This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An Oregon school district has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle with two educators who were punished, then fired, for speaking out against the injurious transgender agenda the district was adopting.
The trans ideology as promoted by Joe Biden and his administration for years includes giving chemicals to children to delay puberty, then doing mutilating body surgeries on the child.
Grants Pass, Ore., educators Katie Medart and Rachel Sager had launched a grassroots movement called "I Resolve" to speak out on a school gender identity education policy, and to offer alternatives that would allow teachers to continue teaching without submitting their religious beliefs to the social agenda.
And one that would respect the rights of parents to know what their children were being given in school.
They posted a video on their own website promoting their beliefs and efforts.
Subsequently, Grants Pass School District 7 officials suspended them, then fired them.
"Educators are free to express opinions on fundamental issues of public concern—like gender identity education policy—that implicate the freedoms of teachers, parents, and students," said Mathew Hoffman, of the ADF, which represented the teachers along with the Pacific Justice Institute.
"The Grants Pass School District is taking the right step by acknowledging that teachers don't give up their First Amendment rights when they set foot on school property. Public schools can't retaliate against speech simply because they disagree with what's said."
Sager and Medart have worked in the education field for many years, including at North Middle School in Grants Pass. Sager served as assistant principal, and Medart taught science there, the legal teams explained.
Their legal action charging the school violated their free speech, religious freedom and equal protection rights was settled with the district agreeing to pay $650,000 in damages and attorneys' fees.
And the school is issuing a public statement acknowledging that the teachers' wrongful termination fell short of its standards and responsibilities, providing positive letters of recommendation for both, and revising the district's policies and practices to comply with the First Amendment.
The case had been headed for trial, which the district avoided by reaching the settlement, after the usually far-left 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the teachers' favor by partly vacating a lower court's decision for the school, and ordering a trial to be held.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a result that could be filed under, "Well, Duh!" a new report says leftist, high-tax states like New York and New Jersey recently have lost the taxes on some two-thirds of a trillion dollars in residents' taxable incomes.
It's because residents are fleeing states where gender ideology, communist ideas and socialism is surging.
It is the Unleash Prosperity organization that reported this week that New York lost the ability to tax more than $517 billion in residents' incomes from 2013 to 2022. New Jersey, another enclave of leftists, lost $170.1 billion.
California lost the taxes on $370.1 million in residents' incomes and Illinois lost the taxes on $315.2 billion.
The four states alone, all dominated by Democrat politics and politicians, lost the ability to tax nearly $1.4 trillion in income, and that will continue into the future.
A report at Fox Business said, "The report covers cumulative gains and losses in each state's resident income, as a mover takes their income to another state for subsequent years – not just the first year after their move."
"New York and New Jersey combined have lost two-thirds of a trillion dollars in net income and purchasing power over the last decade due to moving vans departing these states," said Steve Moore, economist and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, in an interview.
"This has been one of the greatest wealth losses for one region in American history. New Jersey and New York are being bled to death by low tax states in the South," Moore said.
At the other end of the scale was Florida, where a gain of $1 trillion in taxable income was confirmed, as well as Texas, with saw a $290 billion increase.
The report said, "Based on tax filing data from the 2011-12 period through 2021-22, New York lost a net 1.757 million residents to domestic migration, while California lost 1.632 million, Illinois 881,012 and New Jersey 350,111 over that period."
Florida gained nearly 1.6 million and Texas 1.2 million.
The report, according to the New York Post, follows "an election where New Jersey chose to stay left and New York City opted to go farther left.
It explained, "It's not uncommon to look at the one-year losses and gains of income from internal migration such as taxpayers fleeing New York for Florida, but that fails to capture the long-lasting impact: The migrant's income is lost (or gained) year after year for the rest of his or her life."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
It's more important than climate change, schools, gun violence, health care and inflation.
More significant that the economy, taxes, immigration and abortion.
A higher priority than crime, morals and political divisions.
