New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020
nypost.com
ELECTION 2020
By CARL CAMPANILE
and MARY KAY LINGESquad goals: fight socialism, reboot
the Republican image, dunk on AOC.
Rep.-elect Nicole Malliotakis, soon
to be the New York City delegation’s
lone Republican, is taking direct aim
at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
with an “anti-socialist squad” of fel-
low freshmen whose families, like
hers, fled communist regimes.
“We need to form our own ‘squad.’
We have a group of new Republicans
who love America. We value free-
dom, liberty and opportunity,” Mal-
liotakis, 40, told The Post.
“We need someone who is going to
be a counterbalance to AOC.”
Malliotakis, a state assembly-
woman from Staten Island who ran
for mayor in 2017, beat first-term
Democratic Rep. Max Rose last week
in the 11th Congressional District that
encompasses her right-leaning home
borough and a swath of southern
Brooklyn. Rose conceded the race on
Thursday.
Malliotakis said the Democratic
Party’s leftist agenda in the House has
gone largely unchecked — until now,
after a spate of surprise GOP wins on
Nov. 3 cut into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
majority.
Now she’s joining forces with fel-
low Rep.-elects Carlos Gimenez and
Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and
Victoria Spartz of Indiana.
“In many ways, it’s the very reason
we entered our races for Congress,”
Malliotakis said.
Countering AOC’s democratic so-
cialist leanings is personal for Mal-
liotakis, whose mother fled Fidel Cas-
tro’s Cuba in 1959.
“We all have stories we want to
share with the American people,”
Malliotakis said of her new crew.
Gimenez, born in Cuba, and Spartz,from Ukraine, grew up under commu-
nist regimes. Salazar, like Malliotakis,
is the daughter of a Cuban refugee.
All four, who are in DC for several
days of orientation for the House’s
newcomers, embody the GOP’s out-
reach to Latinos and women.
“It’s a natural alliance that has
formed. We share very similar back-
grounds and have the same con-
cerns,” Malliotakis said.
“We don’t have a name; we’re not in
high school,” she said — although, she
admitted, “Freedom Squad” has a nice
ring to it.
“We have a shared concern that so-
cialism is encroaching, little by little,
into our society, and our freedoms and
liberties are threatened,” she said. “Our
families fled from oppressive coun-
tries with the very same policies that
AOC and the Squad are promoting.”
In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, theSquad consists of Reps. Ilhan Omar of
Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Mas-
sachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Mi-
chigan. All of them won second terms.
With seven elections still too close
to call — and Republicans leading in
most of them — the Democrats could
end up with a majority as slim as five
seats when the 117th Congress con-
venes in January.
“We will have a governing minor-
ity,” Malliotakis said. “The Democrats
will need to work with us if they want
to accomplish anything.”
That could give Malliotakis a big
megaphone as the media seeks a con-
servative counterweight to AOC —
who told CNN last week of her plans to
wade into campaigns for Georgia’s Jan-
uary Senate runoffs “so that we don’t
have to negotiate” with Republicans.
“Look at what she’s saying about ‘not
having to negotiate,’ ” MalliotakisMalliotakis plans
anti-AOC team as
she enters House
anti-‘social’
club: Republican
Rep.-elect Nicole
Malliotakis (right)
— who has been in
Washington, DC,
for orientation after
winning the House
seat in Staten Is-
land and south
Brooklyn — says
she plans to “coun-
terbalance” the
Democratic major-
ity’s socialist-lean-
ing agenda by
forming a conserv-
ative alliance with
fellow incoming
members (at left,
from top) Victoria
Spartz of Indiana
and Maria Elvira
Salazar and Carlos
Gimenez of Florida.By ISABEL VINCENTA cancer charity started
by President-elect Joe Biden
gave out no money to re-
search and spent most of its
contributions on staff sala-
ries, federal filings show.
The Biden Cancer Initia-
tive was founded in 2017 by
the former vice president
and his wife, Jill, to “de-
velop and drive implemen-
tation of solutions to accel-
erate progress in cancer
prevention, detection, diag-
nosis, research and care and
to reduce disparities in can-
cer outcomes,” according to
its IRS mission statement.
But it gave out no grants
in its first two years and
spent millions of dollars on
the salaries of former
Washington, DC, aides it
hired.
The charity took in
$4,809,619 in contributions
in fiscal years 2017 and 2018
and spent $3,070,301 on pay-
roll in those two years.
The group’s president,
Gregory Simon, raked in
$429,850 in fiscal 2018 (from
July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019),
according to the charity’s
most recent federal tax fil-
ings.
Simon, a former Pfizer
exec and longtime health-
care lobbyist who headed
up the White House’s can-
cer task force in the Obama
administration, saw his sal-
ary nearly double from the
$224,539 he made in fiscal
2017, tax filings show.Danielle Carnival, former
chief of staff for President
Barack Obama’s cancer ini-
tiative, the Cancer Moon-
shot Task Force, took home
$258,207 in 2018.
The charity spent $56,
on conferences and $59,
on travel that year. The fol-
lowing year, the travel ex-
penditure swelled to
$97,149, and the nonprofit
spent $742,953 on conferen-
ces, tax filings show.
But under grants distrib-
uted, it listed zero.
Simon could not be
reached for comment, but
has said that the main point
of the charity was not to
give out grants, and that its
goal was to find ways to ac-
celerate treatment for all,
regardless of background.
As vice president, Biden
led the Cancer Moonshot
Task Force after his son
Beau died of a brain tumor
at age 46 in 2015. After the
veep left office, the Biden
Cancer Initiative sought to
continue such efforts to pro-
vide “urgent” solutions to
treating cancer, according to
a 2017 press statement an-
nouncing its launch.
The Bidens stacked the
board with leading oncolo-
gists and celebrity cancer
survivors, including rapper
Taboo of the Black Eyed
Peas.
After only two years, the
charity “paused” its opera-
tions when Biden and his
wife stepped down for his
presidential run.Biden’s
stingy
charity
Most $$ went to staff