The carnage no one talks about: Drunk driving and illegal aliens



Conservatives have long noticed a disturbing pattern: Hispanic illegal aliens appear again and again in drunk-driving cases. Recent news searches bring up multiple examples, some involving the deaths of children.

This summer’s tragedy in Wisconsin made the problem impossible to ignore — yet the corporate left-wing press tried to do just that. Two high school sweethearts, Hallie Helgeson and Brady Heiling, died when a drunk driver going the wrong way slammed into their car. Just weeks earlier they had gone to prom together.

Americans deserve more than platitudes and silence. They deserve honesty about the cultural, biological, and policy factors behind drunk driving.

The driver was Noelia Saray Martinez-Avila, a Honduran illegal alien who had racked up multiple drunk-driving charges. She lived in a sanctuary jurisdiction that shielded her from deportation. Only under the Trump administration’s renewed immigration enforcement did local authorities finally hand her over to ICE.

A cultural problem that fuels tragedy

The Wisconsin case was heartbreaking, but it was not unique. In 2007, the Raleigh News & Observer published a rare report on the problem. A Mexican man admitted he thought he “drove better after a few beers” and that drunk driving was normal in Mexico. At the time, alcohol-related crashes caused by Hispanic drivers in North Carolina were three times higher than for non-Hispanics.

The national data confirms the trend. Hispanic drunk-driving rates are roughly double those of whites. Alcohol-use disorder is three times as common. More than a third of Hispanic alcohol-dependent users relapse, compared with 23% of whites.

Binge-drinking drives much of the danger. Hispanics are more likely than whites to consume large amounts of alcohol in one sitting. Forty-two percent of Hispanic drinkers admit to three or more drinks per day, compared to 30% of whites.

The numbers don’t lie

Mexicans, who make up half of the illegal alien population, show the highest risk. Mexican-Americans are three times more likely than whites to develop alcohol-use disorder. FBI crime data reported last year shows that Hispanics, 19% of the U.S. population, account for 30% of drunk-driving arrests and 44% of public drunkenness arrests.

In California, where Hispanics made up 37% of the population at the time, they represented 44% of DUI charges in 2012 (the latest I could find). In North Carolina, Hispanics were just 8% of the population but accounted for 18% of 75,000 DUI arrests in 2007.

New Mexico illustrates the deadly stakes. With a population that is half Hispanic, the state suffers nearly three times the national alcohol-related death rate. Five people die every day from alcohol. Before reforms in the 2000s, New Mexico’s DUI crash rate stood 70% higher than the national average.

The pattern reflects Mexico itself. In the United States, drunk drivers cause 31% of traffic deaths. In Mexico, the figure is over 70%. About 24,000 Mexicans die annually in alcohol-linked crashes — more than twice the U.S. toll despite the population difference. Until recently, most Mexican states had no legal blood-alcohol limits, and licensing often required little more than paying a fee.

Native populations face even steeper risks. In McKinley County, New Mexico, where the population is 80% Native American, the alcohol-related death rate is three times higher than the state average and ten times the national average.

Research points to genetic factors. Enzymes that mediate alcohol’s effects vary by ethnic group. Indigenous populations, exposed to alcohol only in the last 300 years, show far higher vulnerability. With Mexicans being heavily Mestizo — roughly 20% indigenous and 60% mixed indigenous (Mestizo) — the biological risk compounds the cultural one.

The media silence

Given decades of national campaigns against drunk driving, one might expect attention to this ethnic dimension. Instead, the media downplay or ignore it. An America First lobbying group once tried to enlist Mothers Against Drunk Driving to raise awareness, but the effort went nowhere.

RELATED: ‘Imminent hazard’: Trump administration shuts licensing loophole after illegal alien trucker allegedly causes fatal crash

c_sorvillo via iStock/Getty Images

Academics sometimes excuse the problem by claiming Hispanic immigrants drink out of depression or isolation. Yet the biggest consumers are Puerto Ricans, not Mexicans. Cuban-Americans drink the least. Mexican women report the lowest rates of all, meaning the averages are driven almost entirely by men.

And claims of “racial profiling” ring hollow. Most offenders are caught at night, their identities confirmed by arrest records, not stereotypes.

Why it matters

Democrats dismiss these realities for the same reason they ignore illegal aliens’ broader lawbreaking: victimhood politics. They portray Hispanics as downtrodden and conservatives as cruel.

