Why it was easy for an illegal immigrant to land top job in Des Moines’ public schools

The arrest of an illegal immigrant serving as the Des Moines, Iowa, superintendent of schools has exposed a broader problem in America’s public education system: Few of them are using E-Verify, the federal government’s tool to weed out people not authorized to work.

Iowa has revoked the education license of Ian Andre Roberts, the Guyanese immigrant who was helming the state’s largest school system despite his defiance of a deportation order issued more than a year ago.

Late Monday, the school board voted to put him on unpaid leave, and said unless he proves his work status by Tuesday, he’ll be fired.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mr. Roberts on Friday, moving to enforce a final deportation order an immigration judge issued last year. Authorities said Mr. Roberts fled in his Des Moines-issued vehicle, then abandoned it and ran before being tracked down.

When officers later searched his vehicle, they found a handgun, which illegal immigrants cannot possess under the law.

ICE said the case should be a “wake-up call” to communities to better check their hires.

“How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district,” said Sam Olson, director of the ICE deportation field office that covers Des Moines.

Jackie Norris, chair of the school board, said Mr. Roberts claimed to be a citizen.

She said he presented a driver’s license and Social Security card and filled out Homeland Security’s I-9 form, the paper-based process for verifying someone is eligible to work. She said the school system had no reason to doubt his claims until last week.

But experts said if the school system had used E-Verify, it could have blocked him and avoided the embarrassing black eye.

“Every school district in the United States should be using E-Verify, if simply to protect the children they are responsible for,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project.

E-Verify is voluntary at the federal level, though some states make it mandatory for employers within their borders. A bill to add Iowa to that list cleared the state Senate last year but did not make it through final passage.

Of the more than 10,000 school districts in the U.S., only a few hundred are listed as users of E-Verify in the program’s database, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A few of those districts are in Iowa, including Storm Lake and the Ballard Community school districts. Des Moines is not among them.

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Don Lemon Says White Men Are “Lazy, Dumb” and Believe Violence is the Answer

Former CNN hack Don Lemon lashed out at white men after the latest mass shootings in North Carolina and Michigan.

White 40-year-old military veterans were behind the latest shootings over the weekend, so Don Lemon opened up his podcast by attacking white men.

Don Lemon is married to a white man.

“White men, something deep in you is broken. You guys believe that violence is the answer,” Don Lemon said.

Black men are way more violent than white men.

Last week, Don Lemon lashed out over the Christian messaging and worship songs at Charlie Kirk’s memorial and said speakers only quoted Biblical scripture because they were “demanding submission.”

A beautiful memorial service was held for TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk at the State Farm Arena in Glendale, Arizona, last Sunday.

Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, delivered a moving speech focused on forgiveness.

In the most powerful and memorable moment of the evening, Mrs. Kirk forgave the assassin who took her husband’s life.

Don Lemon trashed the Christian messaging at Charlie Kirk’s memorial and claimed the service was merely a political rally.

Don Lemon also said, “Donald Trump stood on the stage like a man at the center of prophecy. He called Charlie Kirk a martyr…. as if the passing of the man had lit some sort of sacred fire.”

“What we saw in that arena was not simply faith finding public expression, it was religious nationalism on full display,” Don Lemon said.

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States forgave billions in fraudulent pandemic benefits

It was bad enough that fraudsters stole tens of billions of dollars in bogus pandemic-era unemployment benefits — now it turns out states forgave much of that money without even trying to claw it back.

The exact amount won’t ever be known, though it could stretch into billions. The Labor Department’s inspector general blamed poor decision-making and antiquated systems in the states, which administer the unemployment program with federal backstop funds during the pandemic.

Investigators did a deep dive into Michigan and Massachusetts, which they identified as particular offenders, and found the states forgave people who were using clearly stolen Social Security numbers or suspicious emails or physical addresses that kept popping up in other fraud cases.

Among the claims paid out by Michigan — and later forgiven — was one where the person used an out-of-state Social Security number, gave an address in Alabama, and hadn’t reported any earnings before the pandemic. The state had confirmed that it was a fraudulent application, yet still forgave the money, meaning the fraudster wasn’t asked to pay it back.

In another case, Michigan determined a claim was the result of identity theft. A year later, it still forgave that money.

The inspector general said Michigan waived recovery for nearly 18,000 cases of confirmed fraud.

Massachusetts, meanwhile, set up an “honor system” for some people to ask to be excused from sending back overpayments in pandemic unemployment benefits.

It turned out to be a mistake, the new audit said Monday.

Investigators sampled 121 claims that used the state’s “one-click” waiver request program and found none of them had any documentation to prove they met the hardship standards for keeping taxpayers’ money.

What documentation existed in the files showed the people were “at fault” and shouldn’t have qualified anyway. That included some people who voluntarily quit, some who actually had jobs even as they were collecting unemployment and others who were fired for deliberate misconduct.

Like Michigan, Massachusetts also paid out money — and then waived repayment requirements — to applications that reeked of fraud.

That included one claim, paid $6,804, that used a Social Security number and physical address that were also used in three other states. One of those was Michigan.

