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Student Suspended For Saying ‘Illegal Aliens’ Will Receive Cash, Public Apology

The perceived overreach of administrators at one North Carolina high school sparked a nationwide conversation about whether students should be kicked out of school for using terms some others might find offensive.

At the heart of the case is Christian McGhee, who was 16 when he received a three-day suspension for uttering the words “illegal aliens” during a class lesson.

He insisted he was only trying to clarify the assignment, but the supposed violation was nevertheless deemed severe enough to warrant a suspension.

The ensuing backlash has resulted vindication for the student, as the New York Post reported:

McGhee’s mother, Leah, had filed a lawsuit in which she accused the school and the Davidson County Board of Education of violating her son’s First Amendment rights.

However, McGhee’s family and the school board settled on Wednesday after a year-long battle in the courts, according to court documents.

The board has agreed to remove all references to racial bias in McGhee’s school record and issue a public apology “for the mischaracterization of racial bias” in his record, documents show.

The board will also provide him with $20,000 in compensation to help his family with the costs of tuition at his new private school, to which he was forced to transfer after being suspended.

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FBI thwarts teen’s alleged ‘serious’ mall attack plot involving explosives, gunfire

The FBI and law enforcement officials in Columbia County, Oregon, arrested a teenager late last month who was allegedly planning to carry out a mass shooting involving explosives at a Washington state shopping mall.

In a news release Thursday, the FBI said the teen, whose name was not released, was arrested May 22 by deputies with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.

The FBI learned of “detailed and imminent” attack plans after they were reported to the agency just two days before the juvenile’s arrest.

After learning about the alleged planned attack, the FBI said it began working with its partners to identify the mastermind behind the threat. On May 20, the Columbia County teenager was identified as a suspect.

According to the FBI, the teenager shared nihilistic violent extremist ideology, as well as the plans, in online chats.

The teenager was placed under court-authorized surveillance out of caution for the public, and, on May 22, a federal search warrant was executed, leading to the teen’s arrest.

The FBI said the suspect demonstrated the intention and means to carry out a plan that included details like the map of the Three Rivers Mall in Kelso, located more than two hours south of Seattle, and a route to follow.

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Elon Musk drops ‘really big bomb,’ accuses Trump of being in Epstein files as public brawl escalates

Elon Musk went low in his rapidly escalating feud with President Trump on Thursday, accusing him of withholding information from the public about infamous sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein because it would implicate Trump himself.

“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk posted on X after a multi-hour tirade against the president. “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files.”

“That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he claimed. “Have a nice day, DJT!”

The Justice Department in February released more than 100 pages of Epstein’s phone contacts and flight logs in a “Phase One” disclosure that disappointed internet sleuths hoping for bombshell revelations.

The disgraced financier’s association with Trump has been known for years as the two were videotaped and photographed together at parties in the 1990s, and the initial batch of DOJ-released files revealed the president’s name in flight logs as well as some family members — including Trump’s first wife, Ivana, and daughter Ivanka — as Epstein contacts.

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Chicago Police Recruit Allegedly Found with Cocaine in Pocket

A Chicago Police Department recruit found himself in hot water during a training exercise after allegedly possessing crack cocaine. This incident unfolded during a narcotics arrest training scenario, as reported by CWB Chicago. The recruit’s surprising explanation for the discovery of the illicit substance has raised eyebrows among officials.

The scenario was intended to be a routine exercise, with recruits practicing search techniques. According to the report, a recruit discovered real crack cocaine while searching a fellow recruit’s pocket. The suspect offered a curious defense, claiming the pants were not his own but borrowed from his brother, who is also in law enforcement.

The training exercise involved a trainer providing recruits with a baggie marked with blue stars, simulating heroin. However, the recruit found a different baggie, clear and knotted, containing four smaller bags adorned with green dollar signs. Each of these smaller bags reportedly contained suspected crack cocaine.

In response to the discovery, the trainer questioned the recruit about the contents of the knotted baggie. The recruit initially dismissed it as “trash” before offering his explanation about the ownership of the pants. This bizarre claim has left officials perplexed as they continue their investigation.

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The Sexual Abuse Scandal That’s Engulfed the Evangelical Movement

Whenever Missouri megapreacher Mike Bickle received prophecies from God, he tended to shout the good news from the rooftops. But there was one recurring vision that he only shared with a few people. In the early 1980s, Bickle—who would go on to found International House of Prayer in Kansas City—confided in Tammy Woods, the 14-year-old who was babysitting his children, that his wife Diane would die and “that we could be together,” a prelude to his repeatedly sexually abusing her. The founder of the outrageously successful church certainly felt that God had his back. He had the same vision over a decade later, when he told his 19-year-old female intern that his wife would die and that they would get married.

But maybe God had other plans. Thanks to these two women and their willingness to come forward to attest to Bickle’s misdeeds, a larger crisis of sexual abuse in evangelical Christianity has been exposed, and countless more allegations have followed. In June, Trump spiritual adviser Robert Morris resigned from his Dallas-based Gateway megachurch after he was accused of abusing a 12-year-old girl. Last month, his successor was fired for undisclosed “moral issues.”

That two towering figures of the charismatic evangelical movement have faced such serious allegations ought to lead to soul searching, and more importantly, a rush to ensure better safeguards so that pastors cannot abuse their authority. If the past is any guide, there’s little hope that any kind of reckoning is at hand. As we’ve seen with a series of similar scandals and a damning report into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s evangelical leaders have made failing to act responsibly into an art form.

