
Former Houston mayoral appointee rages at flooded Texas girls camp for being ‘white-only'
'I know I'm going to get cancelled for this, but Camp Mystic is a white-only girls' Christian camp. They don't even have a token Asian. They don't have a token Black person. It's an all-white, white-only conservative Christian camp,' Sade Perkins said in a widely condemned video on her private TikTok account.
'If you ain't white you ain't right, you ain't gettin' in, you ain't goin'. Period,' Perkins said — as the state's overall death toll from the devastating flooding soared, with the number of dead now at 80.
She then claimed no one would care if the victims were minorities.
'If this were a group of Hispanic girls out there, this would not be getting this type of coverage that they're getting, no one would give a f–k, and all these white people, the parents of these little girls would be saying things like 'they need to be deported, they shouldn't have been here in the first place' and yada yada yada,' Perkins said.
4 Sade Perkins, a former Houston mayoral appointee, spews hate about the 'white-only' girls camp devastated by Texas' flooding, critics say.
TikTok / @sades_world8
Perkins was appointed to the city's Food Insecurity Board by former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner in 2023.
Her term expired in January — and Houston Mayor John Whitmire said Sunday that he has no plans to reappoint her, particularly after her 'deeply inappropriate comments.'
4 Perkins also responds to comments on her video with even worse comments about the mass casualty flood.
TikTok / @sades_world8
In the first 2.5-minute video that Perkins posted after the flooding, she recorded the rolling homepage for Camp Mystic while ranting about its 'exclusionary' habits that fostered a 'whites-only enclave.'
The post quickly went viral as it drew massive criticism.
Perkins, seemingly energized by the hate she was receiving, punched back with another video.
'I get that white people are not used to people telling them and calling them out on their racism and telling them about their double standards and how you wouldn't give a damn about other children and how there's children in ICE detention right now who y'all don't give two f–ks about,' she ranted. 'There's no prayers going up for them, but we're supposed to stop the world and stop everything we're doing to go and hunt for these little missing white girls.'
4 Perkins revels in the hate she received online.
TikTok / @sades_world8
4 At least 80 people were killed during the Texas floods.
REUTERS
Perkins lamely added that she still hopes the missing campers are found.
Whitmire said her comments hold 'no place in a decent society.'
A counselor at the camp also is still missing, as are scores of others across the state.
Camp Mystic, which was set to celebrate its hundredth year, has many high-ranking alumnae from Texas' political elite, including daughters of multiple governors and former First Lady Laura Bush.

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Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Parents' group sues over BPS exam school admissions, alleging discrimination against white students
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Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Cook County Democrats hold off endorsement decision for county assessor, don't back Board of Review incumbent
Cook County Democrats punted Thursday on endorsing anyone for Cook County assessor, putting two-term incumbent Fritz Kaegi at risk of an open primary fight as he vies for a third term. The lack of an endorsement is the latest twist in the complex relationship between Kaegi and county Democrats. Eight years ago, Kaegi defeated incumbent Assessor and then-Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Berrios in the Democratic primary race for assessor. Kaegi went on to win the 2018 general election and was subsequently endorsed by the party four years ago. But during a closed-door executive session of party higher-ups Thursday at the IBEW Local 134 meeting hall in Bronzeville, Black members of a party committee united to oppose a recommendation that the full county party organization endorse Kaegi when it convenes Friday. Caucus members were split on which of Kaegi's two primary challengers to support. Several other committee members voted 'present' on a Kaegi endorsement recommendation, bringing him short of the threshold needed to win the endorsement of the countywide slating committee. Instead, the full party will vote on that endorsement Friday. The Kaegi drama highlighted the first day of the party's slating sessions. The Democratic Party's endorsement carries less heft than in decades past, but still gives lesser-known candidates a leg up, providing help with petition signing, campaigning, and inclusion on countywide mailers heading into the March 17, 2026 primary. Candidates at slating make a brief presentation and take questions from fellow committee members from the city's wards and suburban townships. During the first session day, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle — who now chairs the party — avoided a direct faceoff with potential challengers 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly and former state Sen. Rickey 'Hollywood' Hendon. Reilly hasn't formally announced a run against Preckwinkle for County Board president as he is also considering a mayoral run. But Reilly attended the event as the party committeeman for his downtown ward. He planned to appeal to fellow Democrats for an open primary, but told the Tribune he was not allowed to speak during the early morning presentations or during a closed session because he was not a member of the countywide slating committee. Hendon said he was not allowed to present because he did not submit his resume early enough. That left Preckwinkle as the sole candidate and resulted in her winning the committee's endorsement. That decision must also be affirmed Friday. First elected board president in 2010, Preckwinkle, 78, sought to tamp down rumors she planned to end what would be her fifth term early and hand over the reins to a political ally. 