Tag: illinois

Arlington Heights Elderly Leftist Couple Pleads Guilty to Defacing GOP Headquarters with Swastikas and Feces on Charlie Kirk Poster — No Hate Crime Charges, Just $100 Fine

An elderly leftist couple in Arlington Heights, Illinois, charged with vandalizing the Republicans of Wheeling Township headquarters in January pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges on Thursday.

Brock McNerney, a 72-year-old retired financial planner, and Moisette McNerney, a 69-year-old retired special education teacher, admitted to criminal damage to property and criminal defacement of property charges as part of a plea agreement.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that on the night of January 25, 2026, surveillance video captured the pair drawing multiple swastikas and profanities in permanent marker across the windows of the ROWT office at 909 E. Rand Road.

They specifically targeted a portrait of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, born in Arlington Heights and a former volunteer at the local GOP office as a Wheeling High School student, defacing his image. The couple also tossed bags of feces and poured an unknown liquid near the front door.

This was no isolated act of random mischief. It came after earlier vandalism in December 2025 that included threatening and offensive messages scrawled into the brick outside the office, specifically and gleefully referencing Charlie Kirk’s wounds.

The January attack occurred right before the March primary. ROWT members installed cameras after the prior incident.

Despite the use of Nazi symbols against a political organization and the apparent effort to frighten Republican volunteers, the McNerneys were charged only with misdemeanors, not hate crimes.

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Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed

While Flock claims its system tracks vehicles, not people, the documented record of police chiefs stalking ex-partners through Flock shows otherwise. When the most experienced, highest-ranking officers in law enforcement, the people most responsible for enforcing the rules, demonstrate ongoing abuses, the answer is the same courts have given for each generation of powerful tracking technology: require a warrant first.

The police chief of Holiday Hills, Illinois, and a part-time officer at Prairie Grove Police Department, was arrested June 18, 2026, and charged with two counts of official misconduct, a Class 3 felony.

Prosecutors alleged he used Prairie Grove’s Flock license plate reader system and the Illinois State Police LEADS database to track six people he knew personally.

Three of those people were women the chief had been in romantic relationships with, according to prosecutors at his arraignment. He also tracked an ex-boyfriend of one of those women, running that man’s plate 140 times over several months, a figure the protective order petition put at 178, with 86 of those searches conducted while off duty.

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HUGE WIN FOR AMERICANS: Federal Judge Strikes Down Illinois Laws Giving Illegal Aliens In-State Tuition, Financial Aid, and Scholarships — Deals Major Blow to Pritzker’s Sanctuary-State Agenda

A federal judge just delivered a crushing blow to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and the state’s radical open-borders agenda.

U.S. District Judge David W. Dugan ruled Friday that multiple Illinois laws granting illegal aliens preferential access to in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarship programs violate federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.

The ruling marks a major victory for President Trump’s Justice Department, Illinois taxpayers, and American students forced to compete for limited educational resources while Springfield Democrats rolled out the red carpet for people living in the country illegally.

In his 27-page memorandum and order, Judge Dugan denied Illinois’ motion to dismiss the case and granted the federal government’s cross-motion for summary judgment in part.

The court declared the following provisions unconstitutional and invalid as applied to aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States:

  • Current in-state tuition provisions covering Illinois public universities
  • The Acevedo Act provision governing public community colleges
  • The Retention of Illinois Students and Equity Act, or RISE Act, including its 2025 amendments
  • The Illinois DREAM Act and its scholarship program

The judge permanently barred Illinois, Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul, state education agencies, and the named university and community-college boards from enforcing the challenged provisions for illegal aliens.

“Put simply, U.S. citizens or nationals must be treated no worse than illegal aliens,” Judge Dugan wrote.

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Federal appeals court upholds controversial Illinois ban on semiautomatic guns

A federal appeals court upheld a controversial Illinois gun control law that largely bans assault weapons.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit decision issued on Thursday slapped down a district court decision that declared the ban unconstitutional.

“Among other things, the Act criminalizes the manufacture, sale, delivery, purchase, and possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. A grandfather clause permits preexisting lawful owners of the regulated items to continue possessing them,” the Thursday decision noted.

“For reasons that follow, we focus on the Act’s application to AR-15s and thirty-round rifle magazines. The Act’s restrictions on these items, we hold, are consistent with the principles that underpin our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation. Whether to adopt them is thus a decision reposed in our elected representatives, and we reverse,” the decision declared.