Sexual abuse in churches has long been thought of as a “Catholic disease,” but as recent events have shown, it is unchecked power and authority, not celibacy, that is the root of the problem. It is also very much a crisis of the evangelical movement’s own making; in this milieu, commercial incentives have produced a culture where the more charismatic and authoritarian the leader, the more successful the church. The widespread culture of abuse, cover-up, and denial has been exacerbated by the kind of corruption that arises when friends appoint friends to positions of authority, tamping down any incentives toward transparency and accountability.

A big reason the problem has gotten out of control is the growing trend among evangelical churches of all stripes to label themselves “nondenominational.” According to religious data cruncher Ryan Burge, nearly 13 percent of all adults in the United States now identify as nondenominational Protestant Christians, and there are now more nondenominationals in the U.S. than mainline Protestants.

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Alleged manifesto of murder suspect Luigi Mangione highlights lessons learned from Unabomber: Court docs

Police caught up with Luigi Mangione, 27, at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after he allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last December. In addition to allegedly finding a 9mm handgun, a homemade silencer, multiple cartridges, a fake New Jersey ID, a passport, approximately $7,800 in cash, and a written admission of guilt on his person, police reportedly found a notebook detailing plans for the shooting.

Mangione’s defense attorney asked the court overseeing the case to rule the notebook inadmissible, claiming the search of Mangione’s backpack where it was located violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The defense also asked the court to dismiss his indictment altogether.

Prosecutors responded with a damning court filing on Wednesday containing entries from Mangione’s alleged notebook, which they claim reveals “in unambiguous terms [the] defendant’s intent and motive in deliberately assassinating the CEO of the country’s largest health company.”

In an Aug. 15, 2024, entry, Mangione allegedly wrote, “I finally feel confident about what I will do. The details are coming together. And I don’t feel any doubt about whether it’s right/justified. I’m glad — in a way — that I’ve procrastinated bc it allowed me to learn more about UHC. KMD [the initials of another apparent target considered] would’ve been an unjustified catastrophe that would be perceived mostly as sick, but more importantly unhelpful.”

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Supreme Court Issues Unanimous Ruling In Key Case

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision on Thursday involving an Ohio woman who alleges reverse discrimination. The decision could become a key victory in ongoing ideological wars against diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives.

In a 9-0 decision that, believe it or not, was penned by left-leaning Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the highest court in the land ruled that Marlean Ames was not required to meet a “higher burden of proof to prove that she was discriminated against despite being part of a ‘majority’ group,” the New York Post said.

Ames filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Youth Services in November 2020. In the suit, she made allegations that she was wrongfully passed over for a promotion in favor of a lesbian. This individual, she claims, was not qualified for the position, and Ames was later demoted and then replaced by a gay man. This individual was also not qualified for the job, she said.

Ames’s complaint will now be sent back to the lower courts for review.

“The ruling from the Supreme Court makes it easier to pursue claims of reverse discrimination in 20 states and the District of Columbia that are covered by federal courts of appeals that still applied the standard,” CBS News reported.

In the decision, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that SCOTUS’ case law “makes clear that the standard for proving disparate treatment under Title VII does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group. … The ‘background circumstances’ rule flouts that basic principle.”

She also pointed out that the requirement places all majority-group plaintiffs under “the same, highly specific evidentiary standard in every case.”

A federal district court had previously ruled in favor of the Ohio Department of Youth Services after it found that it offered “legitimate, nondiscriminatory business reasons” for not giving Ames the promotion.

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UFO sleuths want fewer secrets in Trump-era investigations

After generations of stigma and secrecy around sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), or what the public calls UFOs, investigators probing hundreds of unsolved cases say the second Trump administration could be a turning point for transparency.

“We’re trying to get as much of the raw evidence out as we can without putting our partners’ equities at risk,” said Jon Kosloski, director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the government-wide task force leading research into mysterious sightings.

“The office has hired additional personnel and we’re investing in automated security review software that can redact the sensitive information from videos,” he said of an effort to release more currently classified material related to the probes.

Congress established the Resolution Office in 2022 to “detect, identify and attribute” mysterious objects of interest in the air, outer space, and underwater, with special focus on mitigating potential threats to military operations and national security.

More than 1800 cases have been reviewed by the Pentagon so far, with the vast majority ultimately resolved as likely balloons, drones, debris or animals based on a comprehensive review of available data.

Kosloski says “several dozen” cases remain anomalous even after rigorous analysis of evidence. They continue to receive new reports of anomalies by military service members and the general public every month.

“It’s a potential problem, a national security problem, safety of flight issue,” Kosloski told ABC News. “We seem to have the full support of the administration” in pursuing answers.

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Scientists probing ‘alien’ mummies make shocking discovery inside womb of corpse

The mystery surrounding the bizarre ‘alien‘ mummies found in Peru has deepened after scientists claimed they discovered a fetus inside the womb of one of the ‘corpses’. 

Dozens of mummified bodies were found in the Nazca desert in 2017 by a local named Leandro Rivera, sparking years of investigation into their origins.

The other-worldly figures were later found to have metal implants in their three-fingered hands and elongated heads.

However, other scientists who claimed to have analyzed the specimens determined the ‘mummies’ were dolls made from animal bones fused with modern glue.

But Dr David Ruiz Vela, a lead expert investigating the alleged remains, has now revealed that his team discovered a fetus inside a mummy named Montserrat while analyzing the remains at a radiology center in Lima.

Dr Ruiz Vela believes Montserrat died 1,200 years ago.

CT scans captured the ‘fetus’ lying on its back, with its head down near the belly area and chest with its arms closer to the pelvic region.

Scientists suggested its bones were still soft, just starting to harden, when Montserrat died, leaving parts of the spine and ribs unable to fuse together.  

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