It's fighting President Donald Trump. It's holding onto Trump Derangement Syndrome.
That's the result of a polling done by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution of Democrat voters in the state.
A full 20% of the Democrats responding said "standing up to Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans" is their most important issue.
Only 17% cited inflation and 15% the economy and jobs.
Longtime Democrat focal points, climate change, abortion, immigration and such all were in single digits.
A report from Townhall said, "The poll found that among likely Georgia Democratic primary voters, 17 percent cited inflation and the cost of living as their top concerns. About 15 percent said the economy and jobs are number one. Yet, when it comes to 'standing up to Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans,' about 20 percent indicated this is their top issue."
GOP respondents in the same polling picked cost of living, 18%, as their highest priority, followed by economy 14%, immigration, 13%, crime 12%. Schools and taxes came in at the high single digit levels.
The report said, "So, despite higher prices at the grocery store and elsewhere (thanks Biden), Democratic voters in the Peach State believe the Orange Man What Is Bad™ is the most pressing issue facing them today. Yes, they are concerned about economic issues when you combine the numbers for inflation and jobs, but the fact that they are still fixated on the president shows how deeply Trump Derangement Syndrome runs among Democrats."
It continued "Imagine being more concerned about who sits in the White House than crime in your communities and the lack of quality education — issues that the president has little control over. These are issues that state and local governments are supposed to address. Yet, too many voters still think the president is the most important issue facing the country."
Social media included several opinions:
"In a new poll out of Georgia, Democrats say their 'single most important issue' is standing up to Abraham Lincoln and anti-slavery Republicans."
"I'll live under a bridge if it means standing up to Trump! That'll show him!"
"DNC convinced a certain demographic to put TDS over prosperity …and they're guzzlin it"."
Interesting to see abortion and climate change have suddenly become non-issues for liberals. Powerful, the TDS is within them."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Some comments have the power to simply bring the conversation to a halt.
Even when the conversation is on video, with a podcaster from the New York Times.
It is Greg Gutfield of Fox News that leveled the field when he was asked about Planned Parenthood getting mean letters.
"Well, I mean, they are killing children," he said, leaving the New York Times host with a stunned look on his face.
Commenters online gave Gutfield heart and thumbs-up emojis,
One abortion promoter oddly felt it important to add to the conversation about Planned Parenthood, one of the biggest abortion industry providers in the world: "Zero kids are killed at Planned Parenthood. Kids are born."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Stacie Laughton, a man who was elected to the New Hampshire legislature as a woman multiple times and resigned multiple times, now is facing a potentially lengthy prison sentence after pleading guilty to the sexual exploitation of children.
Laughton, 41, a Democrat, had been arrested and charged in 2023 in a case where authorities alleged his "former intimate partner," a daycare worker named Lindsay Groves, "admitted" taking sexually explicit photographs of children at the center where she worked and sending them to Laughton.
The report said the sentence for Laughton could be up to 30 years.
The Gateway Pundit said Laughton was charged with sexual exploitation of children, aiding and abetting.
The Department of Justice announced, "According to the charging documents, a preliminary forensic review of Groves' cellphone allegedly revealed over 10,000 text messages between Laughton and Groves that included discussion about, and transfer of, explicit photographs that Groves had taken of children while employed at Creative Minds daycare – including at least four sexually explicit images of children who appear to be approximately three to five years old, as well as explicit descriptions of sex with each other and others, including children."
Groves also is facing various charges.
The DOJ's charges continued, "The charge of sexual exploitation of children provides for a sentence of at least 15 years and up to 30 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case."
Laughton's guilty plea came during a court appearance in Boston.
Social media responses included:
"Shocking."
"Sick."
"Ick."
"I was reliably told this doesn't happen."
And, 'Psychos."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Subpoenas are being prepared – and sent out – in the Department of Justice's case to hold Barack Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, accountable.
