Student suspended for saying 'illegal aliens' in class gets cash, apology from school
The settlement was approved on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, following a year-long legal battle after a 16-year-old student and his parents sued Davidson County Schools for the mischaracterization of racial bias and violation of the student's First Amendment rights.
"Although the parties initially moved to seal the revised settlement agreement, they have since withdrawn any request to seal any version of their settlement," Judge Thomas Schroeder stated in his Tuesday order.
The 16-year-old student was suspended in April of last year after using the term "illegal aliens" during an English class discussion.
"Do you mean space aliens or illegal aliens who need green cards?" the student asked.
The student was later suspended for three days and marks denoting "racially insensitive behavior" were added to his permanent record.
The story of Christian McGhee caught the eyes of Donald Trump, who wrote the student a personal recommendation letter as he seeks an athletic scholarship in the years ahead, according to the Liberty Justice Center, which helped with the litigation.
In addition to the public apology required in the settlement, McGhee's school must correct his permanent record so it no longer denotes racial insensitivity and acknowledge "the inappropriate response to this matter by a former member." However, per Schroeder's order, the settlement does not amount to an admission of liability or wrongdoing.
"As the Supreme Court has often reminded us in its First Amendment jurisprudence, students do not shed their free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate. That it took a federal lawsuit and ultimately a court-approved settlement (including an apology to Christian, and a payment of $20,000) is indicative of how far lost many educators have become in the wake of the previous administration's identity politics obsession," Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at conservative nonprofit Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.
"No more," Perry continued. "The mission of American education is rooted in the viewpoint diversity of a pluralistic society. Our hope is that after Christian's ordeal, schools will think twice about venturing into unconstitutional waters and trampling on the free speech rights of their students."
According to the Liberty Justice Center, McGhee's mother spoke up in defense of her son after the incident happened, including at school board meetings, which led to an alleged attempt to smear her. The center claimed that two board members sent messages to county leaders and residents with the mother's arrest record and encouraged people to post it on social media.
Neither Davidson County Schools, nor the district's board, responded to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
9 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump calls for Intel CEO's resignation
President Trump on Thursday called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, arguing he is 'highly conflicted.' 'The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,' he wrote on Truth Social. 'There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!' While he offered few details about his call for Tan to step aside, Trump's post comes after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote to the semiconductor firm on Tuesday about concerns with the CEO's ties to China. Reuters reported earlier this year that the Intel executive had investments in hundreds of Chinese tech firms, at least eight of which have ties to the Chinese military. Cotton also voiced concerns Tuesday about his previous role as CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which pleaded guilty and paid $140 million last month for violating export controls by selling chip design technology to a Chinese military university. 'Intel is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars and to comply with applicable security regulations,' the Arkansas senator wrote, underscoring the nearly $8 billion that Intel received as part of the CHIPS and Science Act. 'Mr. Tan's associations raise questions about Intel's ability to fulfill these obligations,' he added. Intel's stock dropped 2 percent in after-hours trading following Trump's call for Tan to resign.
The Hill
9 minutes ago
- The Hill
Mysterious ‘orbs' demand scientific study
President Trump interviewed Air Force pilots who were utterly baffled by the objects. They seem to chase Navy fighter jets and have been captured on radar and video. The Pentagon's UFO analysis office is perplexed by them. What is behind the enigmatic 'orbs' reported by countless credible observers since at least World War II? The scientific community must abandon the nearly century-long anti-scientific stigma surrounding UFOs — which the Pentagon likes to call ' unidentified anomalous phenomena ' — and investigate this enduring mystery. This is especially so since the Pentagon now admits openly that it is baffled by ' several dozen ' ' true anomalies ' and ' really peculiar ' UFO incidents, including some involving unknown 'orbs.' On July 24, the Senate confirmed former Air Force fighter pilot Matthew Lohmeier as the under secretary of the Air Force, the department's second-highest civilian position. While in high school, Lohmeier had a remarkable UFO encounter. According to Lohmeier, a 'ball of light' descended upon him and a friend as they were in the wilderness outside of Tucson, Ariz. The object came so close that Lohmeier recalls that 'it seemed to be buzzing with life, but it wasn't man-made.' 