A Florida man is facing life felony charges after allegedly brutally assaulting a defenseless 5-year-old boy in an act of hate-fueled child abuse. “This was a brutal and hateful attack on a defenseless child. There is absolutely no excuse for it. We will make sure justice is served and these children get the safety and support they deserve,” Sheriff Grady Judd said.
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said that on Sunday, May 3, 33-year-old Andre Brown Jr. from Davenport was arrested for child abuse. According to officials, this charge has been categorized as a life felony because it is considered a hate crime.
During interviews with the children in Browns care, it was revealed that Brown had been physically abusive toward a 5-year-old boy, specifically targeting him because he was “mad at him for being gay.” Brown reportedly told deputies that he abused the child because of his sexual orientation, claiming he would “beat the gay out of him if possible.”
The boy told authorities he was afraid of Brown and did not want to talk much about what happened. He had the worst injuries of the three: marks and bruising on his legs, arms, back, and stomach; a fracture to his right wrist; and a contusion to his forehead. He had marks all over his body consistent with being hit by a belt, the sheriff’s office said.
When deputies attempted to remove Brown from the scene, he pulled away, became loud and began yelling slurs, the sheriff’s office said. He continued yelling and pulling away once placed in handcuffs, according to the release, and also was charged with resisting arrest.
Brown has a lengthy criminal history, including domestic battery strangulation, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, kidnapping with intent to commit a felony, home invasion robbery with a firearm and battery on a law enforcement officer, the release said.
I have appointments throughout today, so I’ve set up a few things to read. This one is interesting in that it ties several things together to show us how not only our government but our companies are selling us into thinking we might actually get some fair treatment. It piqued my interest because of the strike last week; it seems “brands” are trying to work against being seen as part of those needing to understand what we the people don’t like how things are and that we expect change. Resist-
Red Lobster wants your attention. You can tell, because their current ads deploy not one but two separate announcers. There’s the expository guy. He’s a little pushy but at least he sticks to the facts. And then there’s the loud guy. He’s got a deep voice. He sounds like he’s broadcasting live from the submerged city of Atlantis. He says it with feeling, and also reverb.
“Because you’ve been asking… a lot… and we made it happen.”
So claims the not-from-Atlantis announcer. But what’s he talking about? We have been asking for many things. To be able to afford homes, for example, or not to have war crimes committed in our names, or to have our planet still exist twenty years from now.
Oh, this is about shrimp. Endless shrimp. It’s back, or so I’m told, in multiple forms. Every time the less pushy guy shares one of the currently available shrimp offerings, his partner pipes up with a complementary point straight from the bottom of the sea.
“Walt’s favorite shrimp.”
“ ENDLESS!”
“Garlic shrimp scampi”
“ENDLESS”
“Shrimp linguini alfredo”
“ENDLESS?”
“And all new marry me shrimp”
“ALL ENDLESS!”
The duo isn’t wrong. Endless shrimp is back. While the previous iteration didn’t technically bankrupt the chain (the real culprit was private equity and real estate chicanery) it was, by all accounts, an absolute mess. American consumers, who rightfully identified that they were getting ripped off in every facet of their lives, leapt at the opportunity to get one over at least one big business.
Back when Endless Shrimp was a permanent feature, shrimp hoarders would occupy tables for hours at a time, not leaving until they beat the house. The real victim of this behavior was, of course, the chain’s underpaid servers (if you walk into a restaurant with “me against these suckers” mindset, you’re less likely to view your waiter as a fellow victim of capitalism and you’re definitely not going to tip well). For the C-Suite, though, the larger concern wasn’t the dignity of their employees. It was a jumbo-sized hole in their bottom line.
It’s like The Boss once sang. Endless shrimp dies baby, that’s a fact. But maybe the endless shrimp that dies, some days comes back. Put your make-up on, do your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight at the only Red Lobster still open in your city.
