In The News

Inside Ziklag, the Secret 

Organization of Wealthy Christians

Source: ProPublica, by Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey

    (ProPublica) - 7/13/2024 - The little-known charity is backed by famous conservative donors, including the families behind Hobby Lobby and Uline. It’s spending millions to make a big political push for this election — but it may be violating the law. A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

    These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups . . . .  see full store HERE

 

School Voucher Costs Blow Hole 

in State Budget

Source: ProPublica, by Eli Hager

    (Propublica) - 7/16/2024 - In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies. In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model. 

    

   Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year . . .  see full store HERE

One Year Later, Uganda's

Anti-LGBTQ+ Law Is Destroying Lives

Source: LGBTQNation

    (LGBTQ) - 7/16/2024 - ​In May 2023, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed one of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world. A year on, the law has worsened the state of LGBTQ+ rights and has become a model shaping the thoughts of other African leaders in regard to queerness — it has also led to a major setback despite the decade-long fight against homophobia.

 

    In its genocidal fantasies, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 stipulates long prison sentences and allows executions for certain types of same-sex activities, making Uganda the first predominantly Christian nation in the world with capital punishment criminalizing homosexuality . . . .  see full store HERE