But the grief of families like the Helgesons and Heilings is not a talking point. It is permanent loss. It is trauma that echoes for generations.

Americans deserve more than platitudes and silence. They deserve honesty about the cultural, biological, and policy factors behind drunk driving. They deserve leaders who will enforce immigration law, reject sanctuary loopholes, and tell the truth about the risks that put their families in danger.

Why you shouldn’t ‘pour one out’ for Charlie Kirk



If you’re like me, nearly every single social media post in your feed over the last week has been about the senseless assassination of Charlie Kirk. And emotions are running high.

From those who loved him. From those who hated him. From those who didn’t really follow him but are lamenting the state of discourse in our country.

The emotions you’re feeling as a result of this and any other type of atrocity are wasted if you drink them away.

I came across one post in particular in which an emotional person suggested a way to cope with everything that’s happened. And I found myself yelling out, “No! Don’t! That’s the last thing you should do. And I don’t think Charlie would want you to, either.”

What is it?

Have a drink. “Pour one out” for Charlie, the colloquial term for having a drink for a fallen friend.

Maybe you’ve seen those posts. We live in a culture that uses anything as an excuse to imbibe. To drink. To get drunk. But especially culture loves to capitalize on tragedy. It tells us that drinking alcohol is not just a way to handle difficult emotions, but the best way to handle difficult emotions, tragedy, and grief.

Your candidate loses an election? Drink.

Work sucks? Drink.

A family member passes away? Drink.

Your team loses? Drink.

The kids are a little feral? Mommy, drink a lot!

So when someone so respected, who spoke on behalf of a generation, is brutally murdered in broad daylight, culture wants you to drink that atrocity away instead of sitting with those painful, confusing, and whatever-else emotions.

In fact, even though drinking is at an all-time low, we’ve still been programmed to think that drinking to deal with our uncomfortable feelings is right, good, and necessary. At minimum it’s accepted.

Trust me, I know.

Hitting rock bottom

I’m the best-selling Christian author who became an alcoholic (not the other way around) after hitting the toughest stretch of my life a few years ago. I knew what I should do to best handle all the emotions in that season, but instead, I took the easy path: I drank all the uncomfortable feelings away.

It wasn’t until I found myself a year and a half into a bottle with no bottom and a “night in” that ended with me drunk, alone, and wading in my own excrement at 1 a.m. in Miami’s South Beach that I asked, “What has my life become?”

I’m not saying that having a drink in the wake of Charlie’s murder means you will become an alcoholic. But if I’m being honest, I never thought I’d get to the point I did either. “I don’t look like those people who drink their lives away,” I told myself. And I didn’t. But rock bottom still came.

And I wish someone had told me sooner that drinking away my challenging emotions can easily turn into something I thought it never would — because it can turn you into someone you thought you’d never be.

Charlie didn’t drink

I think Charlie understood that, too.

“The top-performing people I’ve ever been around, they are very against alcohol, against substances," he said on his show in May in a video titled, “Why I Don’t Drink.”

“And they’ll tell you they perform better, they think clearer, they have better memory, better recall, more energy, more pace.”

“I also find that some of the people that drink the most, they're hiding something, they're masking something,” he concluded.

Let pain fuel your purpose

If Charlie Kirk’s murder has affected you, don’t mask this pain. I beg you, please don’t. Because it can end up doing things to you that are way worse in the long run.

RELATED: A drunkard's terrifying vision: The dark truth behind alcohol’s 'spirit' name

Photo by ZzzVuk via iStock/Getty Images

In the end, the emotions you’re feeling as a result of this and any other type of atrocity are wasted if you drink them away. They just are. Instead, I want to suggest that you use them to motivate you — to boldness, to action, to something better. Don’t numb them; name them. And then use them as fuel. Do good as a result of this evil.

In fact, Charlie knew there wasn’t just a better option but a best option when it comes to what to do with complex emotions, an option that has transformed my life: Bring those emotions to the great healer, Jesus. While I didn’t know Charlie personally, I think, from everything I’ve read and seen, that’s what he would have wanted.

But whatever you do, I know this: He wouldn’t have wanted you to “pour one out” for him.

Or maybe, I guess, that’s exactly what he would have wanted. Pour it out. Leave it alone. Put it down.

He did.