I’m not all that interested in the relative success or failure of chain restaurant promotions, but I do care about the various ways corporations try to win our affection (meaningful cultural signifiers, or so I’d argue). And contra the two announcer voices, the most interesting thing about Red Lobster’s promotion isn’t the shellfish, either of the Walt’s Favorite or Marry Me varieties. It’s what’s whispered rather than shouted.
You see, the biggest difference between the current iteration of Endless Shrimp and its unprofitable predecessor is that now Red Lobster wants you to know that you (the shrimp-loving consumer) and they (the company) are in this together.
If you want the full story, I highly recommend this piece by Luke Winkie in Slate, but here’s the truncated version. There are varieties of shrimp on the Red Lobster menu that aren’t officially part of the promotion. They’re on the menu, but excluded from the benevolent blanket of endlessness. But if a customer were to ask for unlimited quantities of a non-official item (for example, Crispy Dragon Shrimp, a food item that I’m assured contains no actual dragon), the server is to welcome them into a cool secret. Their official, handbook-mandated line? “These items aren’t on the menu for this promotion, but I would be happy to make an exception for you.”
It’s like they say, “the exception is the rule.” Except literally, and by mandate. Servers are required by corporate policy to act like you and they are cheating the system, in hopes that when you remember the night you rode the dragon (shrimp), you remember it not as a conspiracy-of-one, but a sneaky secret between you and your best friend (Red Lobster restaurants, a subsidiary of the Thai Union Seafood Company).
This is not a new psychological trick. It’s a classic low stakes confidence game. The most effective way to a mark is to convince them that they are, in fact, in on the con themselves. It’s the same move that car salesmen use when they leave the room to “talk to their manager” before returning with a report that “he didn’t want me to give you this deal, but…”
It’s still striking, though, to see the strategy laid out in grandiose internal strategy documents. A beleaguered but iconic American brand name, flailing for its survival, hedges its survival on two bets. First, that you are tired, angry and aware that you’re on the wrong side of a rigged game (correct). And second, that, by offering you a facsimile of camaraderie and a very real pile of seafood, that they can win your loyalty (huh).
“[This is] about more than just shrimp,” the document proclaims. An absolute work of art, that sentence.
“[It’s] about creating an experience that says, ‘We listen to you.”
“When guests see Endless Shrimp back on the menu, they feel heard and valued.”
I have never addressed a sit-down chain’s internal strategy document, but I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say, tears in my eyes: Red Lobster, thank you. THIS is what democracy looks like.
As Eli Zeger argued in his 2020 essay about companies that talk like snarky teens on social media, this particular iteration of the “brand as friend” canard is the product of the marriage of late stage capitalism (and its reliance on the selling of “ideas” rather than goods and services) and the post-Citizen United codification of corporate personhood. Red Lobster isn’t a restaruant anymore. It’s your rule-breaking, shrimp loving, newly empathetic pal. It sees you. In fact, it is the only one who see you. It gets that you’re broke, but more so that you’re alone. It’s no longer offering you cheap shrimp (the price tag for the promotion has risen markedly since its last iteration). It’s promising you something more important– belonging, connection, a port in the storm of alienation and precarity we’re all weathering.
But Red Lobster isn’t alone, in surveying a landscape of mass alienation (economic, relational, spiritual) and seeing a business opportunity. Advertising agencies are publishing unironic blogs chillingly titled “the loneliness crisis: how brands can step up?” Silicon Valley’s greatest minds heard that you wanted community and responded with sycophantic AI chatbots. Apparently, our tech overlords’ understanding of human relationships is a robot who agrees with you all the time, including when you muse about harming yourself. Even the outright scammers get it. Gone are the days of far flung princes offering you a financial windfall. As you may have experienced personally, the hot new con is… pretending to be an acquaintance and inviting you to a party.
This is a step beyond the classic commodification funnel, as documented in nineties leftist classics like No Logo and The Conquest of Cool. The brands are no longer promising a great deal, or even hipness. What’s on offer now is the dream of a welcoming community, one deep enough to solve for the isolation that the companies themselves helped create.
That’s very depressing, of course, both the reminder that our economy has always been built on the exploitation of vulnerability, and the reality that there’s just so much more vulnerability to be exploited at this particular moment.