'It was very well-organized, very spherical,' Lohmeier said, 'and it seemed to be very conscious of the two of us that were sitting there in the Arizona mountains, like it was observing us … there was a level of interest from the orb to us.' Frightened, the two ran to their car. The object 'zipped up and disappeared in the sky.' Lohmeier is not the only Air Force fighter pilot left baffled by such an object. In a September appearance on Fox News, Trump stated that he interviewed several Air Force pilots who encountered spherical objects performing extraordinary maneuvers. According to Trump, the pilots told him, 'All I know, sir, there was a round object that was going four times faster than my F-22.' 'Four or five guys [that] I've interviewed, solid people, great pilots for the U.S. Air Force,' Trump continued, have 'seen things that they cannot explain, so there's something.' Trump also told podcaster Joe Rogan that the pilots observed objects 'like a round ball, but it wasn't a comet or a meteor.' Timothy Phillips, the former deputy director of the Department of Defense's UFO analysis office, stated in June that the Pentagon is perplexed by 'fiery orbs.' Such phenomena have been reported since at least World War II. 'Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters' read the headline of a frontpage Jan. 2, 1945, New York Times article describing the mysterious ' foo fighters ' that toyed with American pilots in the European and Pacific theaters. The late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), as a wartime transport pilot in Asia, encountered such an object, which conducted extraordinary maneuvers around his plane. The experience led him to enthusiastically support then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) establishment of a secret Pentagon UFO program in 2008. A 2017 New York Times story revealing that program spurred a sweeping congressional investigation into the UFO phenomenon. This led to the introduction of extraordinary legislation and the establishment of the Pentagon's analysis office. Beyond frequent appearances of such objects in official documents, 'balls of fire' feature prominently in one of the earliest surviving U.S. government UFO assessments. The 1948 Air Force analysis states that 'in most instances, balls of fire have been observed at night.' 'Silver balls,' on the other hand, have 'been observed in daylight and a number under clear weather conditions with visibility unlimited.' Not only were observations of strange silver spheres widely reported in the media during World War II and afterwards, but the former director of the Pentagon's UFO analysis office stated in a 2023 presentation to NASA that the military has tracked 'metallic orbs' 'all over the world' 'making very interesting apparent maneuvers.' A brief video of such an object accompanied his presentation. More recently, litigation under the Freedom of Information Act forced the public disclosure of footage of a metallic sphere captured by a surveillance aircraft flying over Iraq in 2016. Similarly, the well-known 'GoFast' video, which accompanied the 2017 New York Times article, shows fighter pilots reacting in astonishment as a seemingly spherical object moves over the ocean. The Pentagon debunked the video, but it did so prematurely. Had investigators bothered to interview the aircrew, they would have learned that the 'GoFast' UFO was one of four objects flying in 'precise' formation 300 miles off the coast of Florida. This is hardly compatible with the Pentagon's suggestion that the object was a balloon. Moreover, the incident occurred just minutes before the ' Gimbal ' event, which resulted in the most recognizable publicly available UFO footage. For his part, Vice President JD Vance says he is ' obsessed ' with this topic — and the recently released videos in particular. The two 2015 incidents happened as Navy fighter pilots routinely observed spherical objects demonstrating seemingly physics-defying flight characteristics off the East Coast of the U.S. Similarly, Navy fighter pilot Jack Stewart described how a 'spherical' object rapidly changed direction to follow his jet. But that's not all. In July 2019, sailors aboard an advanced Navy warship tracked roughly a dozen objects on radar as they swarmed their vessel. The incident occurred amid months-long UFO incursions, often well over 100 miles off the coast of California. During the incident, the crew captured infrared video of a spherical object moving against strong winds before descending slowly into the ocean. A similarly perplexing incident occurred the following day. A rigorous, multidisciplinary scientific investigation of the 'orb' phenomenon is long overdue. Thankfully, a group of trailblazing scientists has begun serious, unbiased work studying UFOs. Some of their initial findings are potentially paradigm-shifting. Marik von Rennenkampff Sol Foundation.
