What Is In This Newsletter?

• Inviting the Violence Home: Amanda McKinney
• Day of Advocacy
• The Evil Has Landed: PAC Money in Rural Washington

Amanda McKinney, a Yakima County Commissioner and candidate for Congress in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, is dangerous. She is dangerous because she openly invites state violence into our communities and pledges loyalty to a President who has already turned that violence inward on the American people. What follows is why that matters.

America is a country of violence. We see ourselves as peacekeepers and generally good people, but the data suggests otherwise. No statistics are needed to recognize the horror that defines much of our daily life.

I lived for many years in Hong Kong, then one of the safest cities in the world. Despite its density, you would not hesitate to send your twelve-year-old daughter to the corner ATM at 2 a.m. to withdraw a thousand dollars and stop at a 7-Eleven on the way home for ice cream. The thought that harm might befall her did not exist because violence was absent from daily life, regardless of neighborhood.

Living without fear changes you. It frees you to do more and to see the world through an optimistic lens. You do not recognize it at the time because it feels normal.

When I returned to the United States, it took nearly six months to feel comfortable again. I immediately felt the presence of violence. Living in a relatively safe part of West Valley, Yakima, I did not witness violence firsthand, but I was saturated by it through radio, television, newspapers, and social media. Whether through real accounts of gun violence or relentless political discourse, the weight was palpable. Over time, that fear became normalized, woven into daily life.



I often wonder how our tolerance for violence would change if Americans could experience life without it, even briefly.

Stephen Miller giving unlimited power to ICE

Now we live under a new threat, one that comes from our own government acting against its own people. This is the danger we associate with Selma, Kent State, or the Bonus Army, moments when state power was turned inward. Those moments were horrific and limited. Today, the threat is broader and more sustained. Our President has turned state violence inward with deliberate force. Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Memphis, New York City, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, San Francisco, St. Louis, and most recently Minneapolis. In the span of a single week, one person was killed and another shot. The response was not restraint or remorse, but escalation.

According to NPR there are as many as 3,000 troops on standby to deploy to Minnesota under a manufactured narrative of immigration and domestic terrorism. ICE, as intended, provides a necessary service. As it exists today, it has become an army of terror directed at the American people. With warrantless stops, Kavanaugh-era standards, and absolute immunity, the incentive appears to be escalation.



Violence is the only argument where more is required to achieve less.

In Washington, we have largely avoided the President’s direct threat. Even Yakima County’s Constitutional Sheriff, Bob Udell, has said his office would not support ICE raids. Yet we have traitors in our ranks. Amanda “MAGA Barbie” McKinney petitioned to bring federal troops into our towns. Amanda has pledged singular loyalty to the President and is the single greatest threat to our community’s safety.

Amanda has moved beyond rhetoric. She has advocated for the kind of violence now playing out in Minneapolis. If elected, Amanda would bring armed personnel into our streets under the guise of public safety. She is dangerous. Because of people like Amanda McKinney, Rural Americans United will not stop. We are committed to a rural Washington where justice, inclusion, and informed voices prevail.

The evil has landed

Most of us have heard of Brian Heywood and his onslaught of questionably constitutional propositions he has tried to force onto Washington State ballots. He heads up the Let’s Go Washington PAC, which was originally created to place six initiatives on the Washington ballot. Since then, with the help of several very wealthy Washingtonians, it has proliferated into another PAC, Washington Rising*. An odd name for a PAC registered in Tennessee, but less odd once you follow the money behind it.

According to the Washington State PDC, $1,074,999 has been donated by Washington residents, with $1,000,000 coming from just two donors, the Plath family and Robert Ramsey. The Plath family is behind the Washington Fruit and Produce Company and Ramsey made his money off of Tribal members, beginning with the Yakima Nation. Knowing that the Yakima Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation vote heavily Democratic, it is striking that people who profit from these communities would work seemingly against their interests.

That alone would be sufficiently scandalous to warrant scrutiny, but that is not my point.

Open Secrets, 2024 election cycle

The money being funneled into Washington Rising is being used to fund their poster child, Amanda “MAGA Barbie” McKinney. The rumor mill has Amanda boasting that she has $1.8 million behind her, and that claim appears increasingly credible. With her tight connections to Trump, the Kirks, and now Washington Rising, there seems to be no depth of moral corruption she cannot finance.

We have seen how MAGA approaches elections, each cycle becoming more foul and more dishonest. With lies now being manufactured and funded by the likes of Trump, Kirk, and Heywood, the question is no longer if it gets worse, but how much worse we are about to see.

*It is difficult to confirm all aspects of Washington Rising except for the PDC report. I have included links so that you may verify the information yourself. 

https://www.washingtonrising.com/ 

https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/ 

https://firstamericanpetro.com/storage/uploads/resources/TNb9zkYnxNkT2rbiR8BnT0YUecH95kGwqPIc3LK3.pdf

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/12/a-new-right-wing-entity-called-washington-rising-thats-helping-brian-heywood-looks-like-a-front-for-a-national-wealthy-donor.html

https://apollo.pdc.wa.gov/c5/public/-/#/public/report/110332369 

https://ballotpedia.org/Let%27s_Go_Washington_PAC

Rural Americans United will not waver in its efforts to bring racial and social justice to rural Washington State by engaging people in the political process. The words “of, for, and by the people” are not idle. Manifest within them is the power to shape and control our collective destiny. Please help us continue this important work.