A drunkard's terrifying vision: The dark truth behind alcohol’s 'spirit' name



Have you ever considered the eerie link between naming alcohol a “spirit” and the potent brew’s ability to unleash spiritual chaos in one’s life?

If you haven’t, Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters” — a biblical podcast on the supernatural — suggests contemplating this chilling tie because it’s true: Alcohol abuse is indeed a gateway to the demonic.

In this episode, Rick addresses a letter sent by one of his podcast listeners who was vulnerable enough to share his struggles with alcoholism and the harrowing spiritual battles that ensued as a result.

Although the anonymous writer grew up abstaining from alcohol due to his Southern Baptist roots and a family history of alcoholism, he fell into alcohol’s trap later in life.

“I became depressed, and I began to lean on alcohol to help me,” Rick reads from the letter.

While his drinking began slowly — “a glass of wine here or there” — it eventually evolved into “an almost around-the-clock habit.”

“As the habit grew, I noticed strange changes in my surroundings. I began to hear things. I began to see things and finally communicate with things that no one other than myself could see. The first thing that got my attention was I remember walking by a mirror and catching a glimpse of myself. Except it wasn't me. It was an unrecognizable monster-like creature,” he writes.

While he describes his reflection as “terrifying,” it wasn’t enough for him to stop drinking. In fact, things got worse. One day, in a drunken stupor, he decided to drive all the way to the beach house in Florida that his family rented for vacations.

“All the way down, I began to notice something in the car with me. The only way I know to describe it was sort of a cloud. … At no time ever during our previous stays in that home was I ever afraid. This time was different. I saw a cloud everywhere I went in the home. I felt as though there was someone or something horrible in the house with me,” Rick reads from the letter.

Thoroughly terrified, the man called his family and told them about his predicament. They agreed to get him help. He drove home the following day, but the sinister cloud followed him back. The day before he was to leave for treatment, the cloud “began to move around the room” and even “grew bigger.” “I got the sense that it was angry with me,” he writes, noting that his family witnessed him speaking with the entity “in a language that was unknown to anyone in the room.”

The following day, the cloud followed him to the treatment center, where he was “left alone in a cinder-block room to detox.”

“Nothing around me was familiar other than the cloud. I didn't know what to do other than cry and begin to pray. I have no idea how long I cried out. When I finally was able to compose myself, I heard as clear as a bell, ‘Are you ready to listen to me now?"’ the letter reads.

He knew in the moment that the voice came from God. He was rescued in his lowest moment and is now sharing his story to warn others to “never go near this poison.”

“Wow,” says Rick after reading the letter.

“Doing anything that alters your mind — this is something the demonic forces are so hoping that we will do,” he warns.

That’s why Paul instructs us in Ephesians 5:18 to “not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery” but “instead, be filled with the Spirit." Peter conveys a similar message about sobriety and spiritual alertness in 1 Peter 5:8, which says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

Rick, acknowledging his history with alcohol and binge drinking, confesses, “I can honestly say that most of the wicked things that I did or participated in could be tied directly to allowing my mind to be altered in some way.”

Allowing oneself to be cognitively compromised with alcohol or drugs is “an invitation: ‘Come on in, I can easily be manipulated,”’ he cautions.

To hear more of Rick’s commentary, watch the episode above.

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From water to wine: Why Jesus’ first miracle is NOT about alcohol



Many Christians are confused by Jesus’ first miracle documented in the book of John, where he turns water into wine at a wedding at his mother’s request. If Christians are called to refrain from getting drunk, then why would He make more wine, increasing the possibility of drunkenness?

Is this not a contradiction?

Jase and Al Robertson and Zach Dasher, BlazeTV hosts of “Unashamed,” addressed this common question on a recent episode.

“Alcohol is never said to be bad in the Bible ... but getting drunk is always bad,” says Jase.

To explain God’s command against drunkenness, he points to Ephesians 5:18, which says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” He also cites Galatians 5:22, which lists “self control” – the opposite of drunkenness – as one of the fruits of the Spirit.

However, these verses, while certainly true, “have nothing to do with John 2,” says Jase.

When He turns water into wine, “Jesus is revealing a picture of who He is and what He's going to do.”

“Jesus turning water into wine is directly connected to the new wine that Jesus says He's bringing. ... So it's no accident that He's doing this miracle, making new wine at a wedding ceremony, right? Because we're the bride of Christ. There's all kinds of imagery here that's being played out,” Zach explains.

