Biden Admin Hired Activist Behind One Of The Cruelest Cancellations In History

Cancel Culture Zealotry: The Story of Lexie Grüber-Pérez

Lexie Grüber-Pérez, a woman known for her strident racial activism, made headlines for hunting down and destroying the life of a private figure who once wore blackface to a Halloween party. The incident was widely seen as the peak of cancel-culture zealotry. Grüber-Pérez later resurfaced briefly in the Biden administration as a senior advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Halloween Party Incident

Grüber-Pérez attended a 2018 party thrown by then-Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles despite not being invited. Two years later, she complained that she had seen a woman wearing blackface there. Although the woman, later identified as Sue Schafer, wore blackface in an effort to criticize racism, the complaint from Grüber-Pérez prompted a front-page article and the cancelation of Schafer and possibly Toles. The article shocked people across the political spectrum with its vindictive and malignant tone, and was described as the “zenith of cancel culture.”

Grüber-Pérez in the Biden Administration

Grüber-Pérez began working as a senior advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services in September 2021. According to her LinkedIn profile, which pictures her with Biden, she left the job after six months and now lives in England.

The Controversial Law

The Biden administration position Grüber-Pérez held was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA), a law which allows outside interests to pay people to work as government employees. HHS declined to describe the funding mechanism to the outlet. Casey is a big-dollar, far-left activist group.

The Risk of Partisan Billionaires Buying Government

Casey is a nonprofit foundation funded by the estate of the UPS founder, so it is not serving as a pass-through for a corporation. But it is a radical leftist group, and the federal government allowing it to fund jobs raises the risk that partisan billionaires can essentially buy government–providing staff to tackle policy favored by the far-left that the federal government otherwise would not have undertaken.

The Backlash

The cancellation in the Post was so vengeful that it attracted almost uniform backlash for weeks. The story seemed to be entirely driven by Grüber-Pérez, who emailed Toles out of the blue to complain about the incident at his long-ago party. She demanded to know the name of the guest, and when Toles declined to give up Schaefer’s identity to a stranger, Grüber-Pérez accused him of “a deliberate act of white privilege and cowardice.”

The Controversial Law

Under the controversial law, local and state governments and nonprofits are permitted to fund federal positions under certain limited conditions. Grassley suggested that the Schmidt funding could exploit a loophole, with an LLC controlled by Schmidt using the nonprofit Federation of American Scientists (FAS) as a pass-through.

The Story of Lexie Grüber-Pérez

Grüber-Pérez, who is Puerto Rican, wrote that she had “a hard time believing that you are genuine in remorse. . . . I do not feel comfortable reaching out to a woman who publicly harassed me and my friend — simply because we are not white. This happened in public — and so I want a public apology.”

The Cancel Culture Zealotry

Grüber-Pérez, who could not be reached for comment, has a track record of seemingly absurd cancellations. In college, she forced the cancellation of a charity event raising money for orphans, because she said that the Mexican food-themed fundraiser was cultural appropriation.

The Risk of Partisan Billionaires Buying Government

Casey has long been the subject of significant political drama; the UPS founder entrusted his money to a conservative board for the purpose of building orphanages, but board members watched in shock as staff hijacked it for far-leftist purposes, and it was soon no longer running any orphanages at all.