“Massachusetts waived the recovery of overpayments that had a high probability of fraud,” the inspector general concluded.

Investigators took a sample of 14 probably fraudulent claims and ran them by Massachusetts authorities. The state said it hadn’t flagged any of them for fraud, though it had determined they were ineligible — after first paying out weeks’ worth of benefits.

Five of them were actually on a list the feds provided to Massachusetts in 2022 as potentially fraudulent. Massachusetts said it didn’t follow up because it had already ended the claims and listed them as overpayments.

It forgave the money.

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Agriculture Secretary Announces Update As Flesh-Eating Screwworm Comes Within 70 Miles Of US Border

More than 8,000 traps have been deployed across Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, targeting the New World screwworm (NWS) flies, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a Sept. 26 post on X, adding that no additional NWS infections have been detected since last Sunday.

On Sunday, Sept. 21, an announcement was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which said that Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality had confirmed a new NWS infection in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nueva Leon state, less than 70 miles from America’s southern border. The infected animal was an 8-month-old cow.

Earlier in July, an NWS infection had been reported 370 miles south of the U.S.–Mexico border.

In her post, Rollins said that over 13,000 screening samples have been screened, and zero NWS flies have been identified thus far.

In addition, 750,000 sterilized NWS flies are being trucked in and dispersed in the Nueva Leon region twice a week, she said.

Mass-produced, sterile male NWS flies are often used to tackle the spread of wild NWS fly swarms. When these sterile flies are released into a swarm in large numbers, they mate with the wild female flies, which end up laying unfertilized eggs, thus lowering the swarm population.

Tackling NWS swarms is crucial since they pose a major threat to livestock. In an Aug. 15 statement, USDA called NWS a “devastating pest.”

“When NWS fly larvae (maggots) burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious, often deadly damage to the animal. NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds, and in rare cases, people,” the agency said.

“It is not only a threat to our ranching community, but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security.”

Since May, U.S. ports have been closed to imports of cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico to prevent the spread of NWS flies into the United States.

Rollins accused Mexico of having “failed to enforce proper cattle movement controls and neglected to regularly maintain fly traps as agreed, undermining detection efforts.”

“This is unacceptable,” she said in the post on X. “Mexico must immediately implement agreed-upon protocols, expand surveillance, and restrict cattle movement in infected zones. For the foreseeable future the border will remain closed.”

In a Sept. 22 statement, Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development said that the Sept. 21 detection was of an NWS fly in its larval stage, “meaning there is no possibility of the fly emerging.”

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Russia Says It’s ‘Analyzing’ the Possibility of the US Sending Tomahawk Missiles to Ukraine

The Kremlin said on Monday that it was “analyzing” the possibility of the US providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, a step that would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war.

The comments from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov came after US Vice President JD Vance said that President Trump was considering the possibility of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks, which have a range of over 1,000 miles, by selling them to European NATO countries.

“We have heard these statements. We are thoroughly analyzing them. Our military specialists are closely monitoring it,” Peskov said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Peskov also downplayed the idea that Tomahawks would make a difference for Ukraine. “Even if it happens that the United States sends its Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, currently there is no cure-all that could be a game changer on the front lines for the Kiev regime. No magical weapons exist, and Tomahawk or other missiles simply won’t be a game changer,” he said.

With a range of over 1,000 miles, Tomahawks would put Moscow well in range of Ukrainian missile strikes, and Vance’s comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened attacks on Kremlin officials if the war in Ukraine continues. But it’s unclear how Ukraine would fire the missiles since they’re designed to be launched from advanced US warships.

The US has, in recent years, developed two land-based missile launchers that can fire Tomahawk missiles: the Typhon and the Long Range Fires (LRF) systems. These systems were previously prohibited by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019.

The Typhon system has been deployed for military drills in Asia and in Europe, but the LRF has been abandoned by the US Marine Corps due to maneuverability issues. A report from Defense Express suggested that the retired LRF launchers could be refitted and sent to Ukraine for the Ukrainian military to use to fire Tomahawks.

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ICE Doesn’t Want You To Know Why They Bought a Phone Cracking System

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is quietly building up its ability to spy on Americans’ phones. Earlier this month, the agency activated a $2 million contract with Paragon, a service that offers the ability to remotely hack into someone’s phone. Last week, ICE entered into an $11 million contract for Cellebrite devices, which allow agents to break into a locked phone in their physical possession.

And they don’t want you to know why. The justification for the no-bid contract states that ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center “has a need for Universal Forensic Extraction Devices (UFEDs) and related services for investigative purposes. Specifically, the Government requires the capability to perform logical, file system, physical, and password data extraction for mobile electronic devices.”

Every other substantive paragraph in the document is redacted, to an almost comical degree. “Cellebrite’s unique capabilities are that they are the only brand product/service that ██████████,” read one paragraph. “Cellebrite remains the most effective solution for ██████████,” reads another.

The Cyber Crimes Center is attached to Homeland Security Investigations, the section of ICE that handles organized crime rather than day-to-day deportations.

