In which GA state Senator Shawn Still explains to Republican USMC veteran & Senate candidate Tori Branum that they are both veterans – audio & transcripts *Updated
Update: After we asked Senator Still for more information, he now says he was never in the military. This is part of a larger story.
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The below is taken from a longer version of a recorded telephone conversation between Sen. Shawn Still and candidate Tori Branum in which Still discourages Branum from continuing her campaign for the Senate seat in District6 20 now held by Sen. Larry Walker. The entire conversation as posted on facebook is transcribed on the bottom of this page.
Transcripts by Rev.com
- From Branum: “He messaged me on Facebook March 5 and said hey this is Senator still I met you at Stacy’s party. Can you give me a call. So I called him. That was the same day that I qualified to run.”
Shawn Still:
I never heard the 190,000 that live in your district.
Tori:
Right, and they’re gonna know me by the time I get done. They’re gonna know me by the time I get done, and if I lose, that’s fine. Hey, it’s practice. But as an American veteran, I have a right to run for office in my country.
Shawn Still:
Tori, don’t, don’t ever say that to me again. I am too. I’ve served proudly, and you don’t need to throw that in my face.
Tori:
Well, u- you… And you have a right to serve in any capacity that you want, just like I do.
Shawn Still:
And I never s- and I never, ever, ever said that. All I said was, “I think that you have a realistic path in this. Going down a suicide mission, on a kamikaze run, is not one that has a high chance of success, and if you want to be successful, you may want to aim a little lower than where you’re aiming-
Tori:
So what would make me-
Shawn Still:
… because [inaudible 00:00:55].”
Tori:
… as successful? The fact that people write big checks to him?
Shawn Still:
He controls the caucus leadership pack. And if you don’t know what that means, you need to look that up.
Tori:
I do know what it means.
Shawn Still:
Okay.
Tori:
‘Cause I’ve been researching, trying to run for five years, and I’ve, I’ve learned the issue is I… (laughs) And I’m teachable-
Shawn Still:
[inaudible 00:01:19]-
Tori:
… and I research and I learn-
Shawn Still:
… [inaudible 00:01:20].
Tori:
… and I don’t let leadership tell me what to do. I will make decisions, informed decisions; not based on what-
Shawn Still:
Yeah, and u- this is me-
Tori:
… somebody else said.
Shawn Still:
… giving you an informed decision. This is not me telling you what to do.
Tori:
How would Trump back Larry Walker when he wants the swamp cleaned? He’s a pure politician. Nobody’s seen his face since 2015 was the last time he was a co-host. How would Trump back that?
Shawn Still:
‘Cause he only got elected the year before Trump did.
Tori:
Right. Nobody saw him through two elections: through the first Trump, through the Biden. Nobody has seen his face. They just vote because he’s the only one on the ballot.
I may not have 10 million dollars but I got a social media that gets millions and millions of views, and I will use that-
Shawn Still:
I-
Tori:
… to my advantage. And I-… end of transcript.
___
Below is the complete conversation posted on Facebook – which is not the entire phone conversation as recording apparently began after the call to from Sen. Shawn Still.
Tori Branum:
My name is Tori Branum, and I am running for Senate in District 20. It’s the district I know very well. I’ve trained thousands of people to shoot their guns. I’m a eight-year Marine Corps veteran. I’ve been studying policy. I’ve been to the border. You can watch a lot of my videos. I am up on what is going on. And I have integrity, I’m honest, and I’m forthright. And today, after I qualified, I get a message on Facebook from Senator Shawn Still telling me to call him, and he was basically telling me that I don’t have enough money to run, I need to aim lower, they’re gonna eat me alive, I’ll never be able to run for politics again. I’m gonna let you hear what he had to tell me. Um, it’s very insulting. Um, and if you wanna donate to my campaign, it’s toriforgeorgia on Venmo, or you can mail me a check. Message me, I’ll give you my address.
Shawn Still:
Let me start with you.
