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At the least 20 PACs fashioned since late 2020 that, by means of early September, have collectively spent greater than $1.5 million to help the campaigns of 105 conservative candidates in 35 Texas faculty districts.
This text was initially revealed by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative information outlet. Join their weekly e-newsletter, or observe them on Fb and Twitter.”
Over the past three years, an interconnected community of political motion committees (PACs), largely funded by billionaires who help faculty privatization, has begun to remodel the character of native faculty board elections throughout Texas. They’ve finished this with the assistance of consultants whose efforts have largely gone unnoticed.
On August 15, 2022, members of the Carroll Impartial College District (CISD) board of trustees, all wearing Southlake Dragons’ inexperienced, posed for a photograph with representatives of Patriot Cell, a Christian Nationalist telephone firm that spent large final spring to assist safe the victories of three trustees. The event honored the corporate’s donation of posters that learn “In God We Belief.”
The trustee’s acceptance of the purple, white, and blue star-spangled posters instantly drew opposition from critics who see these phrases not simply as a motto that seems on greenback payments, but additionally as a declaration of allegiance to conservative causes. One disapproving mum or dad tried to donate indicators with the identical phrases in Arabic and on a rainbow background however was rejected; the board president stated they already had sufficient.
Different faculty districts acquired the posters across the identical time. And never all mother and father who spoke out have been essential.
Erik Leist, who resides within the neighboring Keller ISD space, spoke to a number of information shops concerning the posters after they have been donated. He accepted of the state regulation handed in 2021 that requires colleges to show donated indicators bearing the nationwide motto in a “conspicuous place.”
“If it’s necessary to communities, the neighborhood will come behind it,” Leist stated, in accordance with accounts revealed in Fox Information and the Texas Tribune that recognized him solely as the daddy of a kindergartener.
Leist, nonetheless, is rather more than a involved dad: He’s a conservative political marketing consultant who on the time had already been paid tens of hundreds of {dollars} by a number of PACs to help the campaigns of recent ultraconservative faculty board members in Carroll and neighboring faculty districts, trustees who have been keen to just accept these posters and who later handed insurance policies limiting college students’ entry to library books and rolling again lodging for LGBTQ+ college students.
Leist is only one well-connected node in a sprawling, hydra-like community of PACs and consulting corporations that more and more are focusing on Texas faculty board races and politicizing these previously low-budget, nonpartisan campaigns, an investigation by the Texas Observer reveals.
The Observer’s examination of marketing campaign finance information reveals that dozens of ultraconservative faculty board candidates across the state have been backed by PACs that collectively make use of a handful of conservative political consulting corporations.
Considered collectively, the connections amongst these people and organizations reveal a community of main funders and political operatives targeted on successful management of the state’s native faculty boards. The technique this community employs has been trumpeted within the right-wing press as a blueprint for college board takeovers: Create a PAC, endorse candidates prepared to run on politicized points, rent a consulting agency with ties to the Republican Occasion, increase sufficient to outspend opponents, and if victory is secured, move insurance policies that align with statewide social gathering priorities. The largest identified backers of this community are conservative billionaires who usually don’t reside within the districts being focused however all of whom help faculty privatization efforts.
The timing of the community’s actions corresponds to revived efforts by Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers to help vouchers for personal colleges within the 2021 and 2023 legislative classes.
The Texas Observer mapped out how this community of PACs, consultants, and funders are all linked collectively. Click on above to interactively discover the community of connections.
To grasp how this community developed over time, it’s greatest to start in CISD — a district positioned in Southlake, a rich suburb of Fort Price that’s over 70 p.c white. It’s the place Leist acquired his begin as a college board marketing campaign marketing consultant, supporting an effort praised by the conservative press as a mannequin for different faculty districts.
In August 2020, the seven-member CISD board held a listening to on one thing known as a Cultural Competence Motion Plan, a proposal created in response to a 2018 viral video of Carroll highschool college students shouting the N-word.
Lower than two weeks later, Tim O’Hare, the previous chair of the Tarrant County Republican Occasion and present Tarrant County choose, teamed up with Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist and the spouse of a former Southlake mayor, to create Southlake Households PAC.