The wedding party, Jase adds, is also reflective of the reality that “we're participating in the greatest party of all parties in Jesus.”

Further, in John 2, Jesus is, for the first time in His ministry, showing that miraculous change can only be done through Him. By turning water into wine with a mere thought – an act none but God Himself could accomplish – Jesus is “giving you a picture [of]: If you want to know how to change something, I'm your guy,” says Jase.

Al then brings up another point: The passage is also about Mary’s faith.

“I mean His mom believed in Him enough [that] she said, ‘Do something about this wine situation.’ I mean, that blows me away that she had enough faith in who He was in the moment to think He could do something, which He did,” he says.

John 2, says Jase, is a passage where many Christians, especially new ones, go off in the weeds debating what the text is saying about alcohol, when in reality, the story is about who Jesus is and what He came to do.

That said, it’s still important to abide by God’s command against drunkenness.

People who have a history of alcohol abuse probably “shouldn't touch it at all,” Zach advises.

“Also, I mean, I wouldn’t have a drink around somebody that I knew had an issue with it," he adds.

“The more you get to know this Jesus and what He is really not only offering you but what He's given you ... it becomes not the ‘do’ and ‘don't do,’ but this is who I live for,” says Al.

To hear more of the panel’s conversation, watch the episode above.

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Staying sober, one checkpoint at a time



I had my last drink 11 years and one day ago. I was on my way to detox at the local ICU.

With the amounts I was drinking, no rehab facility thought I'd survive detox, so they kept turning me away.

I really wanted to hit that checkpoint. I wanted the officer to ask 'Have you had anything to drink today?'

The ICU said they'd take me, but I needed to stave off the shakes and DTs until I could check in.

So I pounded a half-quart of Johnny Walker Black and drove myself to the ICU. And that was my last drink.

Next exit

I like being sober. And I don't miss the nightmare of alcoholism. But there's something missing.

There's a part of me that's empty, that can't be filled. I keep chasing it, but I never find it.

In the Program (AA), they call that "the God-shaped hole." They'll tell you that the only thing that can fill the emptiness is God and His love and following His plan.

Well ... I've got God in my life. And I'm following His plan to the best of my ability. There's a path. Sometimes it's faint and murky. Sometimes it's hard to find. But I'm on it.

I just keep doing the next right thing and the next right thing after that.

Not only do I have God, I have a career, and family, and friends, and hobbies. And amazing things are happening. For example, I wrote a book, and someone actually published it. That would never have happened when I was drinking.

Don't look back

But the emptiness remains. And I feel driven to fill it. Often I'm overcome by the urge to run. Just burn everything down and go — job, family, everything. Hit the road. Don't look back. Figure it out along the way.

Just go. Just run.

And maybe, I think, I'll find what I'm looking for if I unburden myself. Maybe I'll find a way to fill that hole.

From what I understand, this is a common feeling among recovering addicts and alcoholics. They never stop chasing that high, and everything else is just a letdown.

But I wonder ...

I wonder if that emptiness was always there. That it was ever-present before the drugs and the booze. And the addiction was just a result of me trying to fill that hole.

And maybe there's no way I can shake it. Maybe it's going to be with me forever. And I'm going to have to figure out how to live with it somehow.

But in the Program, they also tell you not to worry about these things. That you only need to live your life one day at a time, because if you don't, it's too overwhelming.

RELATED: Bill W.: Alcoholic who helped himself by helping others

Bettmann/Getty Images

Rules of the road

So that's what I do. That's how I proceed. I do it one day at a time.

And today I'm fine. Today is a good day. I've got everything I need.

And I'll worry about tomorrow when it comes.

I was coming back from a day of fishing this past weekend. Driving down a mountain road, I saw one of those flashing highway info signs. It flashed "Slow" and then "Sobriety Checkpoint Ahead."

I really wanted to hit that checkpoint. I wanted the officer to ask, "Have you had anything to drink today?"

And I wanted to say, "I haven't had anything to drink since July 7, 2014!"

And then he'd laugh and I'd laugh, and maybe he'd tell me congratulations and then he'd wave me through.

But I didn't get to say my line. Because by the time I got to the checkpoint, they were done for the day, packing up their cones and signs and tables with the breathalyzers.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to do it next year.