Tori Branum:
Well, I know that my people write checks, but I know the people in the district. I, I know them in all counties, Dodge, Treutlan, Dooly. I’ve trained and been out in the community with all of them. I’m not just sitting, you know, just sit in one place and expect people to guess my name. Like, I have a huge social media, that’s a platform. That’s a new platform and people need to get on board with it. If I can reach millions-
Shawn Still:
It, it’s a platform and-
Tori Branum:
… and millions of people, I have millions and millions of views on my TikTok. I can reach-
Shawn Still:
The only ones that matter are the 190,000 that live in your district.
Tori Branum:
Right, and they’re gonna know me by the time I get done. They’re gonna know me by the time I get done. And if I lose, that’s fine. Hey, it’s practice, but as an American veteran I have a right to run for office in my country.
Shawn Still:
Tori, don’t, don’t ever say that to me again. I am too. I served proudly and you don’t need to throw that in my face.
Tori Branum:
Well, you, and you have a right to serve in any capacity that you want, just like I do.
Shawn Still:
And I never, and I never ever, ever said that. All I said was, I think that you have a realistic path and this going down a suicide mission on a kamikaze run is not one that has a high chance of success. And if you want to be successful you may want to aim a little lower than where you’re aiming.
Tori Branum:
So what would help me as successful? The fact that people write big checks to him?
Shawn Still:
It, he controls the caucus leadership pack. And if you don’t know what that means, you need to look that up.
Tori Branum:
I do know what it means.
Shawn Still:
Okay.
Tori Branum:
I’ve been researching, trying to run for five years and I’ve, I’ve learned the issues. I (laughs), and I’m teachable-
Shawn Still:
And recently you’re from, did you tell me you were from Fayette County?
Tori Branum:
… and I research and I learn and I don’t let leadership tell me what to do. I will make decisions, informed decisions not based-
Shawn Still:
And how about I-
Tori Branum:
On what somebody else tells me.
Shawn Still:
This is me giving you an informed decision. This is not me telling you what to do.
Tori Branum:
How did Trump back Larry Walker when he wants the swamp cleaned? He’s a career politician. Nobody’s seen his face since 2015 was the last time he was opposed. How would Trump back that?
Shawn Still:
‘Cause he only got elected the year before Trump did.
Tori Branum:
Right, and nobody saw him through two elections, through the first Trump, through the Biden. Nobody has seen his face, they just vote because he’s the only one on the ballot. I may not have $10 million dollars, but I got a social media that gets millions and millions of views and I will use that to my advantage. And I will raise the money because let’s see, that’s 100,000 if everybody donates me a dollar. If everybody donates 10, that’s a million. So I can do this grassroots. If not, that’s fine. I’ll go away. I’m not a uh, I mean I won’t go away forever. But I’m, I’m not a sore loser either.
Shawn Still:
Well, I, I just, I think that-
Tori Branum:
Well I mean if he can beat me and all that then what’s the, what’s the use, I mean what’s the, I mean I’m, I mean if he can beat me, then he can beat me fairly and not because I’m gonna be scared of him and back out because people are gonna crucify me. I, I just got my first speeding ticket. Like, I don’t have a criminal record, there’s nothing they’re gonna drag me down and beat me with. And I have a huge female backing, so-
Shawn Still:
You know, I don’t know your district. I, I, but I know that we are in the caucus.
Tori Branum:
I know it very well. And it’s six, six of the counties I worked very closely with all the people teaching shooting lessons. I know all the people, and they know me quite well.
Shawn Still:
Well I, I wish you the best.
Tori Branum:
It’s not just Houston count. I know Juliette, I know Treutlen, I know Dodge, I know Lawrence, I live in Lawrence. I know the people.
Shawn Still:
Well look, I, Tori, all I’m trying to say is that I think you have a future in politics. I don’t think running against one of the top Republicans in the State Senate is, is advisable, but if you want to do it, by all means, you’re right. It’s your right to do it. But when May comes along and we know the outcome of that race, and if it does not go the way that you want it to go, you need to step back and remember this conversation.
Tori Branum:
What’s that gonna do? I’ll still move forward with my life. It might not be, it might not, it won’t be in that position if I lose, but I mean, life goes on.
Shawn Still:
It does, it does.
Tori Branum:
So-
Shawn Still:
I’m trying to spare you that.