In November 2020, Southlake Households PAC — which describes itself as “unapologetically rooted in Judeo-Christian values” — paid a Keller-based advertising firm known as 221b Ingenuity, of which Leist was a managing associate, to assist arrange an internet site to advertise two conservative CISD faculty board candidates. They ran in opposition to the Cultural Competence Motion Plan within the spring 2021 race that featured PAC-funded mailers accusing opponents of pushing “radical socialism.” Each PAC-backed candidates received.
In June 2021, the right-leaning Nationwide Assessment lauded Southlake Households’ victory as a “mannequin for conservative mother and father confronted by related conditions across the nation.” When Southlake Households helped a 3rd candidate win a particular election for a vacant CISD seat that fall, the three joined with a fourth PAC-endorsed incumbent to type a conservative majority on the board.
Since then, seven federal civil rights investigations have been opened into allegations of discrimination in opposition to Carroll college students primarily based on race, incapacity, and gender or sexual harassment. The newest started in January 2023, one month after the board eliminated references to faith, sexual orientation, and gender identification from the district’s nondiscrimination assertion, stoking additional controversy and making information.
What has drawn much less press consideration is that the state of affairs in Carroll has impressed a community of copycat PACs supporting conservative candidates in different traditionally low-budget nonpartisan faculty board races throughout the state, through which PACs and the candidates they endorsed employed from the identical handful of consulting corporations to assist with campaigns.
Tentacles of this big-spending community have already reached greater than two dozen Texas faculty districts. The Observer has recognized 20 PACs fashioned since late 2020 that, by means of early September, have collectively spent greater than $1.5 million to help the campaigns of 105 conservative candidates in 35 districts.
More often than not, that funding has paid off: 65 PAC-supported candidates — or 62 p.c — received their elections from 2021 to 2023.
Nearly all of these PACs are targeted on just one faculty district every. The ultraconservative committees have usually spent tens of hundreds of {dollars} per election, with lower than $100,000 in whole bills since they have been fashioned. A handful of PACs have spent greater than six figures in whole, together with Southlake Households, which has spent greater than $239,000 since late 2020.
Marketing campaign finance information present that these seemingly grassroots teams usually use the identical consulting corporations like Leist’s Edgerton Methods, which has labored on behalf of PACs and candidates in a minimum of 14 faculty districts. Different consulting corporations which have remodeled six figures engaged on faculty board campaigns embody Axiom Methods and CAZ Consulting — and each firms’ subsidiaries. They’re the identical consultants utilized by big-spending conservative political PACs like Patriot Cell Motion and Texans for Academic Freedom, which have respectively spent greater than $500,000 and $330,000 on faculty board races and collectively have endorsed 66 candidates throughout a minimum of 23 districts.
At the least one federal-level tremendous PAC, the 1776 Undertaking, has additionally invested in 28 faculty board candidates throughout eight Texas faculty districts that have been additionally endorsed by both Patriot Cell Motion, Texans for Academic Freedom, or one of many Southlake Households-style PACs.
This degree of out of doors spending is very uncommon at school board races. The outcomes of a 2018 survey carried out by the Nationwide College Board Affiliation confirmed that 75 p.c of all candidates reported spending lower than $1,000 per race, with solely 9 p.c spending greater than $5,000.
Evaluation of marketing campaign bills by the nonprofit OpenSecrets reveals that spending more cash doesn’t at all times guarantee victory — however usually does. Given the comparatively low value of college board races, the inflow of even a couple of thousand {dollars} of out of doors funding can rework the character of such elections at a time of excessive turnover: In accordance with a 2022 survey from College Board Companions, a nationwide group targeted on recruiting and coaching anti-racist faculty board members, almost two-thirds of college board members nationwide stated they deliberate to not search reelection.
“That is extraordinarily irregular,” stated Sarah Reckhow, a professor of political science at Michigan State College who has written two books about outdoors funding of college board elections. “This degree of funding brings the potential of elevating the price of being a official candidate.”
Nonetheless, she stated, if larger spending causes voters to be extra engaged in low-profile elections and acknowledge that different persons are influencing their faculty district, “then perhaps that’s an excellent factor.”
Within the southeast Texas metropolis of Humble, one other 2021 faculty board race turned a quieter testing floor for a brand new conservative PAC. Not like in Carroll ISD, there was no dramatic nationwide protection or conflict over variety and inclusion. The district, in certainly one of Houston’s sprawling and forested northern suburbs, was the primary foray into faculty board races for Texans for Academic Freedom, a PAC with a mission of “preventing in opposition to Essential Race Idea and different anti-American agendas and curriculums.”