Dems Targeted Trump Official For Past Alcoholism Then Cried Foul On Biden Addiction Stories

Democrats tried to exploit the alcoholic past of a Trump official in the same election they cried foul over critiques of Hunter Biden's crack addiction.

Trump opens up about late brother's struggles with alcoholism in moving conversation with Theo Von



During a candid conversation with comedian and podcast host Theo Von released earlier this week, former President Donald Trump opened up about his late brother who struggled with alcohol addiction.

Von, 44, and Trump, 78, touched on a number of topics during the episode of Von's podcast "This Past Weekend," including illegal immigration, Trump's recent debate with Biden, and his son Barron, who's reportedly a fan of Von.

The segments of their conversation that have gone viral on social media, though, related to their discussion about substance abuse, and Trump shared stories about his late brother Fred Trump, an alcoholic who died in 1981 at the age of 42.

'The reason it's good talking about it is, it might help other people. If it helps one other person, it's worth the conversation.'

The former president claimed that Fred "knew he had a problem" with alcohol but could not break it. Because of his struggles, Fred always advised younger brother Donald to steer clear of addictive substances.

"Don't drink, don't drink," Donald Trump recalled Fred saying. "And he said, 'Don't smoke.' He smoked, and he drank."

Donald Trump apparently followed his older brother's advice, telling Von he has "never had a glass of alcohol." Moreover, he admitted that, like Fred, he likely has the "personality" that would lend itself toward addiction.

"I think maybe I'm a personality type where I could have had the problem if I drank," he explained.

"I couldn't have been successful if I had that problem."

During the exchange, Trump also hinted at his continued grief over Fred's untimely death. His voice became rather quiet as he described Fred as a "great guy" and a "great brother" who was "very handsome."

"I admired a lot, so much about him," Trump told Von. "He had so much going. He had the look. He was an unbelievable personality, like, an incredible personality."

When pressed to describe a poignant memory with Fred, Trump shared that Fred was a "very talented" pilot who "loved" to fly and who even helped other skillful pilots improve their craft.

"But ultimately he had to give that [up] because of the alcohol," Trump said. "He had to give that up, which was a hard thing for him to do."

When Von expressed concern that he was touching on too sore of a subject, Trump claimed he wanted to share these stories about Fred in hopes of helping others with similar challenges.

"The reason it's good talking about it is, it might help other people. If it helps one other person, it's worth the conversation," Trump stated.

Trump claimed he also had a friend from business school who likewise died from alcohol addiction. The friend insisted on drinking scotch, which he didn't like, "to be successful in business."

"He hated the taste of scotch, and then he couldn't live without it — literally," Trump recalled of his friend, whom he did not name.

For his part, Von admitted that he has been in recovery for alcohol and drug addiction off and on for the past decade. He claimed he has been sober for the past two years or so.

When Trump asked which addiction, drugs or alcohol, was more difficult to shake, Von claimed drugs were harder but said that consuming alcohol was the gateway to using other drugs.

"If I have a drink then it's tougher for me to prevent myself from [using drugs]," explained Von, who said addiction runs in his family.

Later in the episode, the conversation returned to drug use, and Von went into more detail about the racing feeling caused by cocaine.

"Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie," Von said, addressing the 45th president of the United States. "You know what I'm saying? You'll be out on your own porch, you know, you'll be your own street lamp."

Von insisted the feeling is "horrible" but that addicts continue to pursue it anyway. "Just like the guy ... with the scotch," he explained.

The full one-hour interview between Trump and Von — which was apparently arranged in part by UFC president Dana White — can be viewed here.

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Weekend Read: At war with Drunkspeare



In many ways, Steven Pressfield means us to take the title of his invaluable book “The War of Art” literally. The process of artistic creation, as he sees it, involves persistent battle with a tireless and devious enemy: resistance.

Resistance is what we face whenever we find ourselves entertaining yet another reason not to follow our primal urge to sit down and write.

For Newlove, to drink was to take refuge in delusion, a destructive yet comforting haze inimical to true artistic creation.

One of resistance's primary weapons is fear, which Pressfield makes a point of addressing with blunt honesty: “The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

A successful novelist and screenwriter in his own right, Pressfield has dedicated much of his life to arming his fellow scribes with the tools and the courage they need to face this challenge head on.

Writing books isn't exactly digging ditches, as many a novelist as observed in a moment of faux-humility. True enough. But an undug ditch rarely inflicts the kind of psychological and emotional distress that the blank page does.