He reportedly was one of the instigators of many of the lawfare cases against President Donald Trump.
Reports now confirm that the DOJ is preparing a set of grand jury subpoenas as part of an investigation, being run out of Florida, into Brennan, "and the probes by the CIA and FBI into Russian interference in the 2016 election."
Those claims included that Trump's campaign was coordinating with Russia, a claim that has proven to have been made up.
Jason Reding Quinones, the U.S. attorney in South Florida, is developing the evidence, along with senior staff at the DOJ in Washington.
The investigation was confirmed by the White House weeks ago after reports surfaced that Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the probe based on a criminal referral from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
A lawyer advising the DOJ has confirmed that the grand jury will consider "whether top Obama and Biden officials engaged in a massive conspiracy to violate Donald Trump's civil rights through the Russia investigations and the probes by special counsel Jack Smith," MSNBC reported.
Smith brought two lawfare cases against Trump, both of which have since died.
Brennan, now working for MSNBC, claims he's innocent.
He has separately been accused by the House Judiciary Committee of lying to Congress, an allegation he also disputes.
WND previously reported that the Steele dossier, that collection of wildly false claims about President Donald Trump that was funded by supporters for twice-failed Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and used by Democrats to undermine Trump's presidency, was coming back with a bite.
It was the CIA, through an officer, that drafted an annex containing a summary of the dossier, which actually came from a hired former British agent. And it was Brennan, then CIA chief, who decided to include information from the dossier in an "Intelligence Community Assessment." And it was Brennan who overruled senior CIA officers who opposed the inclusion of that material.
The claim is that Brennan "made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact" about the dossier when testifying under oath to the House Judiciary Committee.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chairman of the committee, said, "We write to refer significant evidence that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview before the Committee on the Judiciary on May 11, 2023. While testifying, Brennan made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the CIA.
"Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, a witness commits a crime if he 'knowingly and willfully . . . makes any materially false . . . statement or representation' with respect to 'any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee . . . of the Congress[.]' Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees do not provide truthful testimony. Making false statements before Congress is a crime that undermines the integrity of the Committee's constitutional duty to conduct oversight," the letter said.
Brennan's accused of "denying that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-2016 election Intelligence Community Assessment; and … testifying when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)."
This scenario was detailed on Jordan's letter:
On January 6, 2017, the CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency published a declassified version of an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) titled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. The ICA stated, among other things, that Russia 'developed a clear preference' for President Trump and 'aspired to help' him win the election. This conclusion—now known to be false—was based in part on the Steele dossier, which 'was referenced in the ICA main body text, and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex.' The Steele dossier was a series of reports containing baseless accusations concerning President Trump's ties to Russia compiled and delivered to the FBI in 2016 by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Subsequent investigations confirmed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Steele via the law firm Perkins Coie and opposition research firm Fusion GPS to provide derogatory information about Trump's purported ties to Russia, which resulted in the discredited dossier. In July 2025, the Trump Administration declassified numerous documents showing that the ICA's main findings were false and that the Obama Administration knowingly fabricated the findings for the purpose of undermining the Trump Administration.
Further, evidence now confirms "Brennan falsely testified to the Committee. During a transcribed interview on May 11, 2023, Brennan stated that 'the CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier.'"
Brennan's claims, the letter charged, "cannot be reconciled with the facts."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Two prominent Republican U.S. senators have come out in favor of killing the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to "end debate" on a bill – like the one Democrats have rejected to reopen the federal government.
President Trump has strongly urged the chambers Republicans to make the rule change, but Majority Leader John Thune says the GOP doesn't have the votes required to do so.
Both Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., spoke out Wednesday in favor of ending the filibuster.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won the race for governor in Virginia, easily defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
With just 35% of the total counted, Fox News projected Spanberger as the victor, collecting 55.3% of the vote, compared to 44.5% for Earle-Sears.
"Thank you for your work, thank you to the tireless volunteers who believed in me," Spanberger told supporters in the wake of her victory. "We won this race because of you."