Funded primarily by a coterie of conservative billionaires, Texans for Academic Freedom — initially generally known as the Freedom Basis of Texas — was based in early 2021 by Christopher Zook Jr., a former subject director for the Harris County Republican Occasion and senior fellow at Texans For Lawsuit Reform.
Within the Could 2021 election, the PAC spent greater than $10,000 to assist three candidates — a big funding from one supply, provided that Humble faculty board candidates tended to spend solely about $3,300 from all contributors in contested races. The PAC cash was spent on a nationwide political consulting agency known as Axiom Methods. All three of the PAC’s candidates received.
Not like in majority-white Southlake, the college board election in Humble — the place white college students are a minority — didn’t characteristic inflammatory, politicized rhetoric. That helped Texans for Academic Freedom maintain a low profile.
“I wasn’t conscious there was outdoors PAC spending,” stated Brian Baker, a father of two college students in Humble ISD. “I had been listening to tales in different elements of the state and I used to be looking for candidates and mailers utilizing sure buzzwords like ‘woke,’ however I didn’t actually discover any.”
After the preliminary victory in Humble, Texans for Academic Freedom focused two extra districts close to Houston, Cypress-Fairbanks and Klein, in 2021. This time, messaging round essential race concept got here to the fore. All three PAC-backed candidates in Cypress-Fairbanks ran in opposition to the ostensible inclusion of essential race concept at school curriculum and instructor coaching, as did one PAC-backed candidate in Klein. Six of the seven candidates received.
By the top of 2021, candidates backed by Texans for Academic Freedom had established close to or outright majorities in all three districts—and all three would later rank on a listing of book-banning districts put collectively by PEN America, a nonprofit group targeted on the safety of free expression.
Texans for Academic Freedom has intervened in races throughout the better Houston space, together with Houston, Conroe, Katy, and Spring Department. The PAC has additionally backed candidates within the wooded Austin suburb of Leander, within the oil-rich flats of Midland, in a number of suburbs of Fort Price, and within the Panhandle’s Canyon ISD. The PAC backed 12 candidates in 2021, 10 in 2022, and 20 in 2023, overlaying a complete of 17 faculty districts. Out of all these candidates, 76 p.c received their elections.
“Issues like this have occurred earlier than however not in such a coordinated manner,” stated Ruth Kravetz, a retired public faculty administrator and instructor who co-founded Neighborhood Voices for Public Training, an advocacy group that seeks to strengthen Houston’s public faculty system. “Prior to now it was to advertise constitution growth. And now it looks as if it’s about selling the destruction of public schooling.”
Candidates backed by Texans for Academic Freedom have frequently run on hot-button points that tie in with state-level Republican coverage and rhetoric, reminiscent of notions that kids are being “indoctrinated” into radical ideologies or “sexually different life.”
In Conroe ISD, three candidates backed by Texans for Academic Freedom ran because the “Mama Bear” slate and received their November 2022 elections after being concerned in a push by a bunch generally known as Mama Bears Rising to limit pupil entry to sure books.
“The PACs have been in a position to help a large printing of voter guides and distribution of mailers,” stated Evan Berlin, a resident who misplaced to one of many Mama Bears. Berlin, a first-time faculty board candidate who has a conservative voting document, informed the Observer he needed to run on offering schooling in a non-politicized method. “I feel with PAC cash coming from out-of-district donors, simply by nature of that we may assume that it’s half of a bigger, extra strategic effort,” he stated.
Final 12 months, whereas Texans for Academic Freedom was concentrating on Houston space races, Patriot Cell Motion and one other 17 PACs have been backing candidates in 22 districts throughout the Dallas-Fort Price space. These candidates largely ran on points which have grow to be a standard chorus: allegations of ideological indoctrination, essential race concept, pornography in colleges, and the sexualization of kids.