But there’s another truth, not a counterpoint, but a complement. How fortunate, for those of us who actually want to connect with other human beings, rather than just make a quick buck off of them. We already have what every corporation in the world wishes they had– the fact that, when we offer a space by our side, to either a stranger or a friend, we actually mean it. We’re not trying to trick you into springing for a Main Deck Margarita Flight to go along with your shrimp. We’re not trying to mine your data or add you to a marketing funnel or load you up with debt and junk. We just think this world would be more navigable together rather than apart.
And as an organizing opportunity? From union drives to neighbor-to-neighbor activism to the precious few political campaigns that care more about building community than personal brand building? My goodness. Why do you keep hearing about neighborism these days, and not just from true believers like me? Because more people are admitting every day how hungry they are for connection, and then taking the risk of making an offering.
The terrible news right now is that the hucksters are going to keep selling us a flim flam simulacra of belonging. Yes, the consultants, but also (I fear) the politicians. I strongly suspect the 2028 Democratic primary to feature a million text messages about “neighbors” and “community” penned by a well-heeled K-Street consultants. But the good news is that we aren’t that dumb. We know the brands aren’t our friends. We’ve lived through the great social media con together. We know what the lie looks like, and now we’d much prefer the deeply imperfect, thoroughly messy alternative.
Emma Tenayuca was a labor organizer in Texas who is best known for leading a strike of pecan shellers in 1938. Workers called her “La Pasionaria“ which means “Passionflower.” From a young age, she survived violence and imprisonment in her quest to help workers get better working conditions and higher wages.
Tenayuca was born on December 21, 1916, and I know all of you December birthday people will identify with her plight – born too close to Christmas, she never got ‘birthday’ presents. Her family was Mexican American, and had lived in Texas for many generations. She was raised by grandparents who were interested in politics, and was also influenced by the speakers in the San Antonio town square. She was brought up with pride in her family and their roots, and she was encouraged to be educated and politically active by her family.
Emma Tenayuca in 1939, photographed for a Personality of the Week article in The San Antonio Light
Tenayuca was arrested for the first time at 16, for protesting alongside striking workers from the Finck Cigar Company. She used her bilingual language skills to help people with their problems and worked with many organizations working towards better pay and better conditions for Mexican-Americans.
One of the most common positions for Mexican-American women in the area was in the pecan industry. Pecan shelling for 6-7 cents a pound was difficult work (the meat of the shell must remain intact) for little pay. Additionally, the process filled the factory rooms with a fine dust that contributed towards tuberculosis.
In 1938, the factories cut pay to 3 cents a pound and Tenayuca, who was 21 years old at the time, found herself leading a strike of approximately 12,000 workers. The strike faced violent opposition, as detailed in the article “Remembering Emma Tenayuca:”
When Pecan production ground to a halt, the owners fought back: Tenayuca and hundreds of strikers were gassed and arrested by San Antonio police. Some were beaten as well. With the NWA rallying community support, the strike turned into a city-wide uprising of the poorest and most oppressed people in San Antonio.
Thirty-seven days after the strike began the pecan producers agreed to arbitration. A few weeks later, the workers had won a wage increase to seven or eight cents per pound.
Tenayuca faced opposition as a woman, as a Mexican-American, as a labor organizer, and as a member of the Communist Party (she left the Party in 1946). From Americans Who Tell the Truth:
A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.
Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.
Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.
But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.
Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.
About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.
The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.
Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.
(This chart is interactive. If you can’t see the arrest data here by mousing over states, you can on the page, linked in the title above, & also at the end of this post.)
New policy
ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.
Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.
One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”
The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.
“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.
The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”
The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.
One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.
Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.
“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.
One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.
Shares of collateral arrests
In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.
West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.
For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.
West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”
Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.
Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.
It’s World Press Freedom Day, I celebrated with a great conversation on The Andy Borowitz Showwith Andy and director Laura Nix about free speech, and the predictions made in the film DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE that have come true since its release.
