Tag: child protective services

Questions Emerge About Pete Buttigieg’s Story of Being Swatted and Separated From His Children by Child Protective Services

Pete Buttigieg’s harrowing swatting story from last week is now coming under scrutiny, suggesting he may not be telling the entire truth.

As TGP’s Jordan Conradson reported, Buttigieg claims he was swatted this week by Child Protective Service agents and separated from his four-year-old twins.

Buttigieg ran to Substack to write a column about the incident.

Describing himself as “bewildered and troubled,” Buttigieg said that “the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day.”

After a “sleepless night,” he says, the officers told him that an anonymous tipster told police that he had spoken to a woman. She said that Buttigieg had “committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”

“After the officer spoke, the CPS worker likewise indicated she had not found anything to substantiate the allegation, though her process would take a bit longer to be formally completed. I no longer needed to avoid being around my children unsupervised. Chasten was invited to come back downstairs and hear the same information that had just been shared with me. Then, per standard procedure, she verified that there was adequate food in our kitchen and asked to take a look at the kids’ bedroom,” Buttigieg wrote.

But questions are emerging that suggest Buttigieg might be embellishing at least part of his story, particularly the part about CPS separating him from his children.

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Pete Buttigieg Says He Was Swatted and Separated From Children by Child Protective Services After Being Accused of “Unspeakable Violent Crimes”

Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claims he was swatted this week by Child Protective Service agents and separated from his four-year-old twins. 

Buttigieg ran to Substack to write a column about the incident.

“Someone decided to hurt our family this week. I’m furious, and I want to share what happened,” he began the posting.

Buttigieg wrote:

You’ve probably heard of “swatting.” It’s a cruel and dangerous kind of hoax that has started happening more frequently in recent years. Someone anonymously calls 911 with a false report of imminent danger, such as a hostage situation, at the home of a public figure. Law enforcement swarms the house, guns drawn, terrifying the unsuspecting homeowner and family and sometimes even leading to deaths or injuries in the confusion. It’s happened to dozens of lawmakers, judges, celebrities, and others. (When I was in the Cabinet, someone attempted to do this to our home, but fortunately the hoax was quickly detected.) It’s become enough of a problem that the FBI now has a dedicated database to track such incidents.

Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

I showed them in, invited them on the deck so that we could hear each other over the barking dog, and asked what was going on. They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.

Describing himself as “bewildered and troubled,” Buttigieg went on to reveal that “the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day.”

“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained,” he wrote.

After a “sleepless night,” he says, the officers told him that an anonymous tipster told police that he had spoken to a woman, and she said that Buttigieg had “committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”

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Ghost Funding Scandal: Connecticut Homeschoolers Push Audit Before Regulatory Showdown

Connecticut’s children’s agency failed to protect 11 year old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres García, then helped turn her death into the emotional engine for a bill to regulate families who homeschool instead of fixing its own system.

AbleChild submitted emergency testimony to defeat the bill based on Mimi.  It laid out that DCF already had extensive involvement with Mimi’s family, the courts, and mandated reporters, and still allowed a faked Zoom “welfare check” to stand in for real protection. Now, as lawmakers head into a Thursday floor debate on HB 5468, homeschoolers have gone on offense, backed by a formal legal demand to follow the money.

Attorney Deborah G. Stevenson, on behalf of National Home Education Legal Defense, LLC (NHELD) and Connecticut taxpayers, has filed a complaint and request for an immediate investigation and audit of the State’s “School Fund” and Education Cost Sharing (ECS) monies. She explains that NHELD has “reason to believe that certain monies in the ‘School Fund’ have been used to pay public school districts per pupil funding for students who are no longer enrolled in the public school system,” a practice “euphemistically called ‘double funding’.” In plain language, districts may be receiving ghost per pupil funding, money for children who have already left public school, at the same time the state is trying to build a system to track and report those very families once they’re gone.

Stevenson’s filing links this practice directly to the pending legislation. She notes that double funding has been happening in the past, “is going on currently, and is planned to continue in the future, as well, due to pending legislation in at least two bills about which we are aware – SB6 and HB5468.” Fiscal notes on those bills show that hundreds of thousands of dollars per year would not go to classroom instruction, but to hiring new staff and building a regulatory framework to process withdrawal forms, contact families no longer enrolled in public schools, report them to various state agencies, track their data, and run records checks on them with DCF. The audit request asks a simple question, how much of that money is coming from funds that, under the Connecticut Constitution, are supposed to be “inviolably” used only to support public schools, not to finance a tracking regime aimed at families who have left.

