In video, Santos encourages transgender people to join GOP
NEW YORK — Months before beginning his first, and unsuccessful, bid for Congress, George Santos appeared at an event that urged members of the LGBTQ community to leave the Democratic Party and embrace Republicans and Donald Trump, who was president at the time.
“My name is Anthony Devolder,” he said, using a version of his full name, George Anthony Devolder Santos. Santos, who is gay, described himself as a New Yorker who recently formed a group, United for Trump, according to a newly surfaced video clip of the March 2019 event held by the conservative Walk Away foundation.
He then addressed a conservative transgender YouTube star, asking her how she “can help educate other trans people from not having to follow the narrative that the media and the Democrats put forward.”
The clip, posted on Twitter Friday, offers new insight into Santos’s early embrace of Trump and the right-wing movement that the former president spawned, as Santos made his first ventures into public political life.
Santos has attracted the attention of federal, state, and local investigators after The New York Times reported last month that he had omitted key details about his business on required candidate financial disclosures, and based his successful run for Congress in New York on a web of fabrications about his real estate holdings, academic degrees, and a successful Wall Street career.
Santos ultimately acknowledged having misled voters about his education and work history, maintaining that, at worst, he was guilty of embellishing his résumé. He was sworn in last weekend, even as colleagues in Congress, including several Republican House members, have called for his resignation.
Former friends, roommates, and colleagues of Santos have previously told the Times that Santos often used variations of his full name in different contexts. The Times located social media profiles, GoFundMe efforts, and business forays, including the company that Santos said was his prime source of income, the Devolder Organization, that used combinations of his first, middle, and last names.
At the time of the Walk Away event, Santos was apparently using the name George Devolder in professional capacities. He was then working as a vice president at LinkBridge Investors, a company that held conferences to connect potential investors and funds. A solicitation for one such conference, made on
March 4, 2019, uses the name George Devolder.
Yet at Republican events, Santos had been identifying differently. In late March, around the time of the Walk Away event, Santos attended a dinner held by the Queens Village Republican Club, where a photo that includes him is captioned with “Anthony Devolder.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Pritzker: Sheriffs will enforce semiautomatic weapon ban
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — To the scores of sheriffs in Illinois who reportedly have vowed not to enforce the ban on semiautomatic weapons that took effect this week, Governor J.B. Pritzker has a succinct answer: Yes, you will.
Nine in 10 of the state’s sheriffs, joining with gun-rights advocates in declaring the prohibition unconstitutional, have sworn off zealous enforcement of the law. It prohibits the manufacture or possession of dozens of rapid-fire weapons and attachments and requires registration of those previously owned in response to the massacre at a July Fourth parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park which killed seven and wounded 30.
“They took an oath of office to enforce the laws of the state of Illinois, and they will do so,” Pritzker said of the sheriffs Friday in Chicago after signing a law protecting abortion and gender-affirming care.
“These are folks who are entrusted by the public to enforce the law,” the governor continued. “They don’t get to choose which laws they enforce.”
Republican Sheriff Mark Landers of Logan County, just northeast of Springfield in central Illinois, was among the first of his peers to declare his stance, posting on social media Wednesday that “the right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right.”
Calling the law “a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Landers said that “neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state nor will we be arresting or housing law-abiding individuals who have been charged solely with non-compliance of this act.”
Pritzker, who called the sheriffs’ stance “political grandstanding,” said he’s confident it will survive court tests, as semiautomatic weapons bans have in eight other states and Washington, D.C.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Biden’s chief science officer David Kessler stepping down
WASHINGTON — Dr. David A. Kessler, who for the past two years has been the behind-thescenes force driving a vast federal effort to develop and distribute coronavirus vaccines and treatments, is leaving the Biden administration — another sign that the pandemic is no longer front and center for the White House.
As chief science officer for the administration’s COVID-19 response, Kessler, 71, has operated largely unseen by the public. But his work — on issues such as setting up mass vaccination sites, pushing for the development of antiviral medicines, and distributing reformulated booster shots — has affected the lives of millions of Americans.
Kessler’s departure signals the end of Operation Warp Speed, which was started by the Trump administration to develop and distribute coronavirus vaccines.
NEW YORK TIMES