Fired Ontario teachers return to labour board over union’s refusal to defend religious freedoms

Two Ontario teachers fired after refusing to “celebrate and affirm” LGBTQ-related school programming are back before the Ontario Labour Relations Board this week, arguing their union failed to defend their constitutional rights.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms says lawyers funded by the organization appeared Thursday on behalf of Matt and Nicole Alexander in their ongoing case against the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

According to the Justice Centre, the Alexanders were terminated by the Renfrew County District School Board in October 2023 after declining to participate in school activities they say conflicted with their sincerely held Christian beliefs regarding sexuality and gender identity.

The couple alleges their union failed in its legal “duty of fair representation” by refusing to properly defend their Charter-protected freedoms of religion and expression.

In a statement released ahead of the hearing, the Justice Centre said the case raises broader questions about whether public sector employees can face professional consequences for declining to endorse ideological positions that conflict with their faith.

Lawyers representing the Alexanders argue the issue is not whether schools can support LGBTQ students, but whether teachers can be compelled to actively affirm beliefs that violate their religious convictions.

The hearing before the Ontario Labour Relations Board is expected to focus on whether the teachers’ union adequately represented the couple during the disciplinary and termination process.

The JCCF says the Alexanders are seeking accountability from the union and recognition that religious Canadians do not surrender their Charter rights when working in public education.

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The Steyer Smear

Billionaire Tom Steyer used his money to attack a lone climate researcher.

Roger Pielke Jr.’s research on climate and disaster policy wins awards and is cited by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“My views are entirely mainstream,” says Pielke. “My work is cited by all three working groups of the IPCC. There’s nothing contrarian.”

Both Steyer and Pielke agree that “greenhouse gases warm the climate,” but Pielke’s sin was saying, “it’s not the apocalypse.”

Because of that, “the Center for American Progress decided to make me a target,” he says.

The center is a lefty group that pushes climate hysteria, running articles claiming, “Climate change is fueling more deadly and destructive floods,” “Extreme weather is only intensifying,” etc.

Anyone who disagrees is labeled a “climate denier.”

Steyer, now running for governor of California, gave the center enough money to run hit piece after hit piece that describes Pielke’s work as “fantastical falsehoods,” and calls him a “disinformer” who “ignores the data on climate science.”

Pielke didn’t know who funded the smears until WikiLeaks revealed an email to Steyer from ThinkProgress’s editor: “Thanks for your support of this work … it’s fair to say, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change.”

Think about that.

“Progressive” activists are proud to stop a researcher from writing about what he knows.

Pielke describes his persecution in my new video.

It began after Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie in which Gore claimed that temperature increases create stronger storms.

Pielke had the nerve to disagree.

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Canada’s Military Punished Whistleblowers Who Flagged Illegal COVID Speech Monitoring

The Canadian Armed Forces reprimanded soldiers who warned that an order to spy on citizens during COVID-19 could violate intelligence-gathering rules. The soldiers were right. The military punished them anyway.

Internal records and emails obtained by CBC News show that on March 11, 2020, a team called Joint Operational Effects (JOE) was ordered to create anonymous social media accounts and scour the internet for information about Canadians.

Under the direction of Col. Chris Henderson, the team produced dozens of reports between March 19 and June 5, tracking what the federal Conservative, NDP, and Bloc Québécois parties were saying about the pandemic.

The Canadian military was monitoring opposition political parties using anonymous accounts created specifically for surveillance.

At least two JOE team members pushed back. They emailed their chain of command, warning that creating anonymous accounts without authorization, while working from home on personal computers, could breach intelligence directives.

One soldier wrote to Maj. John Zwicewicz on March 12, 2020: “Given the sensitivity around social media and military use I have concerns about this.”

They added: “My concern is that by creating these accounts without following proper procedure would come close to, or cross the line set out in the policy.” Another asked to go into the office because they felt it “represented a serious risk” to do the work at home.

Zwicewicz claimed a legal adviser had approved the activities and ordered the group to “cease barrack room lawyering” and get back to work. The team was formally reprimanded more than a week after raising concerns. A source told CBC News that within months, some members quit or were medically released.

The people who raised alarms about potentially illegal surveillance of Canadian citizens got punished. The people who ordered the surveillance kept their positions.

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Employee sues Google over ‘unfair’ dismissal linked to anti-Israel protest – Guardian

A former AI engineer at Google DeepMind has accused the US tech giant of unfairly dismissing him over protests against the company’s deals with Israel, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. The man described the decision to fire him as discriminatory and filed a claim with a British employment tribunal.