The constitutional stakes are explicit. The Connecticut Constitution’s “School Fund” provisions say that the fund must remain perpetual, that its interest “shall be inviolably appropriated to the support and encouragement of the public schools,” and that “no law shall ever be made” that diverts that fund to any other use. Stevenson’s complaint asks the State Auditors to determine, among other things, whether there is a clearly identifiable School Fund, how much is in it, how its interest is handled, whether ECS per pupil payments come from that interest, whether public schools are being paid for students who are no longer enrolled “in case” they return, and whether money from that fund or ECS is being used to hire staff and build systems that identify, process, report to DCF, correspond with, and data track families who are no longer in the public school system. If misuse is found, the filing calls for all responsible parties to be held fully accountable, civilly or criminally, so that public funds are truly safeguarded.

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NYC Socialist Mayor Eyes Activist Who Called CPS ‘Genocide for Black People’ to Lead Child Welfare Agency

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is considering Angela Burton, a 65-year-old activist known for her criticism of Child Protective Services (CPS), to lead the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).

Burton has described CPS as a form of “slow extractive genocide for black people in America” in a 2023 X post and likened it to “child slavery” in another post from July 2023.

“Leave Black people alone. Your numbers and methods are treasure. Racist garbage in, racist garbage out. We don’t need CPS. CPS is Slow extractive Genocide for Black people in America. We know what you’re up to,” Burton wrote.

Currently, Burton serves on Children’s Rights’ New York Mandated Reporting Working Group, which seeks to narrow mandated reporting laws to reduce what it calls over-surveillance and family separations, particularly affecting Black, Latino, and low-income families.

Burton has also posted on X calling CPS a “grave and imminent threat” to children and families, accusing CPS employees of racism, and advocating for defunding police and the abolition of the “foster care industrial complex.”

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Woman Sparks Major Uproar After Bragging About Calling Child Protective Services On High School Students Who Attended a TPUSA Gathering

A woman has admitted to a disgusting act of outright and wicked censorship regarding conservative high school students, sparking a massive national outrage.

A nosy leftist community leader in Calvert County, Maryland, named Nancy Krause spoke at the Calvert County Board of Education meeting on February 12, 2026 where she made a startling admission: she had notified Child Protective Services due to her supposed safety concerns over a December 2025 Turning Point USA gathering.

Krause also claimed she was concerned about potential conflicts of interest among board members who reportedly spoke at the event.

NANCY: In December of 2025, Turning Point USA hosted an event marketed to high school students with food and beverages advertised as an incentive for attendance.

While community building opportunities for students are important, this event raises serious concerns related to student safety, parental rights and governance oversight. Adults and legal guardians were not permitted to attend the event.

Excluding parents and guardians from a student-focused event creates a lack of transparency and undermines established best practices for youth safety.

I’m also concerned about a potential conflict of interest involving board of education members who served as guests and spoke at this event.

Students are widely recognized as a vulnerable population, they are in critical developmental stages, and especially susceptible to influence.

All Board of Education members in this room are mandated reporters under state law, as I am. Based on the circumstances surrounding this event, a report was made to Child Protective Services.

A student who spoke before Krause said his group placed restrictions on the event after receiving “hate” online.

This included barring access for adults they did not know who were not volunteers or parents of attendees.

He also revealed that all students who attended had parental permission.

As of this writing, no action has been taken against Krause for her censorious move.

Krause’s action sparked an uproar among conservatives on social media.

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California Family Loses Custody Of Daughter After Refusing To Medically “Affirm” Her Transgender Identity

A Ukrainian family in California says Child Welfare removed their teenage daughter from their home and placed them on the child abuse registry after they declined to “affirm” her transgender identity. Speaking to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, the parents say the removal followed a report filed by their daughter’s psychiatrist without their knowledge.

The mother, who will be referred to as Ellie, told Reduxx that a social worker from Shasta County Child Welfare Services arrived at the family’s home on June 3, 2024, without prior notice. According to Ellie, the worker accused the parents of emotional abuse and demanded access to their daughter, who will be referred to as Maya, without presenting a warrant or court order.

“She just kept saying, ‘You’re emotionally abusing your child,’” Ellie said. “But she had nothing in her hands. No paperwork. Nothing.”

The removal was a dramatic climax following years of instability that Ellie says began in early childhood. After the family immigrated to the United States in 2007, Maya began experiencing anxiety, anger issues, attention difficulties, and emotional dysregulation. Her mental health concerns, which once resulted in a temporary placement in a psychiatric facility, were made worse by the persistent bullying she experienced at school starting in first and second grade. She said the bullying came not only from other students but also from indifferent teachers, and that repeated complaints to school administrators were dismissed.

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Children removed from Australian-British couple living off-grid in Italian forest

The children of an Australian mother living off-grid in an Italian forest have been removed by local authorities, after the family came under scrutiny when they were hospitalised due to eating poisonous mushrooms.