Fifteen of the 18 PACs focusing on North Texas faculty districts tapped both Axiom Methods, Edgerton Methods, or CAZ Consulting for marketing campaign consulting — as did many faculty board candidates within the space. The outliers have been: McKinney First PAC, which endorsed candidates that labored with these consulting corporations; Metroplex Residents for a Higher Tomorrow and Decatur ISD Dad and mom Unite, two teams primarily funded by a Republican mega donor who has contributed to Texans for Academic Freedom; and Collin Conservatives United, a self-described PAC that doesn’t seem within the state PAC registry, whose endorsed candidates obtained donations from the identical megadonor.
As this bigger cluster of PACs and consulting corporations has grown, its technique has proved potent. Fourteen of its 17 candidates received in 2021. One other 42 candidates ran in 2022 and 27 received. And thus far in 2023, 48 extra candidates ran and 26 received.
By September 2023, PAC-supported candidates had established majorities in a minimum of eight districts: Carroll, Grapevine-Colleyville, Humble, Katy, Keller, Klein, Mansfield, and Spring Department. And these efforts are persevering with.
The recurring look of sure consulting corporations and large donors throughout supposedly nonpartisan faculty board races seems to have been deliberate or coordinated statewide, if not past. In December 2021, the Republican Occasion of Texas championed PAC-backed victories in Carroll and Cypress-Fairbanks faculty districts and explicitly said the social gathering’s intention “to play a better position in non-partisan races and poll propositions” and deal with recruiting and useful resource sharing.
“It’s no coincidence that this initiative comes on the identical time President Biden’s Division of Justice is trying to suppress parental involvement in native elections by threatening to deal with mother and father as terrorists for turning into concerned of their kids’s schooling,” wrote Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi. “Democrats throughout the nation see the significance of native elections within the combat for America, and so does the Texas GOP.”
In August 2022, Shannon Braun, a Grapevine-Colleyville ISD (GCISD) trustee and present president of the board, wrote an opinion piece for the conservative web site the Dallas Categorical titled “What Occurred in GCISD Isn’t an Accident, It’s a Mannequin.”
“I take consolation in realizing that none of this occurred by chance,” Braun wrote. “It was the truth is a deliberate plan of action that may be replicated in any neighborhood throughout Texas, as long as there are sufficient individuals prepared to take a stand and take the warmth that comes with it.”
Braun was endorsed in 2021 by GCISD Dad and mom, a neighborhood PAC that as of 2023 had paid each Edgerton Methods and Axiom Methods for consulting providers. Braun additionally straight employed Leist as a marketing consultant and was endorsed by Wambsganss of Southlake Households PAC.
Throughout her 2021 race, Braun spent over $30,000 — greater than 3 times her incumbent opponent—to defeat Mindy McClure, a long-time PTA volunteer and former Republican precinct chair.
“I didn’t see it coming,” McClure informed the Observer. “However wanting again, it’s clear to me that there was loads of outdoors cash and coordination. It made the race extra political than native.”
Since her election, Braun has joined with different newly elected conservative faculty board members to move insurance policies that mirror statewide Republican priorities, together with limiting how lecturers speak about race, gender, and sexuality, and limiting lavatory entry for transgender college students.
Amongst Braun’s allies on the college board is Tammy Nakamura, a former Colleyville Metropolis Council member who endorsed Braun’s 2021 marketing campaign. Nakamura’s 2022 faculty board candidacy was endorsed by GCISD Dad and mom and Patriot Cell Motion and assisted by Edgerton Methods.
The most important out-of-district donor to Nakamura’s marketing campaign was Monty Bennett — the Republican mega donor writer of the Dallas Categorical. Since 2021, Bennett has donated over $75,000 to candidates and PACs throughout seven faculty board races, together with $7,000 to Texans for Academic Freedom.
Requested about his motivations for the donations, Bennett stated, “Entry to high quality schooling shouldn’t be denied to any baby, even when authorities can’t or received’t present it.”
Whereas Patriot Cell Motion is primarily funded with cash from the Christian nationalist cellphone firm, some conservative billionaires have forked over large bucks to highschool board PACs, together with Houston actual property mogul Richard Weekley, who contributed $152,500 to Texans for Academic Freedom. He additionally gave $1,237,500 to the Coalition Por/For Texas, a PAC based by Dallas actual property mogul Harlan Crow; the PAC transferred $150,000 of its funds to Texans for Academic Freedom. Then there’s Fred Saunders and his son Stuart Saunders of the rich Houston space banking household, who collectively have contributed $297,500 to Texans for Academic Freedom, and James Leininger, the Texas Public Coverage Basis founder and longtime faculty voucher proponent who donated $70,000 to Texans for Academic Freedom.