Tori Branum:
Well what was the, if he’s gonna beat me that bad, then what does it matter if I step down or not? Who’s gonna beat me is gonna beat me. Why does it matter if I get out of the race? He’s gonna, if he’s gonna beat me then he’s gonna beat me. I mean-
Shawn Still:
Yeah. You’re completely missing the point.
Tori Branum:
So you’re telling me when Georgia goes to play a football game against a team that nobody’s heard of, that everybody’s like well let’s not show up because well, they’re gonna beat them anyway? I mean, that’s not, I’m very intelligent and that is why I am not running for a, I want to learn and I’m teachable and I’m smart and I know the issues and so-
Shawn Still:
Maybe you’d be listening to me if you were. But I wish you all the best. Um, I will be working solidly with Larry, and I will be helping him in every way that I can because that’s what caucus members have to do.
Tori Branum:
Okay. Thank you.
Shawn Still:
I just want to give you that respect from a call.
Tori Branum:
Thank you.
Shawn Still:
Good luck. Goodbye.
The Dustin Inman Society on the CIS podcast with Jessica Vaughan: HB 1105 and SB 354 – “Enforcement works!”
LISTEN HERE.
New State Immigration Laws
Parsing Immigration Policy, Episode 154
Summary
This year has seen important state-level legislation on immigration. The bills that have passed throughout the country tend to be those designed to deter illegal immigration and enhance enforcement of immigration law. As state legislative sessions wrap up around the country, two successful grassroots advocates join Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, to discuss immigration legislative accomplishments in their states – Georgia and Tennessee.
D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society and Joanne Bregman of Tennessee Eagle Forum highlight noteworthy new laws passed in their states this year that can serve as models for other states similarly frustrated by the lack of federal government interest in tackling the record high level of illegal immigration.
- Three main types of legislation are discussed:
- Making illegal presence a state crime.
- Neutralizing local sanctuary policies by mandating cooperation with ICE.
Limiting access to public benefits, especially professional and commercial licenses.
King and Bregman emphasize the importance of grassroots efforts and legal scrutiny in shaping effective policies. Vaughan makes it clear that “States are not helpless.”
Host
Jessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Guests
D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society.
Joanne Bregman of Tennessee Eagle Forum.
Why Are the Charities Enabling Illegal Immigration Still Tax-Exempt?
A 501(c)(3) designation isn’t a license to break the law.
The American Conservative
As the extent of America’s illegal immigration problem under President Biden has become clearer, so has the role played by many of the country’s best-known nonprofits, including Catholic Charities, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Red Cross, and United Way. While ostensibly funded to help overwhelmed personnel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) process the influx of self-declared asylum seekers, these and scores of lesser-known charities have instead worked to increase the number of illegal border-crossers dramatically.
We now know, for example, that as far back as 2019 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was using the messaging service WhatsApp to update Central American migrants on the safest routes through Mexico to the U.S., the best places to obtain food and water, and how to contact their families. The ICRC was also identifying shelters and help centers along the way to the southern border.
More recently, it has been revealed that few of the charities funded to help legally screened migrants reach their desired destinations in the U.S. ever bother to determine whether the people they transport have actually been processed. “Let’s face it,” said former Department of Homeland Security advisor Charles Marino, “they [the nonprofits] help whoever they encounter. And that includes those that are gotaways, where there are no records of them with CBP [Customs and Border Protection] at all.”
By March 2023, even the Department of Homeland Security had to admit that many of its nonprofit subcontractors were giving just as much assistance to illegal immigrants as they were to those who had been vetted at the border. Two months later, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Chairman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, and Rep. Jake LaTurner of Kansas jointly condemned the degree to which taxpayer funded charities had become responsible for so many “overwhelmed American communities, from Yuma and El Paso to Martha’s Vineyard and New York City.”
To be clear, there is no problem with any nonprofit expressing sympathy for foreign nationals who want to come to the U.S. or for policies which would help them realize their desire. Under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which clarifies what tax-exempt organizations are legally permitted to do, educating the public on the pros and cons of almost any policy is considered a legitimate activity, no matter which side of the argument the nonprofit itself comes down on.