'I look forward to being reelected and I will serve the entire term,' she pledged. During a brief presentation, she said she would defend the county's ordinance welcoming immigrants and fight for continued access to health care for county residents despite federal attacks on immigrant issues and health care funding. She won praise from allies such as state Sen. Rob Martwick, who credited Preckwinkle for her work in stabilizing the county's pensions and budget. 'All these issues we care about don't matter if we can't afford to pay for them,' he said. During his pitch to party leaders, Kaegi of Oak Park highlighted his advocacy for creating new incentives for affordable housing construction, his work to automatically renew a program that freezes property values for some seniors, and his 'circuit breaker' legislation designed to help low-income homeowners pay for big hikes in their property tax bills. 'When we work together, we can solve big problems,' he told committee members. 'Let's keep going.' Kaegi's personal wealth and ability to self-fund his candidacy represent a major challenge for his opponents, who are largely political unknowns. Kaegi ended the most recent quarter with $1.3 million in the bank. Since 2017, he has loaned himself roughly $5.4 million, including $750,000 earlier this year, according to the State Board of Elections. Any eventual challenger, however, is likely to attract contributions from the business community and commercial real estate interests, both of which have disagreed with Kaegi's methods in running the office. Two Democratic challengers who work at the Cook County Board of Review — which hears appeals to Kaegi's assessments — are so far trailing behind on fundraising and have yet to rally enough committeemen to win an endorsement, either. Timnetra Burruss, the Board of Review's main administrator, ended the quarter with $51,610 on hand, according to campaign records, $50,000 of which came from state Sen. Napoleon Harris, who represents voter-heavy Thornton Township. Dana Pointer, who serves as an outreach coordinator for Board of Review commissioner and constant Kaegi critic Larry Rogers, received a $50,000 loan from Rogers. Burruss, who previously worked for Rogers, told committee members she entered the race after becoming 'frustrated' by rising assessments that did not mirror market values, plus 'thousands upon thousands of errors and general disregard about impact on property owners.' She said she would support creating a new exemption for historically disinvested communities in federal opportunity zones and make it easier for property owners to sign up for other exemptions. Pointer blasted Kaegi's 'mismanagement and lack of transparency,' which she said contributed to this year's late property tax bills, as well as property assessment adjustments Kaegi's office made following the COVID-19 pandemic. The 'apartment loophole' Kaegi's office closed last year, which hiked assessments for certain business properties, wiped out 'some families' generational wealth,' she added. His 'continued use of propaganda to pit homeowners against business owners needs to stop,' Pointer said. Patrick Hynes, the current Lyons Township assessor, said he had 'fought tenaciously for fairness' in his corner of the suburbs after auditing current records and finding several properties missing from the property tax rolls. The Tribune and the Illinois Answers Project detailed some of those problems last year, finding the assessor's office had missed at least $444 million of assessed property value by misclassifying and undervaluing properties, primarily due to its failure to account for new construction and significant property improvements. 'I restored fairness and I will do the same for Cook County,' Hynes said, pledging to begin capturing more data to better reflect homes' true value. First-term Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele also failed to earn the party's endorsement as she runs for a second term. County Democrats opted not to back any candidates in her race for one of the seats on the three-member panel. County Democrats did endorse the other Board of Review commissioner running next year, George Cardenas. Steele, who until recently served on Lake County, Indiana's, property tax appeals board and runs a property valuation consulting business with government clients in Indiana, has been dogged by several controversies in recent months. On Monday, the county's inspector general cited an unnamed Board of Review commissioner for not properly disclosing outside work. The details of the case match Steele, whose annual economic reports did not disclose details about government contracts through her private business, the Leonor Group. Her annual economic interest statements mentioned she owned the firm but not which units of government she worked for, a failing the IG's office said equated to a breach of her fiduciary duty to the county. She's also been fined by the county's ethics board, and she's still fighting a DUI charge from last year. Steele has called the ethics fines 'unfair.' In a statement to the Tribune, she said she was 'singled out' for releasing confidential information about the valuation battle for the Arlington Heights property now owned by the Chicago Bears, arguing it was 'the public's right to know' about information that was already discussed aloud in a public hearing. Steele, who raised just $26,375 last quarter and has only $27,000 on hand in her campaign fund, had publicly considered running against Kaegi for assessor. But last week she dropped out of the race and said she wanted to focus on her board work. One of her opponents, Liz Nicholson, has a background in public relations, fundraising and advising nonprofits. Northfield Township Trustee Vincent Pace, who has worked in real estate investment and finance, also presented to the Democrats seeking the endorsement. Steele gave a brief presentation Thursday, but no committee members asked questions — a troubling sign given that the question period typically features supporters singing the praises of their candidates. No one presented to challenge incumbents Maria Pappas for another term as county treasurer, Monica Gordon for county clerk or Tom Dart for sheriff. All received the committee's recommendations for endorsement. Clad in a pink sweater that read 'All this and brains too,' Pappas highlighted successful efforts to sign up taxpayers for exemptions they were owed and her office's studies of major property tax issues. 