Bennett, Weekley, and Crow are all supporters of Texans for Academic Reform, an advocacy group and PAC that has pushed for college privatization and vouchers since 2014.
McClure, the previous GCISD trustee who was unseated by a PAC-backed candidate, believes that this seemingly coordinated effort to take over faculty boards has a bigger agenda.
“There’s some huge cash in schooling,” McClure stated. “I feel it’s finally all an effort to help the push for college vouchers.”
Anne Russey, a mum or dad of two kids in Katy ISD colleges, has been a vocal critic of the district’s new PAC-backed conservative majority.
“This isn’t nearly gaining management over faculty boards,” Russey stated. “That is about dismantling public schooling as we’ve at all times identified it to exist by disrupting it from the within.”
The place conservative faculty board majorities have been secured with the help of an analogous set of PACs and consultants, trustees have handed related insurance policies.
In 2022, new PAC-backed conservative majorities handed a variety of recent insurance policies within the Carroll, Mansfield, Keller, Klein, Spring Department, and Grapevine-Colleyville districts, affecting issues like entry to sure books, the flexibility of LGBTQ+ college students to make use of sure loos, and the way employees discusses problems with race, gender, and sexuality. In Frisco, the place solely two of 4 PAC-backed candidates received, the board handed a coverage limiting transgender college students from utilizing their most well-liked loos — spurring a grievance from the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In June, PAC-backed trustees in Keller ISD voted to undertake controversial insurance policies concerning pronoun and loo use, successfully requiring lecturers to disclaim the chosen gender identification of scholars. And in late August, the Katy ISD board started requiring employees to tell mother and father if their kids determine as transgender or select to make use of a distinct title or pronouns at college.
“This coverage is a direct assault on trans college students and different marginalized teams of scholars who don’t have a enough voice in policymaking,” stated Cameron Samuels, who graduated from Katy colleges in 2022. “So many trans college students spoke on the board assembly the place they handed the anti-trans coverage, together with myself. However they finally handed the coverage after 4 hours of public remark, which was not a shock in any respect. That’s what they have been elected to do.”
Samuels, a queer one who makes use of they/them pronouns, had been very lively at Lake Excessive College in organizing in opposition to the makes an attempt to take away LGBTQ+-friendly books. As a freshman, they found that LGBTQ+ sources like The Trevor Undertaking have been blocked on the college web, and with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, they acquired it unblocked. Now a graduate, Samuels is the manager director of College students Engaged in Advancing Texas, a nonprofit they co-founded to assist set up pupil advocacy in policy-making.
“Katy is following a development that matches many different faculty districts within the state,” Samuels informed the Observer.
Whether or not this political community will proceed to increase its affect to extra faculty board races is unsure. Latest defeats of PAC-backed candidates in Plano, McKinney, Frisco, and Richardson counsel that organized grassroots opposition teams have prevented extremely funded right-wing faculty board takeovers.
Tarrah Lantz, a longtime PTA volunteer and a former president of the Plano ISD Council of PTAs, checked out marketing campaign finance studies from different faculty board elections in Tarrant County and knew what was coming when she determined to run for Plano faculty board in Could 2023. Lantz despatched out mailers about the specter of outdoors affect and known as out a slate of three candidates who she stated have been working with “the identical Keller-based marketing campaign consulting agency as Patriot Cell Motion, a cellphone firm with an extremist agenda which led the current takeover of Keller, Southlake, Carroll and Grapevine-Colleyville faculty boards.”
“This was on my radar,” Lantz stated. “I used to be watching what was occurring throughout the state, and I knew that if I ran we might have a conservative effort that might attempt to put forth candidates to be mouthpieces for individuals who may not have a direct curiosity in Plano ISD.”
She was proper. Funds to Edgerton Methods and Axiom Methods appeared on the marketing campaign finance studies of all three conservative candidates endorsed by the Plano Residents’ PAC, which additionally paid Edgerton for consulting work. All three candidates misplaced, however the races proved pricey for the victors.
“We needed to actually deal with it as if we have been operating a marketing campaign for state or congressional home,” Lantz informed the Observer. “We had large yard indicators or large highway indicators. We had subject operations. It was large for a college board. Unprecedented, I’d assume.”