Nor, interestingly, does the U.S. tax code prevent a nonprofit from violating the laws of another nation. It has long been recognized that a charity which seeks, say, to care for children in a war-torn or impoverished country might have to bribe certain officials in order to fulfill its mission.
At the same time, there is no special exemption which allows an employee of an American tax-exempt organization willfully to ignore his own country’s laws, as increasing numbers have been doing since Biden’s election. This is true no matter how well-intentioned that nonprofit staffer might imagine himself to be. Or even if, as appears to be the case, that staffer has been collaborating with other nonprofit workers who share the same progressive justification for their illicit behavior—namely, that an open border compensates foreigners whose ancestors were once oppressed by American colonialism.
There is also nothing in the tax code which grants charities the right to perform what they believe to be a humanitarian service, if by doing so they inflict serious pain or loss on third parties who have not agreed to the sacrifice. Much has already been written about the drug smuggling, human trafficking, and crime which accompany the current migrant influx, but this is only part of the unwanted suffering American citizens are being forced to endure.
According to a January 11 report to the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, the net cost of assimilating the average illegal immigrant—welfare, education, and medical care minus whatever he or she may ultimately give back in taxes—is $68,390. Multiply that number by just the 1.7 million gotaways known to have entered the country during Biden’s presidency, plus the 2.7 million “inadmissible aliens” who have nevertheless been released over the same period, and the fiscal burden on U.S. taxpayers is over $300 billion. Adjust further for ICE’s estimate of all gotaways, and the country’s involuntarily assumed liability (at a time when both Social Security and Medicare desperately need more funding) jumps to half a trillion.
If the U.S. government cannot bring itself to stop charities from subverting immigration law, it should at least provide citizens with a clear enough picture of what is really happening at the border to make better informed decisions about their personal giving. As Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, has observed, “A lot of people who donate to these organizations don’t full well know what their money’s going towards.” Many “do a lot of good in certain places,” he adds, “but this is a big bad.”
And yet the Biden administration has gone out of its way to keep such information as hidden from the public as possible. According to Howell, the billions which the charities facilitating illegal immigration get from Washington are filtered through so many federal agencies that an accurate accounting of what each does and how much it spends is almost impossible. Indeed, says Marino, it’s difficult to know even how many are operating along the southwest border.
* The role of nonprofits in fostering illegal immigration is further obscured by channeling their funding through various United Nations agencies under the guise of “foreign aid.” The latest of these UN-camouflaged schemes, as reported by Center for Immigration Studies, aims to “dole out $1.6 billion in cash, debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, and [transportation]” to millions of U.S.-bound immigrants in 2024 alone.
It is only because of the IRS requirement that all tax-exempt groups make public their annual income statements that we have any idea of the extent to which many have become a part of what the Heritage Foundation’s Lora Ries has dubbed the “illegal immigration industrial complex.” A recent analysis… please read the entire essay here.
Republican Kasey Carpenter censured by his District GOP officials
The 14th Congressional District Georgia Republican Party censured State Rep. Kasey Carpenter (R-Dalton), according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.
The Georgia 14th Congressional District Republican Party at its annual convention in Rome recently censured state Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, for being the sole Republican in the state House of Representatives to vote against the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act.
That bill, which requires local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, passed both the state House and Senate and was recently signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp.
In March, Carpenter was censured by the Whitfield County GOP at its annual convention for his vote on that bill as well as speaking out in support last year for a 10-year intergovernmental agreement between Whitfield County, Whitfield County Schools and the city of Varnell that allows a tax allocation district to help fund high-end commercial development at Patterson Farms.
The resolution censuring Carpenter by the district Republican Party calls the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act “a modest bill” and notes that Carpenter was the only Republican in the state House to vote against it. It calls Carpenter “wildly out of touch on the illegal immigration issue with most voters in the 14th Congressional District.” That district includes Whitfield and Murray counties.
“I think we ought to support our sheriffs and police officers, not penalize them for not being immigration experts,” Carpenter said in March after being censured by the county GOP. “I’m also concerned as a person who represents a 52% minority district that Hispanics and other people of color could be profiled.”
Carpenter does not have an opponent in the May 21 Republican primary, and no Democrat qualified to run against him in November.
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