Think the Biden administration isn’t using taxpayer-funded federal agencies to carry out a get-out-the-vote effort for Democrats? Take a look at what President Joe Biden’s constitutionally suspect executive order is doing at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Email communications and other documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests show the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) feverishly scheming to use students in bureau-operated Native American K-12 schools to carry voter registration cards home to their parents. The agency oversees 183 schools on more than 60 Indian reservations in 23 states, according to BIE’s website. Some 46,000 students attend the schools.
Records also expose Biden’s secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, who “made history when she became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary,” arguably stepping over the Hatch Act line that bars executive branch officials from engaging in overtly political activities on the job.
“What’s happening now is absolute corruption. A very red line was crossed by this administration,” Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, told me on The Federalist Radio Hour podcast. “We’ve taken for granted in the United States of America that the president isn’t allowed to use the executive branch to ensure his own reelection. … The voters get to decide who the president is.”
‘Predatory in Nature’
As The Federalist has extensively reported, Biden signed Executive Order 14019 within the first month of his presidency. The innocuous-sounding “Promoting Access to Voting” executive order commands federal agencies to work with state government offices and leftist groups to register and mobilize traditionally left-leaning voters.
Howell asserts the GOTV effort is “predatory in nature” because it targets Democrat voters for mobilization, not all voters.
“It’s really ham-fisted how they’ve gone about this in their absolute desperation,” he said. “We’re seeing a huge uptick in Native American reservations, prisons, college campuses — any key demographic that is associated with the left is a target for the government to activate and to roll into the DNC’s get-out-the-vote program. They are wholly ignoring sort of any demographic that would traditionally lean right.”
Case in point, the U.S. Department of Interior’s proposed initiative to use elementary, junior high, and high school kids in their vote-delivery scheme.
‘Once Again Weaponizing’
“I’d be interested in your thoughts on this one. Department leadership is proposing having BIE send home voter registration cards with students to give to their parents,” Jennifer Segal Wiginton, a Bureau of Indian Education “team lead” in its Office of the Solicitor, wrote in a Feb. 24, 2022 email to Brian Quint, attorney-adviser at the Department of the Interior.
Like many of the communications turned over in the FOIA request, much of Wiginton’s email is redacted. An earlier email from Wiginton to her colleague Joshua Berg raises the funding question.
“I think the question is what source of federal funds, if any, is available for this purpose,” Wiginton wrote in the Feb. 15, 2022 email. She added she would be “happy to brainstorm further” with Berg, who served as attorney-advisor with the Division of Indian Affairs -Tribal Government Services at the time.
Department officials also discussed a plan to provide “return envelopes with pre-paid postage so that parents and/or guardians [could] mail in their completed voter registration applications directly to the corresponding elections office in their state.”
The funding question is very important, particularly because Congress never appropriated taxpayer dollars to operate a national get-out-the-vote campaign for Democrats, in Native American school systems or anywhere else. A lawsuit recently filed by the America First Policy Institute and the national law firm of Schaerr Jaffe LLP alleges the Biden administration is violating the Anti-Deficiency Act through Biden’s sweeping executive order. The act “prohibits money from being expended from the Treasury in excess of the amount appropriated by Congress through legislation for that item,” the lawsuit states.
“The Biden Administration is once again weaponizing federal agencies, this time to steer taxpayer resources to liberal activist groups who want to sway the election,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, one of several plaintiffs, said in a statement. “This is a cynical attempt to turn government agencies into a Democratic turnout machine, and it’s wrong. That’s why I’m joining this lawsuit and working to hold the administration accountable.”
Exactly what happened to the suggested plans is unclear. Department of the Interior officials did not return The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment.
‘Ambitious Expectations’
Another series of Department of the Interior emails shows the Bureau of Indian Education working on a plan to increase Native voting through registration drives at BIE postsecondary colleges and tribally controlled colleges — Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute near Albuquerque.
“We’ve asked that you be added to a meeting with OPM [U.S. Office of Personnel Management] to discuss BIE funding various voting rights initiatives at Haskell and SIPI. You may well be in listen only mode, but given that the leadership has had some ambitious expectations as to BIE’s role in this process, we’re trying to keep the BIE team in the loop,” wrote Sam Ennis, an assistant solicitor in the Division of Indian Affairs, in a March 22, 2022 email to Wiginton and Quint.
A plan was included in the records disclosed but, again, mostly redacted. It noted “top five actions or activities,” including “assisting the public with voter registration, mail ballots and other aspects of voting.” Also included, a section on “Legal Issues By State — in those states which we decide to allow BIE schools act [sic] as a repository for applications and then submit on behalf of parents (following rules for voter registration agencies as a precaution).”
Howell, from the Heritage Oversight Project, said the records obtained show the federal agency “basically picking Indian reservations only in deep blue areas.”
“They’re picking the hardest left demographics in the swing states and doing things as loony as sending kids home with packets to give their parents to fill out,” the election integrity expert said. “They’re enlisting the children to go after the parents. It’s just really, really predatory.”
‘Using Their Official Authority’
Documents also show the Department of the Interior running up against an 85-year-old federal law aimed at preventing “pernicious political activities.”
Heather Gottry, a “designated agency ethics official” in the solicitor’s office, was charged with dealing with vetting the GOTV language in official remarks and speeches. In an email dated June 14, 2022, Gottry notes the involvement of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in making sure Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s voting pep rally speech and column comport with the Hatch Act. The law bars executive branch employees, with the exception of the president and vice president, from overt political activities while on the job.
While permissible for an Interior employee to make public remarks highlighting the agency’s efforts to formally designate the Department-operated colleges as voter registration agencies, “OSC has advised that it is not permissible under the Hatch Act to do so in a way that appears that the federal employee is using their official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election, by showing support for or opposition to a political party or candidate,” the bureaucrat wrote.
She warned that, “ty[ing] GOTV language to an official issue or advocacy on an issue… raises concerns about whether they are using their official authority or influence to encourage those listening to the speech to vote for candidates who share same viewpoints.” OSC advised that “the inclusion of GOTV language in official remarks/speeches should not be targeted to specific demographic or other groups…”
After proposing edits and comments, the legal team signed off on the secretary’s remarks, redacted in the email. Haaland’s op-ed, published in her official capacity, targeted a Native American audience — and seemed to trip over the Hatch Act line. The op-ed, headlined “Our ancestors survived against all odds, we owe it to them to vote,” reeked of progressive politics.
“Recent attempts such as closing certain polling locations, limiting early voting, changing polling location hours, and even drawing maps to hush the voices of specific populations are consistent attempts to restrict voting access,” the secretary complained, painting election integrity laws with a far-left brush.
“With President Biden’s support, we are working with states to expand access to voting at Department of the Interior-operated post-secondary Tribal institutions. In May, I was proud to announce that Haskell Indian Nations University (Haskell) in Kansas and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in New Mexico will be designated voter registration agencies under the National Voter Registration Act. This action seeks to remove barriers to voting by allowing these institutions to facilitate voter registration opportunities for enrolled students and members of those communities.”
Another Biden administration endorsement for Bidenbucks and the party that created the questionable executive order. The biased review comes as federal agencies refuse to turn over relevant and unredacted documents to government watchdog organizations — and Congress.
Howell’s confidence in a free and fair election in November is dwindling “because of things like Bidenbucks or what we’re calling Kamala Campaign Cash, or things like trying to imprison your chief political opponent or, you know, shooting him in the face,” he said. “This election has been interfered with in so many substantial ways that there is a delta that President Trump will have to overcome.”