Chief Judge Michael Brennan dissented from the panel’s decision.

“Our Nation’s enduring traditions forbid governments from prohibiting firearms commonly owned for self-defense. Because the people have overwhelmingly chosen the AR-15 rifle and its magazine as their weapon of choice, they are protected by the Second Amendment,” Brennan wrote.

“Illinois’s ban goes too far and should be enjoined as unconstitutional. I respectfully dissent,” he noted.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who signed the controversial law in early 2023, hailed the court’s decision.

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HORROR: Illegal Alien Who Entered US on Biden’s Open Border Invitation Snatches Special Needs Child From Her Bicycle, Sexually Assaults Her

Sanctuary policies in Democrat-run states are dangerous and deadly.

An illegal alien who entered the US on Joe Biden’s open border invitation grabbed a 9-year-old girl from her bicycle and sexually assaulted her.

The violent assault occurred last week in Pingree Grove, Illinois.

According to Border Hawk News, the suspect, Janio Gionel Velasquez-Muro, illegally entered the US from Venezuela in 2022.

Janio Gionel Velasquez-Muro grabbed the little girl as she was riding her bicycle, shoved her into a car, and sexually assaulted her.

Records reviewed by Border Hawk News reveal the victim has severe and profound intellectual disabilities.

Velasquez-Muro fled the scene but he was later arrested by law enforcement.

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Corrupt Illinois Democrat State Rep and County Clerk Husband INDICTED In Mass NGO Kickback and Fraud Scheme — Just Weeks After Daughter Busted For COVID Fraud

Another corrupt Illinois Democrat family caught with their hands in the till.

Urbana Democrat State Representative Carol Ammons and her husband, Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on multiple felony counts including wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The indictment lays out a brazen scheme where Ammons allegedly used her campaign committee, Friends of Carol Ammons, to issue overpayments and then took cash kickbacks disguised as “gifts.”

At the same time, she used her position as a state lawmaker to steer massive state grants to friendly nonprofits that then put her daughter Titianna Ammons on the payroll, WCIA reported.

According to the federal indictment:

  • Carol Ammons allegedly caused campaign funds to be paid to herself and family members through excess checks and then received cash kickbacks to hide the scheme. She also falsely reported expenditures to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
  • She helped secure over $1.6 million in state grants for nonprofits including:
    • Bridgewater Sullivan Community Life Center ($612,000 grant) — where daughter Titianna was paid more than $60,000 as Program Director (Ammons even helped draft her employment contract).
    • Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (over $1 million in grants) — where Titianna was paid nearly $10,000 as a digital marketing coordinator.
    • Another grant to Hood Vote that also funneled money to the daughter.

Prosecutors say Ammons and her daughter received financial benefits in excess of $100,000 through this web of campaign misuse and grant steering between 2017 and roughly 2023.

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Venezuelan Illegal Alien Former Illinois School Teacher Arrested by ICE After Driving Tren de Aragua Gangsters to Chicago House Party Massacre That Killed Three and Wounded Five

A 32-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant who was teaching in an Illinois classroom has been arrested by ICE for allegedly acting as the driver and getaway accomplice for two Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang members during a brutal December 2024 mass shooting in Chicago that left three people dead and five others wounded.

Giovanna Mercedes Moreno Occhipinti, a Venezuelan national with dual Italian citizenship, entered the United States in October 2021 under the Visa Waiver Program but overstayed her visa.

She was taken into ICE custody on May 13, 2026, and is currently being held at the Grayson County Detention Center in Leitchfield, Kentucky, pending removal from the country, Fox News reported.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Occhipinti drove two alleged TDA gang members, Ricardo Granadillo Padilla and Edward Martinez Cermeno, to a house party in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood on December 2, 2024.

The gunmen opened fire on the crowd. Three people were killed and five were wounded. Federal authorities say she then helped the shooters flee the scene of the slaughter.

Chicago Police arrested Occhipinti just three days later, on December 5, 2024, after finding multiple weapons in her vehicle. But because Chicago and Illinois are militant sanctuary jurisdictions, she was released without ICE ever being notified, despite the obvious public safety threat tied to a triple homicide.

The two actual shooters were eventually deported. One had even been released from ICE custody earlier by a federal judge due to prosecutorial issues. Occhipinti remained free in the community and was reportedly working as a teacher at a school in the Chicago suburb of Elgin until HSI agents finally tracked her down months later.