Leftist influencer Harry Sisson reacted to the red state flipping to blue by saying: "This is a HUGE victory for Virginia and the entire country. Trump and MAGA lose again."
Conservative journalist Nick Sortor noted: "This is NOT a shocking result, as the Republicans had a weak candidate, and federal employees terminated by DOGE – many of which live in VA – are upset. Keep fighting!"
The Republican Earle-Sears previously said in 2022 that she "could not support" Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which Trump eventually won.
"We have a clear mission, and it is time to move on," she told Neil Cavuto of Fox Business.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A New Mexico woman's testimony about how she's been getting food-stamp benefits from American taxpayers has gone online.
A commentary as Twitchy explained, "Democrats are doing what they ALWAYS do, they are bringing out the sob stories about how Republicans will push grandma over a cliff or some other happy horse manure. This time, though, instead of healthcare, it's food stamps."
Social media commenters said, "Has she tried working?" and "THIRTY YEARS?" before one pointed out, "When I heard that she's been milking the taxpayers for THIRTY YEARS my heart went into my throat."
The commentary explained media interests are pushing "sob stories" as Democrats continue to prevent the federal government from opening up, so that programs like SNAP, to provide supplemental nutrition to the needy, is funded again.
Democrats have demanded Congress raid taxpayers' pockets to the tune of $1.5 trillion for public broadcasting propaganda efforts, health care for illegal aliens, and more, before they'll agree to a GOP plan that would have kept the government funding at the same levels for a couple of weeks.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a bold and unprecedented move, Florida has become the first state in the nation to take formal action against the use of foreign worker visas in its public university system. Gov. Ron DeSantis's new proclamation to "pull the plug"on H-1B visas in state institutions, sets a national example, one that could reshape how other states protect their own graduates and taxpayers.
"This is about putting Florida workers and American citizens first," DeSantis declared. "We can do it with our residents of Florida and with Americans."
It's a landmark moment, a state finally standing up to the federal government's decades-long neglect of American labor. However, the H-1B visa is just one part of a much larger system that feeds cheap foreign labor into American jobs.
The alphabet soup of visa programs
The H-1B visa is the most widely known program, allowing companies to hire foreign workers for "specialty occupations" like technology, engineering and business. Legally, employers are supposed to use it only when they cannot find qualified U.S. workers, but in practice, the system has been massively abused to cut labor costs, replacing Americans with cheaper foreign labor.
But the H-1B is just the visible tip of a much deeper structure of foreign visa pipelines. Another is the F-1 student visa, which allows foreign nationals to study in the United States. After graduation, those students can remain in America and work through programs called Optional Practical Training (OPT) and STEM-OPT (for science, technology, engineering and math fields).
OPT is billed as "hands-on training," but in reality it functions as a government-approved work program that lets international students hold real jobs for up to one year after graduation – or three years under the STEM-OPT extension. Employers don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes for these workers, which means they are much cheaper to hire than Americans. In other words, the classroom has become the cheapest recruiting channel in America.
Universities feed the supply, employers feed the demand
The F-1 student visa and its work-authorization offshoots, OPT and STEM-OPT, have become universities' primary gateway into this system. Once marketed as "cultural exchange," these programs now function as revenue engines that allow schools fill classrooms with full-pay international students while giving corporations access to a never-ending pool of low-cost labor.
Each foreign student represents tens of thousands in tuition dollars for universities as well as a tax-free employee for participating companies. Under OPT, neither side pays payroll taxes, saving employers roughly 8% per hire while sidelining American graduates who must compete against subsidized foreign labor on their own soil.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' FY 2024 H-1B Characteristics Report, more than half of all new H-1B approvals were changes of status for people already inside the United States and 71% of those came directly from F-1 or F-2 student visas.
