How BLM Blew $90 Million. Plus. . .

It’s Wednesday, October 23, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Are smartphones stealing childhood?; the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO charged with sex trafficking; plus, legacy media quotes a Municipality of Gaza spokesperson without revealing his likely ties to Hamas. But first, the rise and collapse of Black Lives Matter. 

A lot can change in four years. Just ask Kamala Harris, who’s walked back various 2019 policies such as a fracking ban and support for Medicare for All. Now she’s boasting about owning a Glock. Meanwhile, Democrats have forgotten they ever uttered the words “defund the police.” But perhaps the most vivid example of how we’re not in 2020 anymore—and that the vibes have most definitely shifted—is the fall of Black Lives Matter. In 2020, after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, the movement took on quasi-religious status, with chapters raising $90 million in one year. Today, the BLM brand is widely recognized as a scam that lost $6.2 million in the last fiscal year. 

Earlier this month, Tyree Conyers-Page—a.k.a. Sir Maejor Page—the 35-year-old former leader of the BLM chapter for Greater Atlanta, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for money laundering and wire fraud. Instead of spending the $450,000 raised from 18,000 donors to “fight for George Floyd,” Page splurged on tailored suits, nightclub bar tabs, an evening with a prostitute and, as he texted to a friend, “a big-ass” mansion in Ohio. 

Page is not an outlier. Take Melina Abdullah, co-director of BLM Grassroots, who media reports accuse of using the organization’s money to pay for vacations to Jamaica and her own personal expenses. Though Abdullah has not been charged with a crime, California’s attorney general has threatened to revoke her organization’s tax-exempt status if she fails to turn over its delinquent tax filings and late fees by Sunday. 

“Abdullah has denied the allegations, but at least $8.7 million in donations is unaccounted for,” writes investigative reporter Sean Patrick Cooper in his first piece for The Free Press. “The answer to where the money went may come soon.” 

“Maybe,” Sean concludes, “if the founders had been as committed to social justice as to enriching themselves, BLM could have enjoyed a long life as a progressive institution.” Instead, the movement is a cautionary tale for what happens when people with good intentions are given too much money. Read Sean Patrick Cooper on how BLM misspent millions of dollars. 

Why Is The New York Times Not Disclosing a Source’s Ties to Hamas?

On the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 massacre, The New York Times published an episode of its flagship podcast, The Daily, featuring two men on opposite sides of the war in Gaza. The first was an Israeli man, Golan Abitbul, who’s described as a “liberal” 44-year-old father from Kibbutz Be’eri. The second was “Hussein,” cast as a Palestinian man struggling for survival, whose identity was shrouded in secrecy. 

In the episode, Hussein speaks of Israel “imposing collective punishment on over two million people with no reason.” The podcast’s host, Sabrina Tavernise, doesn’t think to drill down on that, nor to ask why he has an unusually “good income” that enables him to pay $1,000 a month in rent. 

It turns out that Hussein is Hussein Owda, who spent eight years working as the head of public relations for the Municipality of Gaza, which multiple sources told Olivia Reingold is controlled by Hamas. “Every government structure in Gaza was run by Hamas,” Jon Schanzer, a former terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, told Olivia. Schanzer added that Owda, as the former head of public relations for the municipality, likely was “providing propaganda” to advance Hamas’s mission.

None of this means Owda is an actual terrorist. Some employees are just trying to “put food on the table for their families,” Schanzer told Olivia. And perhaps Owda is one of those people. Yet for the past decade, he has been employed by entities linked to Hamas—including a nonprofit with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and now UNRWA, the UN aid agency with suspected ties to Hamas. That ambiguity is why, Schanzer said, all cards should be laid out for the reader.

“Just saying he’s a municipal worker in this context? It’s almost glib,” Schanzer said. “Not mentioning his connection to Hamas at all? Now that’s a problem.”

The New York Times has quoted Owda four separate times, citing his work for UNRWA twice but revealing no other affiliations. Read Olivia Reingold’s piece about NYT’s failure to reveal a source’s troubling connections.

In Episode Six of Raising Parents, Emily Oster Asks: Are Smartphones Stealing Childhood? 

