͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

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Our Undercover Investigators Break Up Three Cockfighting Derbies, Trigger Arrests on July 4th Weekend
Dear Friends,
On a weekend when most Americans were celebrating liberty and community, Animal Wellness Action had people in the field taking extraordinary risks and confronting one of the darkest forms of cruelty still operating in the shadows of our nation. I want to personally update you on back-to-back-to-back undercover anti-cockfighting investigations conducted just this last weekend under the banner of our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign.
On the evening of July 4 and again on July 5, our undercover team, working in cooperation with investigators from Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), infiltrated three cockfighting derbies in Texas — one in Titus County in northeast Texas and two in Kaufman County right outside of Dallas.
With our team alerting law enforcement in real time, including sharing video obtained even inside the fighting complex, sheriff’s deputies responded, shut down the fighting operations, and made arrests at two of the venues, including cockfighting kingpin Tim Thompson, who owns and runs the massive complex in Mount Pleasant.
One of our brave investigators gained access to the illegal fighting venue and documented the knife fights staged between animals thrust into this den of violence. After midnight on July 4, after getting a warrant based on evidence we presented to the sheriff, authorities moved in and arrested Thompson, the operator of what is one of the largest cockfighting pits we’ve ever encountered.
A Set of Cockfighting Kingpins Put Under the Microscope in the Last Month
We had previously investigated Thompson’s pit back in March and documented extensive infrastructure — including a full fighting arena, multiple cockhouses, and upwards of 500 fighting birds he raises (and that doesn’t include the hundreds of birds that cockfighters brought to the cockfighting venue for the late-night fights).
Thompson’s operation sits squarely in the “cockfighting corridor” that stretches between Tulsa and Dallas — an area dense with fighting pits and gamecock farms, likely the most concentrated in the United States.
It was also in this corridor — just a month ago in McIntosh County, Oklahoma — that we penetrated another pit and uncovered shocking evidence that Anthony Devore and Blake Pearce, the self-declared founders of the U.S. Gamefowl Commission, are deeply involved in the world of organized animal fighting. These two men have been on the public stage for three years and presented themselves as lawful breeders and exhibitors, but our investigations have shown them to be hardened cockfighters and central figures in this illicit world of organized crime.
Our Goal Is to Shut Down All the Fighting Pits across the U.S.
These investigations are vital to enforcing the animal fighting laws already on the books—laws that Animal Wellness Action worked hard to help pass at the federal and state levels. But they are also crucial to making the case for additional legislative tools. Chief among them is the FIGHT Act — the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking Act, H.R. 3946 and S. 1454 — now pending in Congress.
Cockfighters have long been brazenly violating state and federal law. But what they have not contemplated is our step-up in field investigations, our infiltrating their illegal fighting pits, and droning their gamecock farms and their fighting pits.
If we pass the FIGHT Act, we’ll tip the scales further in our direction. We’ll ban shipping fighting birds through the U.S. Postal Service and we’ll create a private right of action so average citizens can go to the courts to shut down fighting operations.
We have extraordinary support for this legislation, with 825 endorsing agencies and organizations including 20 state sheriffs’ associations, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and the National District Attorneys Association.
We are at a pivotal moment in our fight to dismantle the cruel and criminal world of cockfighting. Every investigation, every raid, and every arrest brings us closer to ending this savagery for good. But this work is not only dangerous and immensely complicated, it is expensive. We cannot do this daring work without your continued support. [[link removed]]

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Please give generously today. And please write your federal lawmakers in support of the FIGHT Act. [[link removed]]

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Thank you for standing with us — for the animals, for the rule of law, and for the well-being of a civil society.
With determination,

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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