A juvenile court in the Italian city of L’Aquila ruled last week to place the three children of Australian woman Catherine Birmingham and her British husband Nathan Trevallion into protective care.

The court cited poor sanitary conditions at the family’s home in the mountainous Abruzzo region and unauthorised homeschooling of their eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twin boys, according to AFP.

Ms Birmingham, a life coach and former horse riding teacher from Melbourne, bought the farmhouse in 2021 with Mr Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol.

They were raising the children in the woodlands home without mains electricity, water or gas, relying instead on solar power, well water and homegrown food.

“The members of the Trevallion family have no social interactions, no steady income,” the court said in its written ruling.

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I Lost My Freedom, Money, And Guns Based On No Evidence And With No Chance To Defend Myself

Three weeks. That’s how long I was separated from my daughter. No trial. No crime. No violence. Just a single sheet of paper — a Protection from Abuse Order, or PFA — a civil court order meant to prevent harm, often issued on little more than an accusation. It can strip someone of contact with his or her children, home, and firearms — without a criminal charge. That paper took my daughter away from me.

I was only 23.

My daughter was just a few months old. I was still learning how to be a dad — still learning the rhythms of fatherhood. Then she was gone. A sheriff handed me the order at my front door. I knew I was in for an uphill battle.

Over the next three weeks, I scrambled to find an attorney, build a defense, and dig through evidence to prove my innocence. Those weeks didn’t just take away my daughter. They took away my dignity. My voice. And for a time, my will to speak. 

The State of Exception

Legal theorist Carl Schmitt once wrote: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” In other words, the true power of the state lies not in making laws, but in deciding when the law no longer applies. The sovereign is the one who can suspend the rules in the name of security, order, or necessity. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben built on this idea, warning that modern states increasingly rule through exceptions — moments when the law suspends itself in the name of preserving order.

Most people think of these exceptions in cinematic terms, such as Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, the War on Terror and Guantanamo Bay, lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But a quieter kind happens in family court every day. No headlines. No outrage. Just a form, a sheriff, and silence.

That’s what a PFA is. It suspends due process, assumes guilt, and punishes before harm occurs. It creates what Agamben called a “zone of indistinction” — where someone is both inside the law and excluded from its protections. The man served a PFA becomes what Agamben called the Homo Sacer: not just punished without trial, but guilty until proven innocent.

This isn’t tyranny in jackboots. It’s softer. Bureaucratic. A form, not a trial. Control, not compassion. It’s preemptive punishment. 

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Child Protective Services Investigated Her 4 Times Because She Let Her Kids Play Outside

Parenting expectations are often unreasonably high—and so is the number of people who believe that kids can’t handle anything on their own.

Passersby too often see an unsupervised child and assume they are unsafe. So they call the authorities, who also often share those super-sized fears. Then parents get investigated simply for trusting their kids with some age-appropriate, location-appropriate independence.

Because of this frustrating cycle, I frequently get letters like the one below. When people ask why I spend so much time trying to pass Reasonable Childhood Independence laws, it’s for people like Emily Fields and her children. Fields is a mom in small-town Virginia who responded to my nonprofit Let Grow’s call for parents willing to speak to child protective services about why such laws are necessary. (Virginia unanimously passed its Reasonable Childhood Independence law in 2023.)

This letter is presented as a stark example of how little trust our country has in its parents and children anymore—and how misanthropic neighbors can weaponize the state at will.

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Child advocate blames Democrat governor for 6th child death related to family safety dept: ‘There is blood on the governor’

The tragic death of another child in New Mexico has prompted a child advocate to blame the governor and the children’s safety agency that had been warned about the threat.

Vanessa Chavez was charged with child abuse resulting in death after her 18-month-old daughter was found unresponsive and died after 20 minutes of CPR, Albuquerque police said. The girl’s death is the sixth in only four months of incidents that involved the state’s Children, Youth & Families Department, according to KOB-TV.

New Mexico Child First Network founder Maralyn Beck said the death was preventable and places the blame squarely on the governor as well as the child safety agency.

“Every single one of these deaths was preventable,” Beck said to KOB.

She added: “This is on the governor. There is blood on the governor at this point.”

The child had been taken away from Chavez when she was born premature because the girl had been drug-exposed. KOB reports that the girl was returned to the parents for a trial period and died soon afterward.

“One call to child protective services in a functioning system should save the life of a child,” an emotional Beck said. “One single call. That’s a functioning system, and we don’t have that.”

KOB put the criticism to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and she said that it would be a priority for her office as she nears the end of her term but admitted that the agency had troubles.

“You’re chasing your tail, and we’ve been chasing our tail for decades,” she said.

When asked if she was going to make progress in the 18 months she has left, she responded, “We’re gonna make some damn important progress, yes sir.”

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