In plain terms, most so-called "new" H-1B workers aren't being imported from abroad at all; they're former international students who never left. The result is a closed-loop system in which universities import students, employers convert them to workers and the federal government keeps the pipeline open – all while Americans are told there's a "shortage" of talent.
Florida's universities show exactly how these visa pipelines operate in real life.
The University of Florida case study: When 'education' becomes cheap labor
The University of Florida is a case study of how this system operates. In 2024, UF ranked #40 in the nation for international student enrollment with 7,353 F-1 visa holders, according to federal data.
The same year, UF ranked #37 among the Top 200 Employers for OPT and STEM-OPT students, hiring 640 foreign students on OPT and STEM OPT extensions and ranked #43 among the top 100 campuses with F-1 foreign students employed on OPT with 1,675 students working in U.S. jobs through the program.
By comparison, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services records show UF filed just 252 petitions for H-1B visas that year. That means most of the university's foreign labor did not come from overseas hiring. Instead, most of the university's foreign labor came from international students already in Florida, who moved seamlessly from classroom to workplace under the F-1 and OPT programs, bypassing American job-seekers entirely.
A new model for protecting American workers
Florida's action follows on the heels of a major federal reform by President Donald J. Trump, who is once again taking on America's broken visa system. On Sept. 19, Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation on the Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, which imposes new limits on foreign-worker entry under H-1B and other categories.
The proclamation, effective Sept. 21, raised the cost of H-1B petitions by introducing a $100,000 application fee, restricting entry for low-wage positions and granting the federal government greater authority to deny visas that do not serve the national interest. The move aligns with Trump's continuing "America First" labor policy, aimed at reducing corporate reliance on foreign labor and prioritizing American workers.
The state of Florida is the first-in-the-nation to strike against this cycle. By targeting H-1B visas in public universities, Florida has exposed how deeply the foreign-labor system has infiltrated the education sector.
But this is only step one. The F-1 student and OPT work programs are the universities' contribution to the same problem and they've quietly become the largest foreign-labor pipeline in the country. Ending abuse in these programs as well would mean millions of dollars in savings for taxpayers, new opportunities for American graduates and a shift away from the government-sanctioned system of undercutting U.S. labor.
Together, President Trump's federal crackdown and Florida's state-level enforcement create a new model of American labor protection, one that holds universities, employers and the federal government itself accountable for using visa programs in ways that undermine American workers.
Why reform can't stop with H-1B or OPT
For decades, universities and corporations have profited from a revolving door of student and worker visas, turning America's immigration system into an endless conveyor belt of cheap foreign labor. Now, for the first time in years, with federal and state governments finally aligned, that door is beginning to close.
The U.S. visa system has evolved into a sprawling web of programs that reach far beyond H-1B and OPT. Visas such as L-1 (intra-company transfers), H-4 EAD (spousal work permits), J-1 (trainee exchanges) and even investor visas have been quietly repurposed to serve the same purpose, giving employers a steady flow of lower-cost foreign labor at the direct expense of American workers.
If reform stops at H-1B, the system will simply shift to another category. If it stops at OPT, universities will invent new loopholes to keep the profits flowing. The problem is not a single visa program; it is the pipeline itself and the perverse incentives that reward institutions for bypassing U.S. citizens in favor of cheaper foreign alternatives.
America's future wellbeing depends on ending this revolving door of imported labor, student conversion and corporate offshoring once and for all. Every loophole, from F-1 to H-1B to L-1, erodes the promise of equal opportunity for the men and women who built this nation. Florida has proven that real leadership does not wait for permission and President Trump has shown that courage in Washington can still rewrite the rules for the working class.
But this fight cannot end with one state or one proclamation. It must extend to every program, every visa category, every offshore pipeline and every institution that profits from putting foreign workers and foreign interests ahead of Americans. Only when the entire system is dismantled, rebuilt and held accountable will the United States return to what it was always meant to be, a nation that rewards its own citizens first, values honest work and defends the American Dream without compromise.