Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 8/19

[SVPete]

Christian Mom Who Spoke Out Against Transgender Policies Blocked From Son’s Graduation: Lawsuit

https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/08/18/christian-mom-who-spoke-out-against-transgender-policies-blocked-from-sons-graduation-lawsuit/

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Christian mom is suing Portland Public Schools after officials barred her from her children’s elementary school for a year in alleged retaliation for criticizing its transgender policies.

“What the district said was, ‘Be quiet, or we will take your children away from you,’ essentially—at eight hours a day, nine months out of the year, you’re going to essentially take my children from me,” Allison Roberts, the mother, told the Daily Signal in an interview Friday.

Roberts has an elder child who graduated from Meriwether Lewis Elementary School more than a decade ago, and two younger children who both attended the school in the 2025-2026 school year. Yet she missed her son’s graduation from the school this year because police issued a trespass order against her based on what she alleges was a false principal report aimed at silencing her speech against transgender policies.

Roberts is suing Portland Public Schools; the district’s senior director of schools, Chandra Wilson-Cooper; and Lewis Elementary’s principal, Deanne Froehlich. She claims the defendants violated her First Amendment right to free speech by retaliating against her speech and discriminating against her based on her viewpoint, and violated her First Amendment right to free exercise of religion by imposing transgender ideology.
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On Feb. 5, while picking up her kids from school, Roberts spoke with another mother and her husband, according to the lawsuit. After Roberts revealed that she had voted for President Donald Trump, the husband reportedly shouted, “White people are disgusting!” Roberts told him that he was being racist and left the area.

The next morning, police served Roberts with a trespass order.

Froehlich, the principal, said the school was banning Roberts from campus for one year for “threatening and intimidating members of the school community.”

The order states that “during dismissal, a parent approached another parent and began engaging in racial harassment, intimidation, and threatening behavior.”

That the trespass order was created in 18 hours or less suggests that the previous day's incident was planned and staged, possibly with local police cooperation.

[SVPete]

A VA Woman Went to Get Her Eyebrows Done, but She Mentioned Being Jewish and All Hell Broke Loose

https://townhall.com/news/mattvespa/2026/08/17/a-va-woman-went-to-get-her-eyebrows-done-but-she-mentioned-being-jewish-and-all-hell-broke-loose-n2681322

There’s not much to say here, since the woman posted the full account of the encounter on Facebook. Then the video was uploaded. Jessica Watson just wanted to get her eyebrows done at a salon in Alexandria, Virginia. As is common at these establishments, a conversation started, but when she mentioned her Jewish heritage, the owner of the salon, an Afghan, decided to go full terrorist on her. Jessica got kicked out.

I’m nauseated even having to write this, but I won’t be quiet about it. I want my friends—Jewish and non-Jewish—to know what I experienced at a salon in Alexandria, Virginia, because I refuse to let antisemitism become normalized in our country.

I went to the salon yesterday to get my eyebrows done. The esthetician turned out to be Afghan. I was delighted, since I just finished writing a novel based on true stories that is partly set in Afghanistan. I told her about the amazing Afghans I interviewed for the book. We talked warmly about our shared love of Afghan poetry and food. Then she asked me to tell her more about the premise of my novel.

My story is about a Muslim Afghan refugee and the son of Jewish immigrants who forge an unlikely friendship in post-9/11 Alabama, only to find that their shared gift for languages draws them into America’s shadow war in Afghanistan. I joked about how I went down a rabbit hole studying Islam and Sufism to create the Muslim character, but that I at least had an easier time sketching the Jewish half-Israeli character, since I’m Jewish and half-Israeli myself.

The woman stopped short. Then, “Get out of my shop.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs. You need to leave immediately. And there is no such thing as Israel. It’s Palestine. A bunch of Jews from New York showed up a few years ago and stole the land from the Arabs.”

Sometimes, the eloquence of hatred and bigotry needs no further comment.

Note the Jewish woman's use of "normalized". I could be wrong, but isn't that Lib-speak? I would use "accepted" or "allowed to be acceptable".

