , indoor gatherings against the advice of public health experts .
“ As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fauci , the medical community is just getting raked over the coals , and undermined and blamed , ” Dr. Christina Propst , a pediatrician in Houston who helped to organize the letter , told The Intercept .
“ If you ’ re a physician working in places like Texas and Florida , you ’ re just battling disinformation constantly , and it gets so exhausting and frustrating.
” The list of Crenshaw ’ s comments undermining the seriousness of the pandemic runs long .
He has also taken it upon himself to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response to the public health crisis .
In mid-April , the first-term representative recorded a video entitled “ Debunking the Left ’ s COVID-19 Narrative ” where he defended President Donald Trump ’ s pandemic response .
( Trump tweeted the video , describing it as “ BRILLIANT , A MUST-WATCH.
” ) Crenshaw ’ s campaign did not return a request for comment .
On Wednesday , Houston reported 16 new deaths from Covid-19 , the first time the city had reported double-digit fatalities since the virus hit the region in March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were reported in June , as the past month has seen the number of cases skyrocket in Texas and the greater Houston area .
Between Memorial Day and mid-June , Texas ’ s hospitalization rate shot up by 36 percent , a fact that Crenshaw has downplayed .
“ If you just hear 36 percent increase , that does sound like a lot .
… In reality , it ’ s under 500 additional hospitalizations out of a state of 30 million people , ” he said on his podcast .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot .
… We ’ re so far away from being in over-capacity or even close to it that it ’ s laughable.
” When a Harris County judge said around the same time that Texas “ may be approaching the precipice of a disaster ” Crenshaw blasted her for “ pure and simple fear mongering.
” He also added that “ people have figured out what they need to do to remain safe.
” A few weeks later , he argued that “ prolonged and universal closures ” had been “ devastating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter , the doctors criticized Crenshaw for “ undermin [ ing ] the advice of our public health experts at every turn — enabling millions of his followers to the same.
” This mixed messaging , they say , left medical workers “ handicapped in our mission ” to protect Texans from the start of the pandemic .
“ We need elected officials who don ’ t throw out meaningless platitudes while trying to shift blame to the institutions working to keep us informed and protected , ” the doctors wrote .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We are your neighbors .
… We implore you to stop playing politics with our lives , stop spreading dangerous disinformation , and start leading by example.
” Propst said that she felt the tide start to change among physicians a few weeks ago , back when the Republican Party of Texas made clear it had no intention of canceling its in-person biennial convention , where 6,000 people were expected to convene inside Houston ’ s George Brown Convention Center .
Propst and some fellow female colleagues began organizing a petition and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Association to condemn the event , which at the time the association was still sponsoring .
The internal lobbying was successful and in late June , the president of the 50,000-member state medical association withdrew its sponsorship of the event and urged the GOP to cancel it .
( Earlier this week the state Republican Party finally agreed to hold its convention online . )
“ I think when people saw that organizing work , it emboldened us to speak out against more dangerous and unethical things we ’ ve been dealing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who represents Texas ’ s 2nd District — which includes much of northern and western Houston — is facing off in November against Democratic challenger Sima Ladjevardian , an attorney and former adviser to Beto O ’ Rourke .
The race is one of the seven Texas House seats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has deemed most competitive and possible to flip .
“ Now more than ever we need a leader who will listen to our medical heroes , guide Houston toward a recovery , and protect Texans with pre-existing conditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical frontline heroes are begging Congressman Crenshaw to stop spreading disinformation and start acting responsibly , but he won ’ t .
”

More than 100 doctors, medical professionals, and emergency room physicians in the Houston area have signed their names to a letter condemning Republican Rep. Daniel Crenshaw for spreading misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been ravaging the Texas city hard in recent weeks.
The doctors didn’t mince their words.
“The COVID-19 pandemic should not be a partisan issue — that’s why even Governor Abbott is finally stalling the reopening process and implementing the mask mandates that he unwisely blocked just two short months ago,” the medical workers, who are primarily women, wrote in the letter, which is first being reported on by The Intercept. “Dan Crenshaw, on the other hand, has spewed lies for the past four months — minimizing the threat we face and spreading dangerous disinformation for self-indulgent headlines.”