Google’s ties with the Israeli government, including a $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract signed jointly with Amazon, have repeatedly sparked employee protests. In 2024 alone, the company fired dozens of dissenting staff members.

According to the engineer, he was called into a meeting with a manager that led to his dismissal after distributing flyers around DeepMind’s London office reading: “Google provides military AI to forces committing genocide” and “Is your paycheck worth this?” He also reportedly sent emails to his colleagues and called on them to unionize.

The former employee, who is of Palestinian origin, alleged in his lawsuit that Google discriminated against his belief that no one should be complicit in war crimes and claimed he was acting as a whistleblower, according to The Guardian. The US tech giant insisted that the employee’s version of events “does not accurately reflect the facts” and said that he had resigned.

In October, several media outlets reported that the 2021 agreement Google and Amazon signed with Israel barred the companies from restricting West Jerusalem’s access to their services even in cases it violated their terms of use. The deal also reportedly included clauses explicitly preventing the two tech giants from breaking ties with Israel under pressure from employees, shareholders and activists.

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California takes girl after parents oppose ‘gender transition,’ moves to put her up for adoption

California seized a Christian woman’s teenage daughter for opposing her “gender transition,” and now the state is moving to put the girl up for adoption.

Alexandra Lyashchenko, an Orthodox Christian and legal Ukrainian immigrant, lost custody of her then-15-year-old daughter in 2024 after rejecting her “sudden desire to transition.”

Lyashchenko told NTD that California is “deciding that my daughter is going to be adopted out.”   

Her family was “forced out of California” and is now “hiding in Florida” because California also wants her younger son, she added.

The far-left state has legally separated the girl and her parents, according to Lyashchenko.

She also said that she believes that her daughter was sexually assaulted in the foster system, noting that the girl was housed with boys due to her supposed “gender identity.”

Lyashchenko has accused Dr. Michelle Sager, the director of psychiatry at Children’s Legacy Center in Redding, California, of indoctrinating her daughter. She told NTD that she believes that her daughter’s school “secretly indoctrinated” her as well.

Lyashchenko said that her daughter also used the online platform Discord, which hosts radical pro-LGBT servers and where the girl looked into “online psychology.” The mother said that she suspects that Sager led her daughter to a “particular LGBT server” on Discord.

The girl eventually asked for consent to undergo testosterone, which her parents refused.

Testosterone and other transgender hormones are linked to serious and even life-threatening side effects, including cancer, stroke, and sterilization.

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Rep. Chip Roy Files Bill to BAN Chinese Communists and Radical Islamists from Buying American Homes

Rep. Chip Roy has introduced new legislation to stop Chinese Communist Party members, radical Islamists, and other designated foreign adversaries from purchasing homes and real estate in the United States.

In an announcement on Tuesday, Roy declared that American property should belong to American citizens, not to geopolitical foes who seek to undermine the country from within.

The bill would explicitly prohibit individuals affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, Islamist groups, or other designated adversaries from acquiring residential property.

“American homes belong to American families — not the Chinese Communist Party, foreign Islamists, or our geopolitical foes,” Roy told the Daily Caller. “While Americans struggle to afford housing, hostile regimes are buying up our land and neighborhoods.”

“This bill slams the door on foreign adversaries owning American housing and forces them to sell what they already control,” Roy added. “We’re putting America’s homes back in American hands.”

Housing affordability is a top issue for American families struggling with high prices and limited inventory, while foreign entities, especially from China, continue to snap up homes and farmland in strategic locations.

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California Immigration Judge Sues Trump DOJ; Claims She Was Fired for Being a Registered Democrat Woman Over 40

A California immigration judge has filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Justice, alleging she was terminated because she is a registered Democrat, a woman over 40, fluent in Spanish, and had ties to immigrant-rights groups.

Kyra Lilien had been in the San Francisco Immigration Court since 2023, before transferring to the Concord Immigration Court in 2024.

Last July, Lilien was notified that her two-year probationary period would not be converted to a permanent appointment.

The 14-page lawsuit, filed this week, names the DOJ and Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche as defendants.

Lilien claims she met or exceeded all performance standards and received the highest possible ratings in her probationary reports for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

According to TRAC Immigration data, she denied just 34% of asylum claims brought before her.

Despite this, she alleges her removal violated her civil and First Amendment rights.

Lilien’s attorney, Kevin Owen of Gilbert Employment Law in Maryland, told local station KTVU that Lilien “didn’t fit their mold” and that the actions taken against her were “impermissible and unlawful.”

