Protests and Perfidy
Wake Democrat's "No Kings" image goes national, plus a "die in" for Medicaid
This past week, Wake County Democratic Rep. Julie von Haefen saw blowback from her decision to post an image from the “No Kings” protest that featured a guillotine and a life-like decapitated head of President Donald Trump.
von Haefen initially didn’t apologize for posting the image which she had included in an Instagram reel along with other pictures and video of the protest.
The story then went viral, mainly due to the story being picked up by the X account Libs of TikTok.
Amid calls for her to resign, von Haefen did eventually give a short apology on the N.C. House floor.
Read the full recap of von Haefen’s viral moment at North State Journal.
You can also hear me discuss the von Haefen post with Pete Kaliner on his WBT radio show.
No Democrat in the state has yet to go on record condemning her activities, including NC Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton, who went the deflection route.
Clayton’s deflection reminds me of Jim Treacher’s Democrat/Republican reporting rule.
Prior to the “No Kings” protest, Clayton and her party tried to get folks out to “protest in solidarity” with the Los Angeles ICE rioters.
That protest attempt did not have the turnout they likely were looking for. Perhaps the crowd will be bigger for their "2025 Drag Brunch" being held at the NCDP headquarters in Raleigh on June 22.
Moving on from “No Kings” and beheading images…
On June 17, protesters held a "die in" over proposed Medicaid cuts outside North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis' office in Greensboro.
This is not the first protest outside one of Tillis' offices. Near the end of May, the NC Democratic Party and Mecklenburg Democrats protested "Benefits before Billionaires," at his Charlotte office location. The protest centered on President Trump's "one big beautiful bill" (OBBB) and proposed Medicaid changes.
Democrats nationally have seized on the Medicaid changes as "cuts," while leaving out the changes to the program would drop an estimated 1.4 million illegal aliens currently getting Medicaid benefits.
By the way, the Center for Immigration Studies is reporting the number of illegal aliens in the country may have dropped by a million between President Trump taking office in January and the end of May.
Democrats and critics also don't mention the OBBB's changes to Medicaid are estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to save $700B over the next ten years.
The Medicaid provisions in the OBBB do introduce a significant change to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by shifting more cost-sharing to the states and by imposing a work requirement in order to be eligible for benefits.
The "die in" was advertised in a post on Reddit. The accompanying graphic for the protest listed Indivisible Greensboro and The NC Justice Center as the organizers.
The NC Justice Center is a 501(c)3, and organizing this kind of political protest arguably could be a violation of that nonprofit status.
The center would likely argue this is part of its "health advocacy project," of which the organization spent $806,863 in 2023, including grants of $ 131,250.
The center also spent $667,889. including grants of $ 7,531, on "immigration and refugee rights," which it describes as making sure "low-income" immigrants have access to legal representation.
NC Justice Center's 2023 990 filing overall shows revenue of $7,115,074 and expenditures of $1,465,772. Compensation for the center's six paid staffers came in at $877,265, with its Executive Director Reginald Shuford pullin in over a quarter of a million.
Spending on its programs like health advocacy and immigrant legal services came in at over $4.131 million for that year.
More To The Story
The NC Justice Center used to run the left-leaning blog "NC Policy Watch," which the center acquired in 2007.
In early 2023, States Newsroom acquired Policy Watch from the NC Justice Center. Policy Watch was rebranded and renamed "NC Newsline."
States Newsroom is a hyper-partisan, progressive group run by Chris Fitzsimon, who is also the founder of NC Policy Watch and who ran that blog while it was at the NC Justice Center.
Following the acquisition of Policy Watch in 2023, I dropped a report at the North State Journal on States Newsroom and NC Justice Center's dark money funding through pass-though sources like Arabella Advisors and the Wyss Foundation.
Excerpt:
States Newsroom got its start as a project of the Arabella-run 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund under the name “Newsroom Network.” In 2019, Hopewell Fund issued a grant totaling $250,000 to States Newsroom for the purpose of “Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy.”
Available tax records show Sixteen Thirty Fund distributed $3,365,700 in grants to 13 North Carolina progressive groups between 2016 and 2019. Between 2014 and 2019, available records show The New Venture Fund distributed $2,548,732 to over 25 North Carolina entities.
In 2019 alone, available filings show The Hopewell Fund dropped $1,282,303 across six groups, including States Newsroom and including $395,000 to NC Policy Watch’s parent group, The NC Justice Center.
States Newsroom has reportedly also received funding from The Wyss Foundation, originally founded by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss with a focus on land conservation in the Americas.
States Newsroom was originally called the "Newsroom Network," a web of exclusively progressive/left-leaning hyper-partisan blog sites. States Newsroom rebranded in 2019 as an "independent" 501(c)3 nonprofit despite the hyper-partisan content produced on its 40 affiliate websites.
Some related articles of mine over at North State Journal:
Tweet of the Week
Image in 5051 No Kings Defiant L