Much of the cardboard and paper goods strewn about our homes
— the mail-order boxes and grocery store bags
— are sold by a single private company, with its name, #Uline, stamped on the bottom.

Few Americans know that a multibillion-dollar fortune made on those ubiquitous products is now
fueling election deniers and other far-right candidates across the country.

#Dick and #Liz #Uihlein of Illinois are the largest contributors to Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate #Doug #Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6 rally and was linked to a prominent antisemite, and have given to #Jim #Marchant, the Nevada Secretary of State nominee who says he opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020.

They are major funders to groups spreading #election #falsehoods, including "Restoration of America", which, according to an internal document obtained by ProPublica, aims to “get on God’s side of the issues and stay there” and
“punish leftists.”

Flush with profits from their shipping supply company, the Uihleins have emerged as
️the No. 1 federal campaign donors for Republicans ahead of the November elections, and
️the No. 2 donors overall behind liberal financier George Soros.

The couple has spent at least $121 million on state and federal politics in the last two years alone,
fighting taxes, unions, abortion rights and marijuana legalization.

The German-American clan made their original fortune in the 19th century as owners of the Milwaukee brewery Schlitz.

Family members were staples of the Chicago Tribune society pages.

In 1917, Dick’s grandfather was identified as a millionaire in a Chicago Tribune humor item about how the wealthy man had fired an unqualified chauffeur.

When Dick and Liz Uihlein donated millions in recent years to the pro-Trump super PAC "America First Action", they were following in a family tradition.

Edgar J. Uihlein of Chicago was among the handful of largest donors to the original "America First Committee", the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s group that opposed the United States’ entry into World War II.
(It’s unclear whether that was Edgar Sr., Dick’s grandfather, or Edgar Jr., his father, who had just graduated from college.)

While "America First" drew supporters from across the political spectrum, it was most associated with rightists.

Uihlein’s donation was disclosed in 1941.

Later that year, Lindbergh gave an openly #antisemitic #speech assailing Jewish influence.

When Edgar Uihlein Sr. died in 1956, his estate was valued at $4.8 million
— more than $50 million in today’s dollars
— and the money was left in a trust for his heirs, newspapers reported at the time.

Dick’s father, #Edgar Uihlein Jr., who had started a plastics company after serving in the Navy during World War II, established himself as an important funder of far-right political groups in the 1960s.

A document from 1963 identifies Edgar Uihlein Jr. as on the National Finance Committee of the #John #Birch #Society.

Founded a few years earlier, the group quickly became a significant force to the right of the Republican Party, known for its obsessively anti-communist politics.

The Birchers combined hostility to New Deal social programs with lurid conspiracies, famously campaigning against “the horrors of #fluoridation,” a supposed Red plot.

The group fiercely opposed civil rights.

An entry in one 1963 Birch newsletter railed against the upcoming March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King would give his
“I Have a Dream” speech:
“the only good Americans who should have anything to do with this Communist-instigated mob in any way, or pay any attention to it in Washington, are the police required to maintain law and order.”

Edgar Uihlein Jr. supported politicians who embraced #segregation.

In early 1962, he sponsored a speech that brought to Chicago a former U.S. Army general named #Edwin #Walker.

Walker toured the country attacking supposed communist conspiracies and civil rights, while celebrating the Southern defeat of Reconstruction, which he labeled “the tyranny within our own white race.”

The Anti-Defamation League,
which tracked far-right figures in the period,
has archives showing Edgar Uihlein Jr.’s involvement with several other groups and campaigns,
including a $1,000 contribution to the presidential campaign of segregationist #George #Wallace in 1968.

It’s not clear when, if ever, Uihlein’s association with the John Birch Society ended.

As late as 1977, the founder of the group wrote a long letter to him asking for money.

https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial?utm_campaign=propublica-sprout&utm_content=1724992559&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook,threads,twitter

Donald Trump unleashed so many #falsehoods during his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that it seemed to overwhelm CNN’s on-air fact checker. 

After Trump’s appearance Thursday night, CNN’s #Daniel #Dale ran through a lengthy list of Trump’s lies,
having to brush past several on his list because he was running out of time to dispute each baseless claim. 

During his speech, Trump had claimed that his opponents inherited a world “at #peace.”
“Trump did not achieve world peace when he was president; certainly wasn’t at peace when he left office,” Dale explained.

“There were active wars or armed conflicts in dozens of nations in 2020: 51 by one research institution’s count, and then 51 again in 2021.”

“Trump handed President Biden ongoing civil #wars in Yemen and Syria, of course, an unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli-Iranian conflict, a war in Ethiopia,” Dale explained.

There were also the U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a civil war in Somalia, insurgents fighting Africa’s Sahel region, violent clashes between drug cartels in Mexico, to name a few others, according to CNN.  

️“I could go on for a while, but I don’t have time because there were so many other false claims. So let’s address some of those, not even all of them,” said Dale.

He later noted that Trump falsely claimed to have defeated “100 percent of #ISIS.” 
“In fact, the ISIS caliphate was declared fully liberated more than two years into his presidency,” Dale said. 

Trump “repeated his usual lie about Democrats having #cheated in the 2020 election. It’s nonsense,” Dale said.
During his speech, Trump offhandedly claimedthat Democrats had somehow managed to use the Covid-19 #pandemic to cheat in the 2020 election. 
“He said #crime is going up. The opposite is true. It’s gone sharply down in 2023 and early 2024.
It’s now lower than it was under Trump in 2020,” Dale said.

Trump has repeatedly made claims about an increase in violent crime and tried to blame it on undocumented #immigrants. 
Not only has Trump’s campaign failed to provide any evidence of a surge in crime committed by migrants,
there has been no increase in violent crime to speak of.
More importantly, U.S. citizens are proven to commit crimes at a higher rate than undocumented immigrants.

Still, Trump falsely claimed that other countries were releasing people from #prisons and #mental #institutions into the United States. 

Trump also “said we have the worst #inflation we’ve ever had.
Again, not even close. It is 3 percent right now.
The U.S. record is 23.7 percent.
He said there was no inflation under him. It was low, of course, but not nonexistent
—it was 8 percent total for his presidency, 1.4 percent year over year in the month he left office,” Dale said.

Trump also lied about the price of #groceries, according to Dale: “He said the price of groceries is up 57 percent under Biden.
It’s actually 21 percent.”
Apparently, plenty of Trump’s numbers were all over the place.

The former president “said Democrats are proposing to quadruple people’s #taxes.
That is imaginary.

He said his tax #cut was the largest in American history,
not even close again,” Dale explained.
A report from the Congressional Budget Office found that Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama had each facilitated larger tax cuts than Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 

Much like Trump’s speech, which seemed to go on and on into eternity (it was a whopping 92 minutes), his lies continued to stack up. 

Trump claimed that the government had recently hired 88,000 #IRS agents,
but that number appears to be from a projection from a 2021 Treasury Department report, which predicted the agency could bring in roughly 87,000 new hires in the next decade, thanks to $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Trump “said the Biden administration does nothing to stop #migrants.
Well, the administration tried to get Congress to pass a bill to tighten the border, and after Trump himself helped to kill that bill, Biden took executive action to tighten the border.” Dale said.

“Trump said he stopped human #trafficking. Again, not true.”

Trump made plenty of false claims about his business dealings with #China, claiming that the country had “stopped buying oil from Iran under him,” Dale said.
“Also did not happen.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/184048/how-many-times-trump-lied-weird-rnc-speech