'I don't think anybody's running against me, but if they are, I love a good fight,' she said. The party reconvenes Friday morning to hear from statewide candidates, including for U.S. Senate and comptroller, an opening that arose following incumbent Susana Mendoza's announcement that she would not run for reelection. A new name surfaced for the comptroller's post Thursday: State Sen. Karina Villa, a Latina who was born and raised in West Chicago. A former vice president of the local school board who has a master's degree in social work from Aurora University, Villa was elected to the Illinois House in 2018 and to the state Senate two years later. Villa is scheduled to present her credentials for comptroller to slatemakers Friday, along with state Rep. Margaret Croke of Chicago and Lake County Treasurer Holly Kim.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
ICE Is Making an Example of California
In California, well before federal immigration agents reach their targets, their regular, brutal raids are sometimes augured by a video. 'They passed Ventura, entering Santa Barbara, 10am,' read the caption on an Instagram post the morning of Thursday, July 10. Shot through the windshield of a moving car on the freeway, it showed a line of vans, SUVs, and other large vehicles, the type often spotted at raids. 'Fucking caravan, you guys—fucking caravan,' a voice in the car added. The footage was reposted by two immigrant rights groups in Ventura County, 805 Immigrant Coalition and VC Defensa. Then it spread over social media. A few hours later, an ABC7 news chopper hovered over the scene as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on farms near Camarillo. It was late afternoon on the East Coast when I opened the news station's live feed on YouTube. Almost instantly, I felt sick. From high overhead, the chopper's camera zoomed in on ICE agents in an apparent standoff, their vehicles parked in dusty brown earth at the roadside, as if abandoned. Striding around casually while dressed for war, agents could be seen lining up farm workers. Some agents stood a few feet from a stretcher with a person lying on it. All told, the arrests a week ago may add up to the largest single roundup yet by this administration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 300 people were arrested in the raids on farms in Camarillo and Carpinteria. But the arrests did not target only workers. Additional federal agents, their faces covered with neck gaiters and reflective sunglasses, launched smoking canisters into the group of witnesses and community members gathered behind a length of flimsy yellow police tape drawn across the road. Stacks of water bottles appeared roadside, to drink and as an eye flush in case of tear gas. This was direct action more than protest; few, if any, signs could be seen. People were putting their bodies in ICE's way, a rolling vigil over hours. Periodically, different witnesses raised their phones aloft, pointing them at officers blocking the road. The whole thing was recorded from so many angles. At times, individuals stood motionless, inches from the front of the federal agents' vehicles. The live feed of the arrests and protests, almost completely silent except for an eerie mechanical buzz, went on for hours, too. It was numbing to watch until those moments when the scene seemed to mark itself for future inclusion in a documentary series or a civil rights case (or a news story). That quantity of footage may be too much to consume, especially on top of the myriad videos that demonstrators themselves shot and shared on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky. As available as all of this material was, a record right at our fingertips, the simple facts of the raid could get submerged. Breaking news stories euphemistically described an 'immigration enforcement action' and 'clashes'—a disingenuous term that suggests equal force on both sides—between protestors and federal agents. But the story is both clear and simple: Federal agents arrested workers at a large commercial farm near Camarillo, and federal agents also arrested the people who came out to defend the workers. Defending workers is something Californians have been doing in rising numbers for weeks now, ever since Trump's close advisor, Stephen Miller, and Trump's 'immigration czar,' Tom Homan, selected California residents as the people to be made an example of in their contemptible national crackdown. This week marked the fortieth day of ICE raids in California, during which an estimated 3,000 people have been arrested, and 2,000 National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines remain stationed in Los Angeles. In mid-June, Border Patrol released a video of its agents, also faceless and in full gear, making arrests in Los Angeles. The video, titled 'A Relentless Mission – LA Protests – U.S. Border Patrol,' underlines the extent to which these 'immigration enforcement actions' are deliberately choreographed displays of power, meant to suppress and shrink immigrant communities and political opposition alike. The raids are spectacles, designed for the rest of the country to applaud or fear, in which immigrants are scapegoated and dissenters are punished for the cameras: a cautionary action-horror movie playing out in real time. In addition to the Border Patrol, National Guard and police blockaded access to the farms, reported Mel Buer, an independent journalist in Los Angeles who has been covering the response to ICE raids. 