Today, the national average gas price is $4.43 a gallon. That’s the national average. If you are in California, a gallon of gas will cost you more than $4.43. If you’re in a place like South Carolina, it will probably be a little less. At any rate, it’s much more expensive than it should be, all because of Donald Trump.
One whatabout that MAGAts use is that gas prices were high when Joe Biden was president, at least for a minute. What they leave out is that Joe Biden didn’t do anything to cause high gas prices. When gas prices were high under Biden, they were high internationally, and again, not because of any negative policies inflicted by President Biden.
Today, gas prices are also high internationally, and it’s all because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump chose to start a war that didn’t need to be started. Trump is trying desperately to get a deal with Iran and get them to the negotiating table, which is where they were before he started dropping bombs on them. (snip-MORE)
Donald Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned.
Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database. “Trump is trying to amass a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.
In his 19th-floor office in Phoenix, Fontes said that in his view Trump wants to create the equivalent of “apartheid in the United States” and likened his actions to those of his counterpart in North Korea. With personal information on all Americans at his disposal, the president could regulate key aspects of the lives of his opponents, including “shutting off their bank accounts, or keeping them from getting healthcare”.
“This is Donald Trump trying to pick his own voters,” he said.
Fontes won a major victory in his running battle with the Trump administration on Tuesday when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit from the US justice department against Arizona over its refusal to hand over its voter roll. The judge, Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, ruled that the Department of Justice was not entitled to the document under federal law.
The suit was part of a push by the DoJ to obtain voter roll information from all 50 states, suing 30 including Arizona that have refused to co-operate. At least 13 states have voluntarily complied with the DoJ’s demands, but many others are resisting.
In those cases where courts have ruled on the dispute – California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – all judges have found against the administration. Fontes – who was himself sued after he declined to hand over the data, pointing out that it would be illegal under state law to divulge sensitive personal information about almost 5 million Arizonan voters – has joined that list of vindicated parties.
“This is now the sixth federal court to reach the same conclusion. Arizona acted correctly in refusing this request, and today’s ruling vindicates that decision,” he said.
Fontes was elected secretary of state four years ago as part of a sweep by Democrats of top statewide positions. Katie Hobbs was elected governor and Kris Mayes as attorney general.
All three are now in re-election battles facing Republican challengers who have in varying degrees embraced the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Arizona has for years been pivotal to Trump’s efforts to stoke election denial conspiracy theories. Maricopa county, which covers Phoenix, is one of the largest and most electorally consequential swing counties in the country.
In 2020, it was the focus of a fierce battle in which Trump loyalists attempted to declare victory in the face of his defeat to Democratic rival Joe Biden. The Republican-controlled state senate contracted Cyber Ninjas, a private security firm that had no background in election administration, to conduct an audit into Maricopa county’s results.
The audit, which was widely debunked, concluded that Biden had won the election.
Arizona is now back in the crosshairs as the November midterm elections approach. The state has been the subject of at least three federal investigations into its election procedures, with the Trump administration continuing to press unfounded claims that electoral fraud is rife.
The DoJ claims that its data demands aim to root out rampant fraud and voting by noncitizens. Fontes rejects that argument .
“This doesn’t have anything to do with non-citizens, because non-citizens don’t vote. Every study shows that,” he said. “So what you have here is an unprecedented invasion into the privacy of Americans, sold under a false narrative of illegal voting.”
In March the FBI seized a vast stash of digital data that had been compiled by the Cyber Ninjas’ audit of Maricopa county in 2020. Though it is unclear what exactly was in the trove, it is possible that it included details of votes cast and images of actual ballots.
The material was handed over to FBI agents under a federal grand jury subpoena by the Republican president of the state senate, Warren Petersen. Fontes was scathing about Petersen’s decision to cooperate with the subpoena, suggesting it may have broken state data-protection laws.
“He was so quick to turn over the material as a political favor to Donald Trump,” Fontes said. “Clearly he had no intention of protecting Arizona voters or legal processes.”
Petersen’s compliance with the FBI subpoena is likely to be a factor in the mid-term election for Arizona attorney general. He is currently the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate challenging Mayes, the incumbent Democrat.
