In February 2026, a rumor spread that Bo French, a Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, wanted to deport Native Americans — people indigenous to the U.S. Several social media posts made the claim, including on Facebook, where one user said French had called for the deportation of “third world savages” including Native Americans.
Some posts linked to a Feb. 10, 2026, article in Texas Monthly, which included a line that read, “One of French’s favorite phrases is ‘third world savages’—which he has applied to Afghan asylum seekers, Muslims, and even Native Americans, who he also wants deported.” It is true that French called for the deportation of Native Americans. He did so in an Oct. 10, 2025, post on X.
Read the full article. French, who is allied with two far-right Christian nationalist fracking billionaire pastors, last appeared here in November 2024 when he declared that Democrats are “retarded unmanly homos.” He appeared here in September 2024 when he lost a court battle to ban early voting on college campuses.
A former instructor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday accused the agency of dramatically slashing training standards for new officers and lying to Congress about it as the Trump administration seeks to rapidly expand its mass deportation operation.
Ryan Schwank, who resigned from his job at an ICE academy in Georgia last week, told congressional Democrats at a hearing that the agency eliminated 240 hours of “vital classes” from a mandatory 580-hour training program, including instruction about the legal boundaries for the use of force, how to safely handle firearms, and the proper way to detain and arrest immigrants.
“Law enforcement is a deadly serious biz. It is not a place for shortcuts,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed. … ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure that 12,000 officers can faithfully uphold the Constitution and perform their jobs.”
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE academy instructor, testified in front of Congress today about constitutional violations.“At the academy, we took out the class that tells the officers that they have an oath to the Constitution.”
Former ICE agent: My first day training new cadets, I received secretive orders to teach them to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a warrant. I watched ICE cut classes that teach our legal system, firearms training, use of force, lawful arrests, and the limits of officers' authority
Former ICE trainer Ryan Schwank is telling Congress that agents are being trained to ignore the Constitution. "I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution when I joined ICE. I followed it when I resigned. The legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken."
Director Lyons looked me in the eyes and said ICE was receiving proper training.Now a whistleblower says officials are lying about how much training new recruits actually get.They’re cutting corners and covering up. We need real answers and accountability. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-whi…
Donald Trump has complained that a “stupid” lawsuit forced him to reveal plans to build a top-secret military base underneath his White House ballroom.
The 79-year-old president was defending his $400 million vanity project while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, after a New York Times article over the weekend exposed the shoddy nature of its construction and design.
While holding comically large placards detailing how the completed ballroom might look, Trump also gave updates on what is being built beneath the area where the White House East Wing once stood.
“The military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” he said.
“The ballroom essentially becomes a shed [shield] for what’s being built under the military, including from drones, and including from any other thing,” Trump added. “The glass, or the windows, you see the big windows, the glass is extremely thick. It’s high-grade bulletproof glass, so all of the windows are bulletproof.”
The ballroom is being funded thanks to donations from Donald Trump’s billionaire friends.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The lawsuit Trump referenced was filed in December 2025 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is asking a federal judge to halt construction of the ballroom until it undergoes multiple independent reviews, passes environmental assessments, and receives approval from Congress.
A federal judge said he will rule by the end of March on whether to issue an injunction stopping construction of the project pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
Trump also lashed out at the lawsuit for forcing the administration to reveal its plans to build an underground military bunker beneath the ballroom in a typically unhinged Truth Social post in January.
“It is being done with the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service. The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore top secret fact,” Trump wrote.
An underground bomb shelter beneath the old East Wing, built during World War II, was demolished in October to make way for Trump’s ballroom.
A rendition of how the ballroom might look when it is eventually completed.White House
The vanity project is being built as tens of millions of Americans suffer through a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by Trump’s war on Iran.
On Sunday, the Times reported that multiple experts also condemned the proposed design of the mammoth building, noting that it includes a staircase that doesn’t lead anywhere, columns that will block the view of its windows, and the 90,000-square-foot ballroom that is “unnecessarily” large.
Donald Trump updated reporters about his vanity project before discussing the war on Iran.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at the report and accused it of being written by “three random people who have ‘studied fine arts’ and ‘long written about urban planning.’”
“President Trump and his lead architect have built world-class buildings around the world, and they are ensuring the People’s House finally has a beautiful ballroom that’s been needed for decades—at no expense to the taxpayer,” Leavitt posted on X.