Illinois officials have refused to disclose to DHS which school employed her.

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Illinois DEI Training Equates Whites With Mosquitoes — Which Can Be Killed With Fire

If you want to know why there will be more Karmelo Anthonys — angry black youth all too willing to kill whites — look no further than diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training offered by the Illinois government. It portrays white people and police as mosquitoes inflicting “microaggression” bites that maddeningly accumulate over time. Don’t worry, though, there is a remedy.

The training also shows a black woman using a flamethrower to incinerate the whites and cops mosquitoes.

(Such propaganda may help explain why so many believe Anthony was justified in killing white teen Austin Metcalf.)

You can, however, avoid this fiery fate by refraining from making certain comments. “When I look at you, I don’t see color” and “My best friend is Black” are forbidden. “Your English is so good” is, too. For these are all microaggressions — and who knows what else could be fancied so? So you just have to walk on eggshells with ballerina-like skill.

The Washington Free Beacon recently reported on the story:

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s (D.) administration offers a taxpayer-funded training on “microaggressions” and other “exclusionary behaviors” that depicts white people and police officers as mosquitoes who suck blood from people of color.

The training — which Pritzker’s Department of Human Rights offers to “private-sector, government, and public participants” and which the Washington Free Beacon attended [on May 15] — is meant to “increase knowledge, awareness and prevention of discrimination and harassment issues and offer solutions to employers and employees on how to appropriately respond to situations as they arise.” It defines “microaggressions” as “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons solely based upon their marginalized group membership.”

The Content Tells the Tale

The irony here is that the Illinois “microaggression” training is itself a macroaggression, as its content evidences. As Red Right Daily (RRD) informs:

One training slide reportedly classified the phrase “When I look at you, I don’t see color” as a racial microaggression because it allegedly “denies a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience.” Another example listed “My best friend is Black” as evidence of “denial of individual racism.”

Then came the now-infamous mosquito analogy.

The training video asks participants to imagine microaggressions not as “stupid comments” but as mosquito bites that accumulate over time. In one example, a white woman tells a Black woman she is “so well spoken” before transforming into a mosquito and biting her. Other examples include comments like “Where are you really from?” and “Your English is so good.”

Now, I’ve been told many times over the years that I’m well spoken. Would it be less true were I black? And were I, should I have taken offense at the innocuous comment? But it gets worse. RRD continues:

But the video escalates far beyond awkward social interactions.

“Beyond just being annoying, some mosquitoes carry truly threatening diseases that can mess up your life for years,” the narrator says before transitioning into references to policing.

“And other mosquitoes carry strains that can even kill you. He looked like he was up to trouble. Okay, I felt threatened.”

The implication is not subtle. Police officers and racially insensitive individuals are folded into the same metaphorical category as dangerous, disease-carrying insects capable of killing people.

Besides being obviously ridiculous, it’s hard identifying an aspect of this “training” that isn’t based on a falsehood or fallacy. The idea that police unfairly target blacks, for example, has been repeatedly refuted.

Just consider 2016 research by black Ivy League professor Roland Fryer. Much to his own surprise, he learned cops were less likely to shoot black and Hispanic suspects than white ones. Other studies have drawn the same conclusion. But, hey, can’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.

The DEI training video also shows a white person mosquito asking a black woman, “Can I touch your hair?” Now, I’ve heard this lament from “sensitivity training” sources before, as if it’s some pervasive phenomenon. I’ve never actually witnessed it occurring, though. So I’ll ask my fellow whites: Do any of you have a burning desire to feel a black person’s hair? Is this something I’ve missed?

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Illinois Just Adopted a Half-Baked Scheme to Tax Social Media

Government officials may not fully understand what social media is, but they damned well plan to do something about the ills it may or may not inflict on our society. They’ll happily start with extracting some money from the companies behind social media, though it may take a few tries, given politicians’ complete lack of understanding of the thing they want to tax. Illinois is a good example, where legislators just passed an attempt at a social media levy that runs afoul of its authors’ ignorance.

“A nearly $56 billion state spending plan is headed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk after the Democratic-controlled Illinois legislature approved it in the early-morning hours of another overtime spring session,” the Chicago Tribune‘s Dan Petrella noted last week. “The biggest source of new revenue is a new per-user tax on large social media companies.”