The third federal investigation into Arizona elections is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is also taking a renewed look at the 2020 presidential election result in a further bizarre move to relitigate a contest that was settled more than five years ago.
“It’s like herpes,” Fontes said, referring to the perpetual resurfacing of the election denial conspiracy in Arizona. “It just keeps coming back. And I just don’t think the state, or the nation, deserves that.”
Trump’s latest ploy to wrestle control over elections from the states is his executive order last month that tries to limit mail-in voting by creating a national voter file to which the US postal service would have to defer before delivering mail ballots. The order, which is being challenged as unconstitutional, is especially sensitive in Arizona, where 80% of votes are cast by mail in a system devised decades ago, ironically, by the Republican party.
“This is a bald-faced attempt at completely controlling American democracy according to the whims of one political actor, and that’s not just un-American, it’s absolutely anti-American,” Fontes said.
Fontes is gearing up for his own potentially bruising re-election battle in November, in which he is likely to be competing against an election denialist. The two Republicans vying for their party’s candidacy in the secretary of state’s race both have election-denial track records.
Alexander Kolodin, a lawyer, was placed on probation by the state bar association after he filed lawsuits challenging Biden’s 2020 victory that a judge slammed as being full of “gossip and innuendo”.
The other candidate, the former chair of the Arizona Republican party, Gina Swoboda, was the Trump campaign’s director of operations on election day in 2020. She claimed in a lawsuit that was dismissed for lack of evidence that more than 1 million ineligible voters may have been on the rolls.
Fontes said he was “cautiously optimistic” that he and his Democratic peers would sweep the state again in November. But he conceded that “we have to be extra vigilant”.
“We have to spend every single day from now until November focused on communicating as clearly as we can with every Arizona voter,” he said.
Two factors were in play this midterm cycle that would make re-election more difficult, he said: unlike in 2022, there is no US senate race in Arizona this year, so there is less of a draw to attract Democratic voters to the polls.
The other factor he pointed to was that since 2022, the rightwing activist group Turning Point USA has grown in influence. Turning Point, whose leader Charlie Kirk was killed by a gunman in September, is headquartered in Arizona and in Fontes’s view has largely surplanted the old Republican party in the state.
“We’ve got to be cautious because we’re going to be running against the conspiracy theories, lies and misrepresentations,” he said. “The stakes of this election are enormous, and every voter will be impacted by the outcome.”
On the last post I made about this I was going to write a long intro. However when I read the comments every point I would have made is made in the comments in far fewer words than I would have done. So if you wish to see opinions on what the government is doing to follow Russia and wipe the LGBTQ+ from society in the name of protecting children / straight people / cis people / and religious privilege to discriminate then please read the comments. Hugs
The Trump administration is investigating three dozen Illinois school districts to assess if their curriculums include “gender ideology” — and parental opt-outs — and whether trans students can participate in competitive sports.
The districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of similar federal investigations since President Donald Trump began his second term last year.
The ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Three dozen Illinois school districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of federal investigations into whether the institutions teach about sexual orientation and “gender ideology,” and whether parents can opt out of such curriculum.
The inquiry, announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, will also “assess” whether the 35 school districts around the state, plus Chicago’s largest charter school network, allow transgender students to use single-sex bathrooms or participate in competitive sports.
The DOJ’s notice did not say what prompted the investigation or why the districts — which range from rural schools with extremely small enrollment to one of the largest districts in Illinois — and the agency did not respond to a request for clarification. More than half of the school districts are in the Chicago area, though the list does not include any of the large suburban school districts that have attracted attention in recent years for litigation over trans students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms.
But Thursday’s announcement did point to a June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires school districts to allow opt-outs for LGBTQ-related lessons in the classroom, plus a more recent March ruling blocking a California policy that allowed schools to keep a student’s gender transition private from their parents.
“This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in the news release.