The Intercept
9 minutes ago
- The Intercept
What Court Order? Federal Agents Keep Raiding LA Workplaces Despite Ban
As day laborers and street vendors selling breakfast lined the parking lot of the MacArthur Park Home Depot in Los Angeles early Wednesday morning, a yellow Penske moving truck pulled into the lot. Its driver claimed he was looking for movers, according to organizers, security guards, and a day laborer who witnessed the event and spoke to The Intercept. That's when a group of at least seven Border Patrol agents dressed in tactical gear stormed out of the back of the truck and rushed toward the day laborers and street vendors gathered outside. Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino dubbed the raid 'Operation Trojan Horse,' sharing video on social media from a Fox News reporter who was embedded with agents inside the moving truck. Agents detained at least 16 people during the raid, which appears to be in direct defiance of a temporary restraining order a federal judge put in place in early July after immigrants rights groups sued the government. After a month of militarized raids and racial profiling throughout Southern California, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of California's Central District, in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by community organizations and detained workers, delivered the Trump administration a major blow. She issued an order that prohibits federal agents from targeting individuals based on their race and ethnicity; whether they speak Spanish or English with an accent; their location such as a car wash, department store parking lot, or other worksite; or their occupation, such as landscapers or street vendors. The Trump administration appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld the temporary restraining order. The order had brought relative calm to the region in recent weeks, slowing what had been near-daily operations to occasional isolated incidents. But the Trump administration's Southern California campaign was not over. Since Friday's decision to uphold the temporary restraining order, federal agents have raided at least five other worksites in Los Angeles County, according to organizers and witnesses who spoke to The Intercept. Though it's unclear whether federal agents had warrants for the operations, the raids did not appear to be aimed at any specific individuals and took place at worksites that had been previously targeted, all with predominantly immigrant and Latino workforces. 'Basically everything that they said not to do in the [temporary restraining order] was on a to-do checklist for today,' said a day laborer organizer at the MacArthur Park Home Depot on Wednesday who was not authorized to speak with the media. 'Racial profiling, check. Going to a Home Depot, check. That was on purpose to undermine the courts and to undermine the power of the law.' The organizer said witnesses had reported seeing agents brandishing firearms at bystanders in front of the Home Depot, including at U.S. citizens. 'There's so many violations to the Constitution, not just to migrants,' he said Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to The Intercept's request for comment. Penske said it was not aware its truck would be used in Wednesday's immigration operation and said its policy 'strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances.' The company said it planned to reach out to the Department of Homeland Security to 'reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future.' Since Friday's decision upholding the temporary restraining order, federal agents raided a car wash in Lakewood, detaining two workers on Saturday; a Superior Grocers in Lynwood on Sunday; another Home Depot in Hollywood on Monday, where at least two individuals were taken; and the Magnolia Car Wash in Fountain Valley, Orange County, where agents on Tuesday detained four workers, according to CLEAN Carwash Worker Center. Among those taken in Fountain Valley was a father originally from El Salvador who was the main financial supporter for his mother, according to a GoFundMe page set up by a relative. Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California, or IDEPSCA, which advocates for the rights of day laborers and immigrants, said it is still working to confirm how many people were detained at the Hollywood Home Depot on Monday. During that raid, federal agents used a horn that tamaleros use to call people over to buy tamales in an attempt to lure people to detain them, said Maegan Ortiz, executive director of IDEPSCA, in a video posted on social media. Read Our Complete Coverage Deceptive tactics used by immigration authorities were recently banned in the context of home raids as a part of a settlement in a separate class-action lawsuit based in Los Angeles. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of people who were lured out of their homes by ICE agents who claimed they were local law enforcement officers. The Penske moving truck plot on Wednesday may have been beyond the scope of that settlement, but still prompted concern from organizers. 'They had a lot of officers and did it quickly, and did not present warrants, and were targeting people indiscriminately,' said Zoie Matthew, an organizer with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, which has run a community defense center at the store since the initial June 6 raid. 'They were violating the TRO completely — which it seems like has been the case for the past several Home Depots they've hit this week.' Even after the restraining order was granted, Bovino, who is heading Border Patrol operations across California, doubled down, promising to deliver on Trump's pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in history with a daily quota of 3,000 arrests per day. 'Different day, different illegal aliens, same objective,' Bovino wrote on his X account on Wednesday, alongside an edited video montage of agents detaining workers at a car wash. 'We're on a mission here in Los Angeles. And we're not leaving until we accomplish our goals.' The Fox News reporter who embedded with agents, Matt Finn, quoted DHS on his X account, saying that 'MS 13 has a chokehold on this area, which is one reason they're carrying out the highly optic immigration raids.' The government and Fox News have both evoked MS-13 to justify a previous raid in MacArthur Park in early July in which ICE agents, alongside military service members, surrounded and swarmed soccer fields and other recreation areas where a summer camp was taking place — but made zero arrests. Even so, Wednesday's raids appeared to target only workers. The majority of people detained during immigration operations in the LA area in recent months do not have criminal records. Video taken by residents who live in an apartment directly overlooking the MacArthur Park Home Depot parking lot showed two Border Patrol agents yanking one man toward the pavement, while other agents pulled three women from a row of tables topped with food and drinks. The workers and vendors were led toward a white van parked in front of the Penske truck. A day laborer told The Intercept he managed to run inside the Home Depot with other workers during the raid and hid for a half-hour. He immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala a year ago to stay with his cousin and to find work. 'I'm nervous,' said the man, who goes to the Home Depot every day to find work. 'I'm nervous because I feel like they're going to come back again,' he said. Even so, the man said he plans to continue returning to the store, the only place he knows where to find a job.