This person Same is interviewing is from the Cato Institute. Sam and David talk about the bigotry and attempt to purify the country of non-white people. tRump and his racist administration claim to want to remove 100 million from the US. There is no where near that number of undocumented people in the country. That number is almost 1/3 of the US population. Undocumented immigrants were estimated at 14 million in 2023 at the highest. So where are the rest of these people coming from? Legal documented immigrants and non-white citizens born in the US. That is why they are rounding up brown people who immigrated here legally and why they are trying so hard to end birth right citizenship. The goal has become clear and it is scary to me. To cement the white majority for as long as possible and stop the slow decline of the white majority / rize of minority demographics. Stephen Miller and the other racists in tRump administration want an apartheid state like the former South African one was. They want no rights for non-whites. They want no non-whites in positions of authority. The administration is going after businesses and higher education for not prioritizing whites over any other group. They feel no white male is less qualified than any non-white. If a non-white person scored 95 and the white person scored 75, these racists feel the white person is still more qualified because of their skin color. The racists feel the only DEI that should be allowed is the promotion of white males over everyone else. Hugs
The game plan is clear and was used to accomplish the genocide of the LGBTQ+ from society in Russia. Attack the most vulnerable and smallest members of the LGBTQ+ trans people in the name of saving the most vulnerable, who are the little children espcailly little girls / daughters. Every study proves that the ones in real danger or under threat are not the kids but the trans people. Then use the momentum and rising bigotry to remove all rights and equality from the rest of the LGBQ+ based on the same lies. End goal is to create a straight cis country where the Christian white male is making the country safe / regressive enough for their bigoted view of Jesus to feel comfortable enough to return and pat them on their heads. Hugs
The Idaho Senate has widely passed a bill that would fine local and state governments for flying flags that aren’t on the Legislature’s pre-approved list.
The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Ted Hill, an Eagle Republican, has said House Bill 561 is meant to target the city of Boise for flying an LGBTQ+ pride flag. Boise’s City Council voted to declare the pride flag and the organ donor flag as official flags, in an apparent move to work around the Legislature’s flag ban law passed last year.
The bill would add a $2,000 daily fine, per offending flag, to the flag ban law from last year, which lacked an enforcement process. The bill widely passed the House earlier this month. But since the Senate amended the bill, it must return to the House before it would go to Gov. Brad Little for final consideration.
Rep. Ted Hill [photo] appeared here yesterday for his successful bill that criminalizes using the “wrong” bathroom. Violating that law would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony, carrying up to a five-year prison sentence.
Hill appeared here in 2024 for his successful bill banning teachers from referring to students with their preferred pronouns.
Earlier this month, the Idaho House passed a resolution to petition the US Supreme Court on overturning Obergefell.
In February, the Idaho House advanced a bill to overturn all local LGBTQ rights ordinances statewide. Thirteen Idaho cities and counties, including Boise and its home county, have such laws on the books.
Project 2025 was very clear. The goal is to remove all representation of LGBTQ+ people from society. Pride flags are determined to be political incitement and agitation; media representation and books with even an LGBTQ+ character are called sexualizing children while the same with straight kids is not, and letting a child express how they deeply feel inside by letting them change their hairstyle and clothing is called child abuse while doing the discredited / harmful conversion therapy to force a person of any age to be straight and cis is considered to be healthy for the child. Lies are spread constantly about puberty blockers by people who misrepresent what these medical studies show or only claim in fake medical studies that have no peer reviewed status by medical personnel in that field of study. The goal is to do what Russia, Hungary, and several other highly religious authoritarian countries have done, which is to wipe the existence of anything not straight and not cis from being. I don’t know if this is due to their being highly religious and wanting to force everyone in the country to live by their church doctrines or if they just are straight / cis so they don’t think if they don’t feel it that it can’t be true. I ran into that decades ago as a gay man with straight people claiming everyone was straight because they were and that was normal, but some people choose to be weird deviants and have bad types of sex. But if you ask them when they chose to be straight they think it is a stupid question as they never chose; they just were. Clips below. Hugs
“They go in the bathroom they’re supposed to, they upset people. If they go in the one that they now look like, they’re breaking the law, which could include pretty severe penalties” Guthrie told senators. “ … We seem to be really focused on this space and ignoring the fact that there are people that are just like us, human beings, just like us. What are they supposed to do?”
‘Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked?’ trans man testifies
The bill builds on a wave of anti-LGTBQ+ bills that the Legislature and the governor have approved in recent years.
“Over the last several years, legislators have gone from refusing to protect us to actively targeting us,” Nikson Mathews, who serves as chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, said at a news conference in February.
“Every single day when I’m out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked,” Mathews told lawmakers.
A bathroom sign as seen on March 16, 2026, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho Legislature widely approved a bill that would criminalize “willfully” entering public and government bathrooms and changing rooms designated for another sex.
The bill — which heads to Gov. Brad Little for final consideration — would effectively block transgender people from using their preferred public bathrooms in Idaho, expanding on the state’s transgender bathroom ban in public schools.
House Bill 752 would create criminal misdemeanor and felony charges for people who “knowingly and willfully” enter a bathroom or changing room designated for the opposite sex, with some exceptions. The bill would apply in government-owned buildings and places of public accommodations, like private businesses.
A first offense would carry a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Only three states — Utah, Florida and Kansas — have criminal bans on trans people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates — Idaho called the bill “the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the nation.”