Dhillon, who advised Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and rose to prominence as the face of several unsuccessful lawsuits against California’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, is the administration’s key lawyer on civil rights issues. As assistant attorney general for civil rights, Dhillon oversees the “Title IX Special Investigations Team” — a joint effort between the DOJ and U.S. Department of Education that was launched last year.
“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: Parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” Dhillon said. “This includes exempting their children from ideological instruction that contradicts their values or decisions about their children’s health and best interests.”
In a statement, Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the inquiry as the Trump administration continuing to “punish states the president does not like,” calling it a “sham investigation.”
“The Civil Rights Division used to investigate actual discrimination concerns to ensure all individuals are treated equally under the law, but they’re now focused on belittling the rights and humanity of LGBTQ+ communities,” he said.
In 2019, Pritzker signed legislation requiring Illinois public schools’ history curriculum “include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this state,” but Thursday’s news release made no mention of the law.
String of investigations
The DOJ’s announcement is similar to more than a dozen from the Trump administration since the president began his second term last January, most citing Title IX, the sweeping 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
One of his first official acts back in power was signing an executive order dubbed “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which threatened to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
That included school lunch funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the state of Maine found out in early 2025 after a public spat between the president and Gov. Janet Mills at the White House over the executive order. After the Department of Education launched an investigation into the state’s education agency and subsequently froze the funding, a judge ordered the USDA to unfreeze the funds, and the agency settled the suit.
Inquiries announced last year in states like New York, Oregon and Washington are ongoing, though the administration has claimed it found evidence of violation of Title IX in Kansas and Colorado school districts. The administration has also launched, and in some cases wrapped up, similar assessments of public universities and community colleges.
ACLU of Illinois cites wrong interpretation
Ed Yohnka with the ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law, which he said are both “clear that students have an ability to play on sports teams and to use private areas consistent with their gender identity.”
Yohnka also said it was ironic that the Trump administration, brought to power by Republicans who generally oppose government overreach, was trying to limit local control of school districts.
“None of these schools need some ideological culture warrior in Washington, D.C., telling Watseka what their curriculum should be,” he said. “The notion that Justice Department is going to launch investigations and divert money for education because the president signed a piece of paper is just a misuse of our tax dollars.”
Yohnka said he wasn’t aware of any pattern among the three dozen districts the DOJ is investigating, but one school official from rural northwest Illinois has an “emerging operational theory.” In a social media post Friday, Oregon Community Unit School District 220 Superintendent PJ Caposey said he didn’t have “definitive answers” from the DOJ as to why his district was included, he posited it may have something to do with the districts’ participation in a federal School Violence Prevention Program grant.
“To be absolutely clear, this does not confirm that grant participation is the reason for inclusion, nor can we state that as fact,” he wrote. “It is simply one possible connection being explored as we work to better understand the broader picture.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
The Trump administration has made an aggressive push to add the president’s name to buildings, battleships, money and government websites.
President Donald Trump is physically leaving his mark on Washington and beyond, more so than any other president in modern U.S. history.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images file
The federal government is undergoing an unprecedented presidential branding makeover, with Donald Trump’s name being added to everything from buildings and battleships to a drug website and a park pass.
While Trump has had roads and even an airport named after him since winning a second term in office, his administration has initiated a series of actions to imprint his name and likeness on the federal government well beyond internal documents and communications.
The branding is in stark contrast to prior presidencies, including Trump’s first term, when the largest branding controversy involved having his name added to Covid relief checks during an election year.
Here’s a look at all the places and items where the administration has added Trump’s name during his second term.
Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace
The U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington last year.Alex Kent / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
The first federal building to be named after a sitting U.S. president was the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in downtown Washington in December 2025. The agency was named by Congress when it was established through legislation in 1984.
The renaming was carried out by the State Department.
“President Trump will be remembered by history as the President of Peace. It’s time our State Department display that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on social media on Dec. 3, 2025.
The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts
The Kennedy Center in Washington last year.Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
About two weeks after the Institute of Peace renaming, the president’s handpicked board at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts voted to add his name to the storied performance venue as well.
“The unanimous vote recognizes that the current Chairman saved the institution from financial ruin and physical destruction,” a spokesperson for the center said at the time.