Kids today are digital natives. Increasingly, it seems like their first word after mama and dada is iPhone. Parents may feel uncomfortable giving their children a small supercomputer, but they often cave to social pressure. By the time the average American child is 10, more than 40 percent of their peers own a smartphone. By age 12, that figure is 70 percent. And by age 14, it’s over 90 percent. Meanwhile, nearly 50 percent of teenagers say they use their phones “almost constantly.” 

In the latest episode of Raising Parents, Emily Oster explores how much smartphones are harming children’s social lives, cognitive development, and physical and mental health. And, she asks, who should we trust to put things right: parents, schools—or even the government? 

Click play below, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, to listen to Emily Oster unpack all this and more. 

Joe Rogan in Las Vegas, in happier times. (Jeff Bottari via Zuffa LLC)

• On Tuesday, South Korea said it is considering sending weapons to Ukraine, in response to its spy agency’s estimation that North Korea has already sent at least 1,500 troops to Russia. Seoul says the North Korean troops are being trained to fight in Ukraine. The possibility of South Korean weapons being used against North Korean troops in a war in Europe has an uncomfortably “World War III” feel to it. 

• For years, British and American forces have had to rely on multimillion-dollar missiles to take out drones launched by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. But it’s not “economically sustainable to shoot down a $100 or $1,000 drone with a $1mm plus interceptor,” a defense researcher told the Financial Times. Instead, Western governments are hoping to deploy more cost-effective laser technology to defeat drones by 2027. Major defense contractors across Europe and America, including RTX, MBDA, and QinetiQ, are rushing to develop drone-destroying technology.

   

• Imagine having to bribe your own dad. On Tuesday, an Orange County supervisor in California pleaded guilty to accepting over half a million dollars in bribes—in exchange for directing $10 million to a charity associated with his daughter. The funds were originally supposed to go toward feeding the elderly during the Covid pandemic. Instead, they went to Viet America Society (VAS), which the supervisor’s daughter Rhiannon Do then used to buy a $1 million home.

• The latest, and final, Atlanta Constitution-Journal poll of Georgia finds that Donald Trump has a 47 to 43 percent lead over Kamala Harris in the crucial state. It’s a small but meaningful lead, just outside the poll’s 3.1 percent margin of error. But perhaps the most interesting number in the survey is the 8 percent of voters who say that, with under two weeks to go, they still haven’t made up their minds.
  

• It is presumably these kinds of undecided voters to whom Trump hopes to appeal with an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast this week. According to a Trump campaign official, the former president will tape an episode of the show—which has more than 17 million subscribers on YouTube and 14 million on Spotify—on Friday. President Trump, if you’re reading this, it’s not too late to come on Honestly. Drop us a line: tips@thefp.com. Bari promises to keep it under eight hours and won’t ask you whether you think aliens built the pyramids.
  

• A special Free Press shout-out to the voter who, at the start of a Harris campaign town hall event in Michigan on Monday, asked: “Are we going to be able to ask a question?” We admire the questioner’s quixotic faith in American democracy. Host Maria Shriver had to explain that only prescreened questions were on the slate for the night. “Hopefully I’ll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head,” Shriver added. 

• Remember when Abercrombie & Fitch had Shirtless Guys outside every store? Remember the guy who conceived that idea? Mike Jeffries stepped down as CEO in 2014, but now he is back in the spotlight—and not in a good way. Yesterday, he was arrested and charged with sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution, after the culmination of a yearlong FBI investigation into allegations he sexually abused multiple young male models between 2009 and 2015 at “sex parties” everywhere from Morocco to the Caribbean. Attendees were allegedly told that participating in the parties would lead to modeling opportunities and that not complying “could harm their careers.” Jeffries also allegedly paid an exclusive household staff to “facilitate and supervise the sex events,” giving partygoers alcohol, muscle relaxants, Viagra, and condoms. It’s all falling a bit short of the company’s mission, which partly states that it is “committed to quality” and “authentic goodness.”

• On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to hand over his Manhattan penthouse and other valuable possessions to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers he defamed—and to whom he now owes $150 million. The possessions Giuliani had to part with included a collection of watches, some of which were given to him by European presidents after 9/11, as well as a Mercedes once owned by Lauren Bacall. How much does a 9/11 watch go for on eBay?

Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor for The Free Press. Follow her on X @madeleinekearns. 

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