We Need to Talk About Women for America First

Despite right-wing violence occurring for the third time in a row after one of their rallies, this dark money organization is avoiding scrutiny.

In a pinned tweet from Jan. 6, Women for America First (WFAF), the organization that promoted the so-called “March to Save America” rally that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said that they were “saddened by what has happened at the US Capitol this afternoon,” but were “not involved in the storming of the Capitol and do not condone any type of violence,” further stating that they “support law enforcement and encourage everyone to remain peaceful.”

Women for America First
is saddened by what has happened at the US Capitol this afternoon.

We are not involved in the storming of the Capitol and do not condone any type of violence.

We support law enforcement and encourage everyone to remain peaceful.

— Women for America First 🇺🇸 (@america1stwomen) January 6, 2021

The tweet comes off as self-serving however, as for the third time in as many months a Women for America First preceded right wing violence that resulted in injuries, vandalism and this time the death of five persons. The organization has been seldom mentioned in the wake of the insurrection, but questions were raised last month about them being granted permits for rallies despite their history.

It has been called the most significant breach of the building since 1814 during the War of 1812, and in the end it resulted in the arrests of dozens of people and Donald Trump making history as the only president to be impeached twice, the charge this time being inciting an insurrection. Trump’s legacy has been seen in many respects as the culmination of the political anger and hatred the right has fostered since Barack Obama became president. It was in those days that Amy Kremer, a onetime Delta Airlines flight attendant, began her political activism as part of the Tea Party campaign in 2009. She would eventually be seen as one of the Tea Party’s most influential activists courtesy of her co-founding of Tea Party Patriots, one of their biggest social networking platforms, and by 2016 was founding and heading up pro-Trump PACs, along with Ann Stone, the ex-wife of Trump advisor Roger Stone. In 2017 she ran for Rep. Tom Price’s vacated seat in Congress after he left to head the Department of Health and Human Services, but lost the multi-party special election primary with 0.18% of the vote, an election that saw future Senator-elect Jon Ossoff advance to a runoff election as the top vote-getter, only to lose to Republican Karen Handel.

Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie founded Women for America First in 2019 with attorney and conservative activist Dan Backer listed as its registered agent. It was under this banner that they organized a rally to oppose Trump’s first impeachment that year. Later, WFAF will organize rallies around the country to oppose the stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and by the end of the year shift to contesting the election with a Facebook page titled Stop the Steal, which eventually was deleted by Facebook because it was “organized around the delegitimization of the election process”. On Nov. 12, WFAF held a rally to coincide with the end of a Stop the Steal bus tour around the country, and with that came the neo-fascist Proud Boys and other supporters of Donald Trump who attacked counter-protesters, stabbing three and vandalized signs promoting Black Lives Matter, many of them on private property, and most notably on the fence at Black Lives Matter Plaza by tearing down signs and memorial pictures of the men, women and children murdered by police. When WFAF announced a rally for Dec. 12, a letter was sent to the National Park Service questioning if the organization should be granted a permit given the violence of the month before. The question fell on deaf ears however, and when the rally was held, violence followed it for a second time, and in addition to more attacks and more stabbings, historically Black churches were targeted with the Proud Boys taking Black Lives matter banners from Asbury United Methodist Church and Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Because WFAF is a 501(c)(4) organization, unlike other political committees that are required to disclose donors to the Federal Election Commission, they are not required to. Another 501(c)(4) organization, America First Policies, did however disclose that they donated $25,000 to WFAF. America First Policies is chaired by World Wrestling Foundation co-founder Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump ally who also served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.

In recent years America First Policies had seen their Director for Advocacy, Carl Higbie resign as head of Corporation for National and Community Service after making racist and inflammatory comments on a radio talk show about black Americans, Muslims, women, LGBT people, veterans suffering from PTSD and immigrants, which included advocating violence. In 2018, the group’s policy advisor, Juan Pablo Andrade, was recorded on a Snapchat video saying that “the only thing the Nazis didn’t get right was that they didn’t keep fucking going,” and later that month,  John Loudon, a policy advisor for the group, used inflammatory and derogatory language against women, Muslims and Democrats. After it was learned that three Fortune 500 companies, including CVS Health and Dow Chemical contributed to America First Policies, those two corporations announced that they would no longer do so.

While the WFAF statement on Twitter might be seen as a self-serving attempt to deflect blame for the insurrection at the Capitol, their website statement tried to suggest that the protests against police brutality and killings informed those they have rallied to engage in such and act. “Unfortunately, for months the left and the mainstream media told the American people that violence was an acceptable political tool,” the statement read. “They were wrong. It is not.” The WFAF website, according to Talking Points Memo, has been scrubbed in the wake of Jan. 6, with the statement being all that remains. WFAF has also not tweeted since Jan. 7.

America First as a slogan was first used as during Warren G. Harding’s presidential campaign in 1920, but is later became a rallying cry for American nationalism and against the nation’s entry into World War II. In 1940, the non-interventionist pressure group American First Committee was founded, many charging the organization with being anti-Semitic and pro-fascist.