Like many writers, Donald Newlove (who died in 2021 at 93) attempted to ease the pain of creation by drinking. His prodigious efforts earned him a few unpublishable manuscripts (the work of his rarely-sober alter ego “Drunkspeare”) and years of crippling alcoholism.

When he finally did quit in his late thirties, Newlove found he had a lot to say about the effect of alcohol on his work and on the work of other writers. In 1981 he published “Those Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writers," re-released in 2022 by Tough Poets Press.

“Those Drinking Days” empathetically yet unsparingly dismantles persistent, romantic notions linking artistic inspiration and addiction. For Newlove, to drink was to take refuge in delusion, a destructive yet comforting haze inimical to true artistic creation.

Newlove diagnoses the same problem in many of his heroes, in a passage which any sad, young, literary man biding his time in a bar may find soberingly familiar:

“[T]hese writers toweringly resist and consistently fail to recognize home truths about themselves ... False allegiances abound: to culture and place of birth, to so-called social graces, to male bonding in war or sports or hunting, to ‘literature’ and the fellowship of dead drunks, and to living companions at their manly self-sacrifice to Old Ego-giant."

First lady of Oregon announces struggles with alcoholism, mental illness as accusations of nepotism swirl



The legal partner of Democrat Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has announced that she is in recovery for addiction and mental illness amid questions about her growing influence in the governor's office.

On Tuesday, Oregon first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson, 47, admitted her struggles with alcoholism. "I share this information about myself now, and have in the past, in the hopes it will make a difference and reduce stigma," Wilson said in a statement. "Far too often, individuals have remained silent about their experience because of shame, pain, and fear. ... And, that is why it is so important for me to do my part to reduce the stigma around addiction and mental health."

Wilson has not indicated the nature of her mental illness or how long she has been in addiction recovery, Oregon Live reported.

Her announcement also comes in the wake of heavy criticism about her newly expanded role in the governor's office. Though technically working as an unpaid volunteer, Wilson was recently given a private office in what Willamette Week described as "the governor’s crowded suite of offices."

Wilson likewise accompanied Kotek on a recent international tour and spoke with mental-health practitioners. As part of her work, Wilson has been issued extra security detail as well, paid for out of Kotek's existing budget.

Gov. Kotek is even exploring the possibility of opening an official Office of the First Spouse and onboarded Meliah Masiba, previously of the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, earlier this week to serve as a short-term adviser in connection with it. Masiba will "also assist and support the current first spouse in her official capacity in support of the administration," according to a statement from governor spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard.

Masiba will remain as an adviser for six months and receive $72,000 for her work during that time. After the six months have expired, another individual will rotate into the position.

Though other states, including California and Maryland, already have an Office of the First Spouse, Oregonians may be leery of opening one in their state after a governor in recent memory was forced to resign at least in part because of his fiancée's influence-peddling.

In February 2015, just one month into his fourth term, Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) resigned after his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, who attended official meetings and helped promote environmental policies, allegedly earned $118,000 in fellowships from environmental groups that had significant interest in the policies Hayes was promoting. There are also indications that Hayes failed to report that money on her tax filings. She eventually agreed to pay $44,000 in ethics violations.

No such allegations of financial impropriety have been made against Wilson, but three executive advisers will leave the governor's office in the next week or so, all reportedly on account of their strained relationships with Wilson.

Jeff Barker, a former Democratic lawmaker from Washington County, claimed he was "surprised" that Kotek would allow Wilson to wield so much influence in light of the Hayes scandal that plagued Kitzhaber's final years in office. "It looks too much like nepotism," Barker said.

"I can’t believe they are opening this can of worms," said another Democrat former lawmaker. "Very little upside and lots of downside."

On Monday, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission confirmed it had received a complaint about Kotek regarding Wilson's role as first lady. Details about the complaint have not been released.

"We will review and respond to any complaint upon receipt, consistent with Oregon state ethics laws," said Shepard, Kotek's spokesperson. "We have no further comment, as this is a pending complaint."

In a separate statement, Shepard claimed, "The governor makes all policy decisions on behalf of the office."

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The Biden Family Corruption Story Is More About Love Of Money Than Love Of Hunter

There is no evidence to suggest that Hunter's years-long addiction to illicit drugs bears any responsibility for his present legal crisis.