Cellebrite is not keen on revealing its capabilities; in a leaked training video, Cellebrite representatives asked police to keep the use of their devices “as hush hush as possible.” But ICE’s justification even censors details about competing products the agency looked at. “Similarly, ██████████ offers ██████████. None of these tools provide ██████████ needed to handle ██████████,” the document reads.

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Canadian city spends $33k of taxpayer cash giving street woke new name that NO ONE can pronounce

The City of Vancouver has been exposed for spending more than $30,000 of taxpayer cash to rename a street.

MLA Dallas Brodie slammed the city in a recent X post, leaking documents that show Vancouver paid $33,500 to rename Trutch Street.

The new name is šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street (sh-MUS-kwee-uhm-AWH-sum), which translates to Musqueamview Street in English.

Trutch Street was named after British Columbia’s first governor general Joseph Trutch, a British colonizer who took swathes of land from First Nations people.

The previous city council voted on the rebrand in July 2021 after a request from the Musqueam Nation. It was followed through in June 2025.

Mayor Ken Sim green-lighted the project to ‘address a historic injustice and take another step forward on the path towards reconciliation.’ 

‘We recognize and honor the Musqueam people and their longstanding connection to this land,’ he wrote on X.

Brodie shamed the city for wasting hard working taxpayer dollars on the name change.

The revealed documents showed the cost breakdown that went into the rename: $10,000 on reimbursement for expenses completed, $6,000 on meetings, $7,500 on collaborative work, and another $10,000 on the event. The various costs amount to a total of $33,500.

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Canada To Revive Online Censorship Targeting “Harmful” Content, “Hate” Speech, and Deepfakes

A renewed censorship effort is taking shape in Canada as the federal government pushes ahead with a controversial bill targeting what it labels “harmful online content.”

Framed as a safeguard against exploitation and “hate,” the proposed legislation mirrors the widely criticized Bill C-36, which was abandoned after concerns about its vague language and expansive reach.

Bill C-63 would have established a powerful new Digital Safety Commission tasked with pressuring platforms to restrict user content.

If passed, the law would have compelled tech companies to remove flagged material such as intimate images shared without consent or child abuse content within 24 hours.

It also gives both the poster and complainant a chance to respond, but the final decision would ultimately fall to a state-backed regulator.

Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault attempted to justify the new push during a House of Commons committee meeting, stating the bill aims to remove “clearly harmful content” and is “designed to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

He added, “Online safety is certainly about protecting kids, but it’s obviously more than that.”

Beyond images and exploitation, the bill includes a broader mandate to police expression.

It calls for tougher Criminal Code penalties around so-called “hate propaganda,” including a life sentence for promoting genocide. It would create a new offense for “hate crimes” and let judges issue “peace bonds” to restrict someone’s freedom based on a prediction of possible future hate-based offenses.

On top of that, the proposal seeks to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, allowing individuals to file complaints over online speech that meets a definition of “detestation or vilification,” as outlined by past Supreme Court decisions.

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Trans-Identified Male Pedophile Brutally Assaults Female Inmate At Washington Women’s Prison

A female inmate at the Women’s Correctional Center in Washington has come forward to tell Reduxx that she was brutally beaten by a trans-identified male inmate being held there due to the state’s gender identity policies. Faye Jones, whose name has been altered to protect her safety, says she was struck repeatedly in the head by convicted pedophile Christopher Williams, who has remained in the women’s prison despite having been accused of sexually assaulting a female inmate just last year.

According to testimony provided to Reduxx by Jones, the two were in a common area on August 7 when Williams, who stands 6’3″, began punching her in the face in an apparent retaliation against her for calling him a “rapist.” Jones, in contrast, is 5’4″.

Leading up to the incident, Jones says she had made an active effort to avoid him. Noticing that she was going out of her way to keep her distance, Williams began to sit near her in the cafeteria during meals. “I think he noticed a pattern, so he sits where I sit on purpose,” Jones said.

But on the day of the assault, Jones first attempted to assert herself. She asked Williams to sit elsewhere, as she didn’t want to leave her friend in the day room while the predator was present. Williams responded by calling her a “fucking weirdo.” Offended, Jones remarked that he was a “fucking rapist.”

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Frigate, Radars, Troops Rushed To Copenhagen To Defend Against Mystery Drones

European nations are beefing up security in Copenhagen amid an ongoing wave of reported drone sightings in the Baltics and Scandinavia. The movement of counter-drone systems, advanced radars, a German frigate, a French helicopter and troops is designed to protect this week’s European Union meetings in the Danish capital. 

The sightings, over military installations and civilian airports, have also prompted Denmark to close its airspace to civilian drones for a week starting today after the incursion forced it to shut down a half dozen airports last week. In Norway, authorities said flights had to be diverted on Sunday because of unknown drones over airports there.

While Denmark has called the drones part of a “hybrid attack,” officials there have stopped short of saying definitively who is responsible, Reuters noted. However, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has suggested it could be Moscow, calling Russia the primary “country that poses a threat to European security.” The Kremlin denies any involvement.

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