The governor’s signature is essentially guaranteed, since the budget proposal and social media tax originated in his office. Pritzker hopes to raise $200 million per year from the scheme. But the plan faces challenges, not least of which is that a similar tax passed by Chicago is tied up in court. Another and potentially more serious problem, as pointed out by Dan Levin of Straight Arrow News, is that “one of the elements that remains the most unclear is what exactly is being taxed? The language in the bill does not answer that question directly and is, frankly, confusing.”

As passed, the budget plan imposes a tax on social media companies based on “the average number of monthly users of the platform located in the State of Illinois.” Platforms with 100,000 to 500,000 “Illinois users” will have to pay $0.10 per user each month; platforms with 500,000 to 1 million “shall pay $40,000, plus $0.25 per month” per user; and platforms with over 1 million users will pay $165,000, plus $0.50 per user, each month on the number of users over 1 million. A provision adjusts the tax for inflation starting in 2028. Companies that fail or refuse to pay will be punished with a fee of “an amount equal to 100% of the unpaid fee and any penalties each month until the fee is paid.”

That’s an awful lot of numbers backed by dire threats. But it still doesn’t clarify how to tally up the bill.

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These Are The Six States Celebrating America 250 By Raising Your Gas Tax

The final countdown for America’s 250th birthday is on. Families will be planning road trips, parades, vacations, reunions, and cookouts to celebrate the greatest nation in history. But in six states, politicians have a different idea for the party: raise taxes.

Beginning July 1, drivers in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi are scheduled to see higher state gas taxes. In other words, as the country prepares to celebrate casting aside a tax-heavy king in favor of freedom, these states will use the occasion to fatten government coffers one gallon at a time.

The worst offenders will be no surprise. California, Washington and Illinois  — we’ll call them the Axis of Glut.

Their governors are often the first to fake outrage when gas prices rise. They blame oil companies. They blame “price gouging.” They blame world events. They blame everyone except the politicians who keep piling taxes, mandates, and regulations onto every gallon drivers buy.

Yet these same states already have some of the worst gas prices in the nation, some of the highest gas taxes in America, and now they are getting ready to raise those taxes again.

California’s gas tax is already the highest in the country and is scheduled to climb again on July 1, from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents per gallon, under the state’s annual inflation adjustment. The same report noted California’s average price for regular gasoline was nearly $6 per gallon in early June.

Illinois is no better. The state says its motor fuel tax will rise on July 1 because the law requires an annual inflation adjustment. Washington joined the club with a gas tax increase last year and then baked in automatic increases going forward. Starting July 1, 2026, the state’s fuel tax rises by 2% every year unless lawmakers change the law.

This is the dirty hustle behind inflation-indexed taxes. Politicians get to raise taxes without holding a press conference to admitting it. They pass the law once, then every year drivers get mugged by a formula.

As of June 8, the national average for regular gas was $4.164, down 38.2 cents in a single month. That is welcome relief for families, workers, small businesses and anyone trying to get through summer. But the national average would look even better if it were not being anchored down by tax-heavy states that treat drivers like a rolling ATM.

The problem is not limited to the six July 1 tax-hike states. Seven of the ten most expensive states for gas are run by Democratic governors. That is not a coincidence.

Taxes play a major role in the high-price reputation of many of these states. So do their regulatory regimes, special fuel rules, anti-energy policies and climate mandates that make fuel harder to produce, refine, transport and sell.

The result is predictable.

Families, small businesses, truckers, and farmers all pay more. Then the same politicians who helped drive up the cost pretend they are shocked by the bill.

That is not compassion. That is government gluttony.

Supporters claim the money goes to roads and infrastructure. But that excuse only goes so far. Every tax increase is sold as necessary. Yet somehow the burden always lands in the same place: on the people who drive to work, school, church, the grocery store or a summer vacation.

That is what makes the timing so perfect, and so insulting.

America’s 250th birthday should be a celebration of freedom, independence and the rejection of government overreach. The American Revolution was born from the idea that people should not be treated as endless revenue sources for rulers who never seem to have enough.

Nearly 250 years later, millions of drivers will pull into gas stations in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi and get a reminder that some politicians still have not learned the lesson.

The country is moving toward a better energy future: lower prices, more production, more reliability and less punishment for the people who keep America moving. But these six states are choosing a different path.

America 250 should remind us why this country was born: because free people eventually get tired of being treated like revenue.

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