One Republican opposed the bill in the Senate
In the Idaho Senate, the bill passed on a near-party line 28-7 vote Friday, with all six Democrats opposing. One Republican, Sen. Jim Guthrie, from McCammon, broke with Republicans support of the bill.
He called legislation like it “harmful.”
“They go in the bathroom they’re supposed to, they upset people. If they go in the one that they now look like, they’re breaking the law, which could include pretty severe penalties” Guthrie told senators. “ … We seem to be really focused on this space and ignoring the fact that there are people that are just like us, human beings, just like us. What are they supposed to do?”
Idaho Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, walks through the halls at the State Capitol building on Jan. 9, 2023. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
Bill sponsor Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, told senators that the bill protects “common sense realities.”
“The Legislature has a fundamental duty to protect the bodily privacy and safety of Idaho citizens,” Toews said. “House Bill 752 provides a clear, proactive tool to secure sex-separated private spaces in our state, while accommodating common-sense realities.”
Once the bill is transmitted to Little, he has five days to decide on it. He has three options: sign it into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature.
In the House, the bill passed on a 54-15 vote earlier this month, with six Republicans joining the House’s nine Democrats in opposition.
‘Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked?’ trans man testifies
The bill builds on a wave of anti-LGTBQ+ bills that the Legislature and the governor have approved in recent years.
And for more than a decade, efforts to add anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people to state law have failed.
“Over the last several years, legislators have gone from refusing to protect us to actively targeting us,” Nikson Mathews, who serves as chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, said at a news conference in February.
Mathews, a trans man with a beard, told a House committee earlier this year that the bathroom bill would force him to use the women’s restroom.
“Every single day when I’m out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked,” Mathews told lawmakers.
A 2025 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found “no evidence of increased harms to people who are not transgender when transgender people are allowed to use restrooms and other gendered facilities according to their identity.” But when trans people are refused access to facilities that align with their gender, the study found that trans people report verbal harassment and physical assault.
Bill is about discrimination, Democratic senator says
Sen. Ron Taylor, a Democrat from Hailey, said the bill is about discrimination. He said constituents told him that they’d move out of Idaho if it passed — because it would throw their transgender children in jail.
Idaho state Sen. Ron Taylor, D-Hailey, enters the House of Representatives chamber for the governor’s State of the State Address on Jan. 12, 2026, at the State Capitol in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
“Now maybe that’s what some of us want, is to chase a population that’s marginalized out of Idaho,” Taylor said. “But that’s not Idaho. Idaho was founded by a population that was marginalized.”
Sen. Brian Lenney, a Republican from Nampa, said the bill is about keeping women and girls safe from having men in their spaces.
“Trans women aren’t women,” said Sen. Joshua Kohl, a Republican from Twin Falls. “They’re men. And they need to be treated as such.”
Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, listens to proceedings during the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting on Jan. 13, 2026, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
Sen. Jim Woodward, a Republican from Sagle in North Idaho, said the bill is largely borne out of an event where he said a man was found in a women’s locker room in a YMCA in Sandpoint. He said he’d vote for the bill, but he had some reservations.
“What comes next and how much further do we venture inside of a private building?” Woodward said. “I don’t support the punitive measures in this bill, but the policy does reflect the sentiment of my community, and so for that reason, I will support it. It is the best for the most.”
Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat, said she saw people crying after a recent committee hearing on the bill.
“They were crying because they just didn’t feel as if they were human. That a simple little thing they had to do, like go to the bathroom, would have to be in a law,” Wintrow said.
Idaho Fraternal Order of Police opposed the bill
The bill was opposed by some law enforcement groups and several transgender Idahoans.
The bill outlines several exceptions, including to give medical assistance, law enforcement assistance, and if someone “is in dire need of urinating or defecating and such facility is the only facility reasonably available at the time of the person’s use.”
The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police flagged that exception as concerning.
“Officers responding to a complaint would be placed in the difficult position of determining an individual’s biological sex in order to enforce the statute,” Idaho Fraternal Order of Police President Bryan Lovell wrote. “In many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.”
Kyle Pfannenstiel
Kyle Pfannenstiel is a reporter for the Idaho Capital Sun, covering health care and state politics. He previously reported for the Post Register/Report for America, Idaho Education News and the Idaho Press. Kyle is a military brat who calls Idaho home. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from University of Idaho.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
This is about the save act. Chip Roy and the republicans constantly say it is no problem for people in the US to get a identifcation or be able to vote if they have changed their name via marriage. Fact is even Chip Roy’s own staff is struggling to get it done. And as Sam says that staff member gets the time off work and has the backing of a high level boss. The Save Act allows states to let people use the marriage license as a document but doesn’t require it. So only the blue states run by democrats will. Florida wont. And the state I was born in doesn’t allow for birth certificate changes without a court order. Roy says he doesn’t want to publicize this flaw or give it credit because the republicans want women / and gay men who might have changed their names to be blocked from voting. Again it is about promoting their view of a perfect world / and voter. A straight cis Christian white male who votes only for restrictive republicans and has a right wing ideology. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 