“She didn’t fit their mold,” Owen said. “And what they did to her was impermissible and unlawful.”

The suit claims that immigration judges who were terminated or not retained around the same time were overwhelmingly female and points to internal memos issued by then-acting EOIR Director Sirce Owen in early 2025.

Those memos criticized “extremist leftist organizations” involved in illegal alien advocacy and Biden-era hiring practices that promoted illegal immigration and DEI hires.

Lilien, KTVU reports, “used to be program director for Jewish Family and Community Services, which largely helps Afghan refugees settle in the United States, and was the immigration program director for Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland.”

The complaint also names nearly 30 other immigration judges from across the country who were similarly fired or not converted from probationary status, including 14 from the Concord and San Francisco courts.

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Leftist Mob Runs Trump Supporter Out of Concert: Crowd Erupts in Vulgar ‘F-ck Trump’ Chants Until They Flee in Viral Video

A Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat was mercilessly harassed and driven from an Ashnikko concert at Hard Rock Live in Orlando after the liberal crowd spotted him and unleashed a torrent of obscene anti-Trump chants.

The disturbing incident occurred Tuesday night during the performer’s “Smoochies Tour” stop at the venue.

A viral TikTok video captured the moment the crowd noticed the man’s red MAGA hat, immediately jeering and shouting him down before breaking into repeated chants of “F-CK DONALD TRUMP! F-CK DONALD TRUMP!”

The supporter, clearly caught off guard, covered his face and quickly left the venue as the mob continued its tirade.

The TikTok user who posted the clip, who uses the name @ahorrorborealis, captioned the video, “He got so embarrassed he covered his face and left! Like literally WHO told you you could be HERE?!”

The video has since exploded online, with many on the left celebrating the public shaming of a conservative simply for wearing political apparel to a concert.

Reddit’s r/PublicFreakout thread was filled with mocking comments speculating the man was either “delusional” about Trump support or trying to provoke a fight.

Ashnikko announced that she is “queer,” “gender-fluid,” and uses she/they pronouns after facing backlash for “fetishizing” transgender people.

The Hollywood Mask reports, “In May 2021, Ashnikko came out as pansexual on Twitter while she was being criticized for fetishizing transgender people because of her song.”

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Paris public prosecutor opens judicial investigation into Elon Musk and X

Paris’ public prosecutor has opened a judicial investigation into Elon Musk’s X social media platform, a new step in a probe over alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data, the prosecutor’s office said on May 7.

The latest legal development puts investigating judges in charge of the probe and follows tech billionaire Mr Musk’s failure to appear at an April 20 summons for questioning.

The public prosecutor is requesting that judges place X.AI Holdings Corp, X Corp and xAI, as well as Mr Musk and former X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino, under formal investigation.

This would be achieved by summoning them for that purpose, or, if they failed to appear, judges could issue a warrant which would be equivalent to putting them under formal investigation, the statement said.

Reuters could not immediately reach representatives for Mr Musk or X.

Mr Kami Haeri, a lawyer for X, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the US and Europe over Big Tech and free speech.

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Rapper M.I.A. Kicked Off Kid Cudi Tour for Telling Audience: ‘I Never Thought I Would be Canceled for Being a Brown Republican Voter’

Kid Cudi has kicked rapper M.I.A. from his Rebel Ragers Tour after the British-Sri Lankan artist was heavily booed during a performance in Dallas over the weekend for going on a political rant that included admitting she had “been canceled for being a brown Republican voter.”

The incident occurred at the Dos Equis Pavilion, where M.I.A., whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam, was opening for Kid Cudi.

According to videos from the show, M.I.A. told the crowd, “I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter.”

She then teased her song “Illegal,” saying, “Can’t do ‘Illegal’ ’cause some of you could be in the audience.”

When the crowd began booing, M.I.A. added, “All right, I’m illegal. Half of my team are not here because they didn’t get the visa, OK? I want you to know that. All right? So don’t listen to what the bots say on the internet, OK?”

Two days later, on Monday, Kid Cudi announced on Instagram that M.I.A. was off the tour.

In his statement to his 3.3 million followers, Cudi wrote:

TOUR UPDATE

M.I.A. is no longer on this tour. I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood. After the last couple shows, I’ve been flooded with messages from fans that were upset by her rants. This, to me, is very disappointing and I wont have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upset my fanbase. Thank you for understanding.”

M.I.A. has long been known for her outspoken political views, including fierce defenses of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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