In the end, Lantz attributes her victory to being extra education-focused.
“When requested about issues like security and safety at one of many first candidate boards, whereas my opponent stated they thought the alleged existence of pornography within the library was our greatest situation, as an alternative I talked concerning the bond cash we’ve dedicated to security and safety and the addition of doorways that may create obstacles ought to a shooter be inside a college,” Lantz stated. “They have been involved with singular points, or they have been operating with an agenda.”
At the same time as some current efforts by this community have faltered, new fronts have opened within the battle for schooling. Some faculty boards taken over by ultraconservative majorities usually are not solely adopting cookie-cutter insurance policies, they’re charting programs far out of the mainstream by attempting to divorce themselves from the longstanding affiliation that trains and helps state faculty boards.
On March 17, the Texas GOP known as on faculty boards to disaffiliate from the Texas Affiliation of College Boards (TASB), a corporation fashioned in 1949 that helps faculty boards with coaching and shared sources. The explanation: TASB’s steering concerning lodging for transgender and gender-nonconforming college students. Simply ten days later, CISD’s conservative-dominated board voted to interrupt ties with TASB. The trustees later expressed curiosity in becoming a member of a brand new group, Texans for Excellence in Training, an explicitly conservative, newly fashioned nonprofit different to TASB.
In accordance with company filings in Delaware, Texans for Excellence in Training was based in 2021 by Dallas hospitality business entrepreneur Adrian Verdin, an affiliate of Bennett’s who has usually visited Bennett’s ranch. The primary article about Texans for Excellence in Training appeared in Bennett’s Dallas Categorical. The article named a longtime Republican political marketing consultant because the group’s public affairs supervisor. The marketing consultant has began a number of organizations up to now with Bennett, together with an unsuccessful try and launch a college voucher program in Wimberley ISD. Bennett didn’t reply to particular questions on these ties.
Texans for Excellence in Training promotes one thing they name the “Classical Social Emotional Studying” coverage, which targets social points reminiscent of “essential race concept,” “gender fluidity,” and “doubtlessly pornographic materials.” The metadata for the coverage doc accessible on the Texans for Excellence in Training web site reveals it was authored by somebody on the regulation agency that employs Tim Davis, the overall counsel of the Tarrant County Republican Occasion. The coverage was first thought of by the GCISD board of trustees, which since 2022 has employed two corporations the place Davis has labored as a associate. In September, GCISD fielded a presentation from Texans for Excellence in Training after two trustee candidates endorsed by the group received their elections.
State Consultant Nate Schatzline, who represents a part of Tarrant County and likewise has paid Axiom Methods and Edgerton Methods for marketing campaign work, lauded Carroll ISD’s transfer and has promoted Texans for Academic Excellence in a number of social media posts.
“A substitute for [TASB] is lastly right here,” Schatzline wrote. “I’m calling on each Texas ISD to depart TASB and be a part of Texans for Excellence in Training! They’ll present all of the sources your faculty district wants with out the leftist indoctrination of TASB!”
There’s additionally a rising effort by a few of these faculty boards with new PAC-backed conservative majorities to problem long-standing faculty funding formulation. College boards in Carroll and Grapevine-Colleyville have just lately thought of resolutions opposing “recapture” funds to the state, whereas boards in Keller and Spring Department have already handed them.
The recapture system, first put into regulation in 1994, requires native districts with excessive quantities of wealth per pupil to ship extra native property tax {dollars} right into a normal fund that’s redistributed to property-poor districts. Therefore the system is sometimes called “Robin Hood.”
These resolutions, within the phrases of 1 PAC-backed CISD trustee, ship a transparent message to the state: “We’re not going to pay you, and that might include some penalties.”
Chris Tackett, a former member of the Granbury ISD faculty board who has turned himself right into a marketing campaign finance researcher, fears that the parallel efforts of those right-wing faculty boards could finally undermine the colleges they’re supposedly serving.
“Individuals usually are proud of their colleges, and that’s an impediment to vouchers. … So whereas vouchers are being pushed … they must devalue the neighborhood’s notion of their native colleges on the identical time,” Tackett stated. “And I feel that’s precisely what they’re doing.”
This story and infographic are a part of a collection supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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