'But people,' she wrote, 'came anyway.' Arriving as the sun set, Buer could hear them chanting well before she reached them. She saw more than 100 demonstrators facing down 'a thick line of Border Patrol agents and National Guard kitted out in riot gear–helmets, gas masks, and shields.' Angelmarie Taylor, a student at California State University Channel Islands and part of 805 Immigrant Coalition, was one of those demonstrators. 'We are average community members who have been volunteering our time to patrol our own streets to keep each other safe from these ICE agents,' Taylor said on Democracy Now on Friday. While the federal agents harmed the demonstrators and violated their rights, she said, those agents used 'even more intense violence' on the farmworkers themselves. Also among the witnesses and protesters was Jonathan Caravello, a professor at California State University, whom Taylor said had been targeted for speaking out in defense of the immigrant community. After he was arrested on Thursday, Caravello vanished for days. The California Faculty Association, Caravello's union, condemned his 'abduction and disappearance,' and said they were still working to locate him. 'The Trump Administration's barbaric attacks on peaceful observers aim to force people of good conscience into silence and complicity while Trump tears our nation apart,' said Arnulfo De La Cruz, President of SEIU Local 2015 and Executive Board Member of SEIU California. CFA and SEIU California jointly called for the release of all the people who were taken by immigration agents in the raid on Thursday and for 'a stop to all immigration raids, immediately.' Late Monday afternoon, Caravello was released from federal detention. Unusually, federal prosecutors did not announce the charges against him until Sunday, and when they did, it was in a post on X by Bill Essayli, the interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. The same office is pursuing federal charges against an activist who brought face shields to distribute at a protest, to protect people from chemical agents used by police. In the Department of Justice, such overreach is now par for the course: The day after Caravello was released, federal prosecutors in Spokane, Washington, charged a group of protestors, including the former city council president, for 'conspiracy to impede or injure officers.' Most of those who were charged in Spokane had merely blocked a bus carrying people whom ICE had detained, a type of intervention we are seeing now across U.S. cities. 'This politically motivated action is a perversion of our justice system,' said Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown. In bringing such specious prosecutions, the Trump administration is hunting for ways to criminalize people who oppose the ICE raids, including those engaging in nonviolent self-defense. Protestors are not a monolith. In opposing the raids, they offer a range of arguments and tactics. Some defend the contributions of immigrant workers. Some do practical work like documenting ICE raids. But the point of these raids is to demonstrate that no one, no matter what they contribute to the community, will be spared arrest. In fact, some, including citizens and elected officials, were targeted precisely for their contributions. Ultimately, neither 'good' immigrants nor 'good' protestors can use their goodness as a shield from ICE's violence. Trump's campaign of 'mass deportations' was never just about carrying out more immigration raids. We knew this campaign would reach far beyond those immigrants who are living in the country without authorization—not just because the number of people he said would be deported exceeds the numbers of undocumented, but because his plans also involve making more and more people deportable. Sure enough, some of the workers who were detained in the July 10 raids were citizens, the United Farm Workers said in a statement. George Restes, a disabled veteran and American citizen, was arrested and held for three days without a phone call, he said, and without treatment after agents pepper sprayed him. These detentions may have been aimed at managing perceptions of the raid. The UFW pointed out that many of those detained reported being released only 'after they were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones.' ICE's project goes well beyond the violent scenes of the raids: It has transformed everyday life in California. Family pets are filling Southern California shelters, given up by owners who have been forced to leave the United States. At a Glendale hospital, ICE agents camped out for days, scaring people away from seeking care; National Nurses United shared Know Your Rights guides for all health care workers. Countless children are left waiting for parents to return, like 16-year-old Alexa, whose pregnant mother was arrested Thursday, forcing Alexa to become the caretaker for her younger siblings until their mother returns. Other family members of missing workers, including their young children, went to the farm the next day, hoping to be reunited. The family of Jaime Alanís, one of the workers gravely injured in the chaotic raid, reunited with him in the hospital, where he died on Saturday. His surviving family members have said that he will be brought to Huajumbaro, Michoacán, his hometown: 'His wife and daughter are waiting for him.' People have long asked themselves what they would do when faced with something like these mass roundups and detentions—an injustice of historic proportions. Until recently, this question may have seemed to be asking you to imagine yourself into the past. But then the Trump administration opened an American concentration camp in the Everglades. What would you do? You would do what you're doing right now. Now it is becoming routine in California for armed agents, without warning or cause, to arrest and detain and deport the people who have, for years, been vilified by an unpopular regime leader. That's why any resistance to these raids is being met with such fierce repression and reprisal. Seeing the evidence of the roundups in front of us doesn't necessarily lead people to do anything differently. But seeing other people push back sometimes does. Solve the daily Crossword