By Katherine HugginsJun 27th, 2021, 10:20 pm
Photo by Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Toyota defended its decision to donate $55,000 to 37 Republican lawmakers who objected to certifying the 2020 election results, telling
Axios Sunday that they “do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification.”
“Based on our thorough review, we decided against giving to some members who, through their statements and actions, undermine the legitimacy of our elections and institutions,” a spokesperson told
Axios in an email.
In a report published Sunday,
Axios found that Toyota donated more than any other company to election objectors. Its $55,000 in donations was nearly double the amounts compared to the two companies behind them in terms of donations to Republican election objectors (Cubic Corp. and Applied Research Associates Inc.).
Toyota Holds the Line on Donating to Republicans, Tells the Outrage Mob to Pound Sand redstate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from redstate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
But as the atmosphere swirled above, catastrophe brewed.
Late in the afternoon, a tornado rated as the most intense on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, an EF5, cut a 6-mile-long (9.7-kilometer) gash through the densely populated Joplin metro area, home to more than 50,000 people.
Despite the city’s track record of following the latest building codes and residents receiving several warnings beforehand, the tornado with winds estimated at more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) per hour at times killed 161, injured over 1,000 and wrecked more than 8,000 buildings, including a major hospital and other critical facilities.
The high number of fatalities made it the deadliest single tornado in the U.S. since the National Weather Service (NWS) began official record-keeping in 1950. And the $2.8 billion in damages made it the costliest.