Democrats and some Kennedy family members say the name change is illegal, since the center was established as a living memorial to Kennedy. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who’s an ex officio member of the board, filed a suit challenging the change. The case is still in litigation.
Trump-class battleships
“Trump-class” battleships were announced at Mar-a-Lago last year.Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images file
Also in December, then-Navy Secretary John Phelan unveiled “Trump-class” warships during an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The “Trump-class battleships,” including a vessel dubbed the USS Defiant, will be “the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans,” Phelan said.
“Hopefully we never have to use them, but there will never be anything built like these,” Trump said at the event.
The Trump gold card
President Donald Trump displayed a “Trump gold card” visa aboard Air Force One last year.Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images file
The president unveiled his “Trump gold card” visa in December. Foreign nationals can pay $1 million to obtain the card, which enables them to legally live and work in the U.S. once they’re approved.
It’s “the green card on steroids,” Trump said as he displayed the card at the White House. He said companies can buy the gold cards for students so they can stay in the country instead of being “shipped out” after graduation.
As of late April, only one person has been approved for the card, The Associated Press reported.
Trump coins
Designs for Semiquincentennial gold coins featuring President Trump.Treasury United States Mint
In March, a federal commission consisting solely of Trump-appointed members approved a 24-carat commemorative gold coin depicting the president in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.
The design approved by the Commission of Fine Arts features an image of Trump in the Oval Office on one side and a bald eagle on the other. The coin needs to be approved by the Treasury Department, which has already announced plans to release a separate $1 coin featuring the president as part of the anniversary celebration.
Trump dollar bills
The President boarding Air Force One with a $50 bill sticking out of his pocket last year.Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images file
The Treasury Department announced in March it would be adding Trump’s signature to “future paper currency” as another part of the country’s 250th anniversary.
“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in his announcement.
Paper currency typically only bears the signature of the treasury secretary and treasurer, and has never featured that of a sitting president.
Trump passports
The State Department will be releasing a limited series of U.S. passports featuring an image of President Trump.U.S. State Dept.
The State Department announced in April that it would be issuing a limited number of U.S. passports with a large image of Trump on the inside cover as part of the 250th celebration as well.
Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the “new patriotic passport design provides yet another great way Americans can join in the spectacular celebrations for America’s 250th birthday.”
Trump national park pass
The Interior Department revealed in November that it was featuring Trump and George Washington on the front of its annual park pass, citing the 250th anniversary.
That move led to a lawsuit from an environmental group, alleging the department violated a 2004 law requiring the pass to carry a picture by the winner of an annual photo contest. The winner for this year had been image of Glacier National Park in Montana.
Trump banners
The Department of Justice headquarters in Washington earlier this year.Brendan Smialowski / AFP – Getty Images
Large banners of Trump have been hung from the Justice, Agriculture and Labor departments.
“We are proud at this Department of Justice to celebrate 250 years of our great country and our historic work to make America safe again at President Trump’s direction,” a DOJ spokesperson said when the banner was hung in February.
TrumpIRA.gov
Trump issued an executive order in April directing the Treasury Department to launch a new website called TrumpIRA.gov.
A “Trump Accounts” event in Washington in January.Win McNamee / Getty Images file
The Trump administration is launching new savings accounts for children this summer called Trump Accounts.
Created under the “big, beautiful bill,” Trump Accounts are tax-advantaged investment accounts for children under 18. Babies born from Jan. 1, 2025, to Dec. 31, 2028, will get $1,000 from the Treasury Department to kick-start their accounts.
“This is something that’s so special,” Trump said at his State of the Union speech in February.
TrumpRx.gov
The launch of “TrumpRx.gov”, which the adminstration said would help to lower prescription drug prices, at the White House in February.Nathan Howard / Getty Images file
In February, the administration launched TrumpRx.gov, a self-pay prescription drug website. It offers coupons that people can take to the pharmacy where they fill their prescriptions.
“You’re going to save a fortune,” Trump said at the news conference launching the site. “And this is also so good for overall healthcare.”
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