Doctors rarely ever make such pointed political statements, but the urgency of the coronavirus crisis — and the real harm caused by disinformation spread by elected officials — prompted the Houston-area physicians to speak up, especially as Republicans in the state continued to promote large, indoor gatherings against the advice of public health experts.
“As everyone is seeing right now with Dr. Fauci, the medical community is just getting raked over the coals, and undermined and blamed,” Dr. Christina Propst, a pediatrician in Houston who helped to organize the letter, told The Intercept. “If you’re a physician working in places like Texas and Florida, you’re just battling disinformation constantly, and it gets so exhausting and frustrating.”
The list of Crenshaw’s comments undermining the seriousness of the pandemic runs long. He has also taken it upon himself to strongly defend the Trump administration’s response to the public health crisis. In mid-April, the first-term representative recorded a video entitled “Debunking the Left’s COVID-19 Narrative” where he defended President Donald Trump’s pandemic response. (Trump tweeted the video, describing it as “BRILLIANT, A MUST-WATCH.”) Crenshaw’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Houston reported 16 new deaths from Covid-19, the first time the city had reported double-digit fatalities since the virus hit the region in March. The deaths were linked to cases that were reported in June, as the past month has seen the number of cases skyrocket in Texas and the greater Houston area.
Between Memorial Day and mid-June, Texas’s hospitalization rate shot up by 36 percent, a fact that Crenshaw has downplayed. “If you just hear 36 percent increase, that does sound like a lot. … In reality, it’s under 500 additional hospitalizations out of a state of 30 million people,” he said on his podcast. “So it’s really not a lot. … We’re so far away from being in over-capacity or even close to it that it’s laughable.”
When a Harris County judge said around the same time that Texas “may be approaching the precipice of a disaster” Crenshaw blasted her for “pure and simple fear mongering.” He also added that “people have figured out what they need to do to remain safe.” A few weeks later, he argued that “prolonged and universal closures” had been “devastating for learning and health.”
In their letter, the doctors criticized Crenshaw for “undermin[ing] the advice of our public health experts at every turn — enabling millions of his followers to the same.” This mixed messaging, they say, left medical workers “handicapped in our mission” to protect Texans from the start of the pandemic.
“We need elected officials who don’t throw out meaningless platitudes while trying to shift blame to the institutions working to keep us informed and protected,” the doctors wrote. “Please Congressman Crenshaw. We are tired. We are your neighbors. … We implore you to stop playing politics with our lives, stop spreading dangerous disinformation, and start leading by example.”
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Propst said that she felt the tide start to change among physicians a few weeks ago, back when the Republican Party of Texas made clear it had no intention of canceling its in-person biennial convention, where 6,000 people were expected to convene inside Houston’s George Brown Convention Center. Propst and some fellow female colleagues began organizing a petition and phone calls to pressure the Texas Medical Association to condemn the event, which at the time the association was still sponsoring. The internal lobbying was successful and in late June, the president of the 50,000-member state medical association withdrew its sponsorship of the event and urged the GOP to cancel it. (Earlier this week the state Republican Party finally agreed to hold its convention online.)
“I think when people saw that organizing work, it emboldened us to speak out against more dangerous and unethical things we’ve been dealing with,” said Propst.
Crenshaw, who represents Texas’s 2nd District — which includes much of northern and western Houston — is facing off in November against Democratic challenger Sima Ladjevardian, an attorney and former adviser to Beto O’Rourke. The race is one of the seven Texas House seats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has deemed most competitive and possible to flip.
“Now more than ever we need a leader who will listen to our medical heroes, guide Houston toward a recovery, and protect Texans with pre-existing conditions,” said Ladjevardian. “Our medical frontline heroes are begging Congressman Crenshaw to stop spreading disinformation and start acting responsibly, but he won’t.”