[SVPete]

‘Pro-Criminal’ Dem Mayor Michelle Wu Threatens Property Owners Leasing to ICE.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2026/08/17/pro-criminal-dem-mayor-michelle-wu-threatens-property-owners-leasing-to-ice/

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu plans to expose property owners cooperating with ICE, prompting the agency to accuse the Democrat of using her office to intimidate private citizens.
PULSE POINTS

❓ WHAT HAPPENED: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D) announced plans to file public records requests to identify property owners leasing parking spaces to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This comes after ICE issued a request for 249 parking spaces in Boston for its operations, prompting Wu to voice opposition to any expansion of ICE activity in her so-called sanctuary city.

📺 DETAIL: Wu stated that while the city cannot legally block private property owners from leasing to ICE, her administration intends to contact those involved to discourage cooperation. Wu claimed ICE activities jeopardize public safety and accused the agency of conducting “unlawful and dangerous” operations.

Sounds like it's time for a surge of ICE arrests of illegals in Boston.

[SVPete]

USS John F. Kennedy Clears Acceptance Sea Trials, Moves Closer to the Fleet

https://wokespy.com/uss-john-f-kennedy-clears-acceptance-sea-trials-moves-closer-to-the-fleet/

The Navy’s newest Gerald R. Ford class nuclear powered aircraft carrier has completed acceptance sea trials, moving the massive warship another important step closer to its scheduled delivery in 2027.

USS John F. Kennedy concluded the testing period Saturday after departing Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia on Wednesday.

The successful trial gives the Navy and shipbuilder another major milestone after years of construction, testing, technical work, and schedule adjustments.
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Acceptance sea trials are among the final hurdles a vessel must clear before formally entering the Navy fleet.

They provide an opportunity to evaluate the ship at sea and confirm that critical equipment and systems meet the standards expected of an American aircraft carrier.

The builder's and the Navy's two sea trials apparently include certification of the arrestor and weapons elevator systems, which had serious teething problems on USS Gerald Ford.

USS Gerald R. Ford replaced the retired USS Enterprise, the USN's first nuclear-powered carrier. The new USS John F. Kennedy, apparently, will replace the soon to be retired, >50-year-old, USS Nimitz (the USN's second CVN).

[SVPete]

Progressives Really Struggling With the Idea the Right Got This Right

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/08/19/progressive-really-struggling-with-the-idea-the-media-might-cover-them-n3818154

At this point I'm genuinely surprised the argument over Jason Arday is still going, but it is. The latest angle, which both David and I wrote about yesterday, is that the media were to blame for his apparent suicide because they...did their jobs?

It could not be more clear that the problem, as they see it, is not that the media revealed a fabulist who was unfit for his high-profile job. The real problem is that he was one of them and the media aren't supposed to go this hard against one of them. The media ought to know that it's okay to destroy a fraud and liar on the right but when it comes to their side of the aisle, the media is supposed to dial it back. The failure to dial it back for Jason Arday is being treated as a sign of bad (racist) motives.

And that's how you get opinion pieces like this one from the Guardian arguing that the right is a bunch of monsters even though in this case they were clearly right about Jason Arday.
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To sum it up, the evil, racist right hounded the poor man to his grave. Now the awkward truth: They were right about him being a fraud.
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The monsters were right and their glee at being right was terrible to behold. And while it's good to demonize those foes of all that is good (the right), don't lump them in with the reporters who were saying exactly the same thing because, well, because the media is composed of fair-minded progressives.
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The underlying idea here, which I think is common on the left, is that the right should always be discounted because of their bad motives. Meanwhile, progressive journalists should always be credited for their virtuous motives even if they are repeating things the conservatives said first. Put another way, no conservative author can ever be credited for just speaking the truth and no left-wing journalist can be faulted for failing to do so until absolute forced by circumstances.

It really is maddening over time to be part of this never ending game of media Calvinball. Sure, the right said Joe Biden was slipping for years, but even when it turns out they were absolutely right almost no one will admit that or remember it for next time. No one wants to talk about why the rest of the media dropped the ball either. And no matter how many cycles of this game we go through, right up to Jason Arday, the Left never can credit the right for just speaking the truth.

Joe Biden ... Graham Plattner ... Hunter's laptop ... the Right is right early on, MSM leftists deny, months later reality forces MSM leftists to admit reality ... without admitting their partisanly wrong denial.