Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalWest Chicago brothers are on the front lines against 'Operation Midway Blitz.' And they're only teenagers.
With a goodbye to their mom, Sam and Ben Luhmann walked out the screen door of their West Chicago home on a recent weekday morning.
A few minutes shy of 7:30 a.m., Ben pulled their midsize sedan out of the garage as Sam stood in the driveway, adjusting the straps around his shoulders and checking his phone.
But the brothers weren’t gunning to beat the first bell at school. They were racing to find ICE.
At 16 and 17 years old, Sam and Ben for the past two months have made it their mission to follow, investigate and capture federal immigration activity across the Chicago area. It’s an undertaking the brothers say happened naturally after growing up in a household where social justice and civic duty were as much a part of their homeschool curriculum as math and science.
“If I get the opportunity to fight like this for the rest of my life, I would be totally OK with that,” Ben said.
Their efforts in the vast resistance movement against the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation in Chicago, represent the wave of youth activists who have been galvanized into action by Midway Operation Blitz, following a long tradition paved around the world by young activists, experts say. From Students of a Democratic Society protesting the Vietnam War to today’s Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, the sense of injustice draws young people to act.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/14/chicago-youth-operation-midway-blitz-ice/
The kids are all right!
Epstein emails reveal enduring ties with influential figures even after his sex crime conviction
By the time Jeffery Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, he had established an enormous network of wealthy and influential friends. Emails made public this week show the crime did little to diminish the desire of that network to stay connected to the billionaire financier.
Thousands of documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday offer a new glimpse into what Epstein’s relationships with business executives, reporters, academics and political players looked like over a decade.
They start with messages he sent and received around the time he finished serving his Florida sentence in 2009 and continue until the months before his arrest on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.
During that time, Epstein’s network was eclectic, spanning the globe and political affiliations: from the liberal academic Noam Chomsky to Steve Bannon, the longtime ally of President Donald Trump.
Some reached out to support Epstein amid lawsuits and prosecutions, others sought introductions or advice on everything from dating to oil prices. One consulted him on how to respond to accusations of sexual harassment.
https://apnews.com/article/epstein-documents-trump-andrew-emails-7bdf92fd2d742f88789b2b5d67bf9f48
It's disgusting that one creep had his hooks in that deep.
U.S. citizen son, 15, released after Gary immigration raid
Newly released, a Gary teen is slowly getting back to daily life after his family was upended in an immigration raid last month.
Being home was “wonderful,” Eli Carrillo, a U.S. citizen, now 15, said Tuesday night. “I would have felt more at peace there had I known mom and dad were safely at home.”
On Tuesday night, he and his siblings ate spaghetti and went to church.
He spent about two weeks at the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center after he was swept up in an immigration raid on Oct. 23 on their Gary home targeting his father, Rosario Carrillo Lopez.
Eli was released Friday, his family said. He turned 15 on Monday.
After Carrillo Lopez took Eli to school on Oct. 13 at Gary Lighthouse Charter School, immigration agents attempted to arrest the father on the way back. The family is disputing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement allegation that the man hit a government vehicle trying to escape.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/12/u-s-citizen-son-15-released-after-gary-immigration-raid/
ICE, of course, claims the father tried to hit their vehicle with his car (it was apparently vice versa) and that the 5'1 mother "assaulted" a federal agent, who was wearing body armor and armed with a gun. How ridiculuous can you get?
Innovative juvenile corrections program is growing roots
On a rainy fall afternoon, Brian Emerson wanders through the school garden at the Grow Academy where he helps incarcerated boys connect with nature, tend vegetables and grow life skills.
“The idea of planting a seed, watching it grow… there's something pretty deep in that, as far as understanding how to care for something and succeed in it,” he said as he examined peppers the students had grown this summer.
Emerson is the director of urban agricultural education at Rooted, a Madison nonprofit focused on developing urban community connections through agriculture and food access. He also works at the Grow Academy, a low-security residential youth center outside of Fitchburg that is part of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ network of juvenile facilities.
The center provides education, mental health treatment and support services to boys ages 14-18 who are involved in Wisconsin’s youth incarceration system. Since its founding in June 2014, the program has graduated a total of 177 boys, according to the Department of Corrections.
Administrators at the center have referred to it as a “first chance” or a “last chance,” meaning that the boys at the center have either been referred there as an alternative to a higher security juvenile prison setting or are receiving step-down services after leaving such a facility but before reentering their communities.
Now, the residential center in Dane County hopes to expand its capacity to serve more young people and set them on similar paths to success.
https://captimes.com/news/government/innovative-juvenile-corrections-program-is-growing-roots/article_fa0c3e36-a6d8-471e-8a3d-ecc1f072d3e8.html
THIS is what a juvenile corrections facility should look like, not a prison!
A flotilla kicks off the People's Summit for activists at UN climate talks
As United Nations climate talks rolled on Wednesday at the elaborate new venues built for the summit, many of the activists eager to shape the talks took to the water.
Carried by scores of boats large and small, a vast group whooped and laughed, smiled and wept. Some splashed canoe paddles through the bay where a northern section of the Amazon rainforest meets the Atlantic Ocean. Others hugged old friends. They pressed their foreheads together or held hands or stood solemnly in moments of prayer and reflection.
They were there to celebrate a community from around the world at a gathering of activists, organizers, environmentalists and Indigenous groups, outside the halls where world leaders are discussing climate change for the next two weeks. Their joy came after a brief but tense moment the night before when protesters broke through security barricades at the main conference venue, slightly injuring two security guards, according to the U.N.
Many emphasized the importance of making the voice of the people heard after years of these talks being held in countries where civil society is not free to demonstrate.
“The Amazon for us is the space of life,” said Jhajayra Machoa, an A’l Kofan First Nation of Ecuador member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, who helped paddle one of the canoes. “We carry the feeling and emotions of everything lived in this place, and what we want is to remember. Remember where we are from and where we’re going and what we want.”
https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-climate-talks-peoples-summit-indigenous-538fe43de6ebd52c63a6921563e2a70a
Zanzibar's 'solar mamas' are trained as technicians to help light up communities
When darkness came, so did the smoke.
Hamna Silima Nyange, like half of the 2 million people in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, did not have a house connected to the electricity grid. After sunset, she would turn to smoky oil lamps that provided the only light for her eight children to study.
”The light was too weak,” Nyange said. “And the smoke from the lamp hurt my eyes.”
Then one day a neighbor, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed solar panels and bulbs that lit her home with help from the strong sunlight along the Indian Ocean coast.
“Today we have enough light,” Nyange said.
Hamad is one of dozens of “solar mamas” trained in Zanzibar by Barefoot College International, a global nonprofit, through a program that brings light to rural communities and provides jobs for local women. So far in Zanzibar, it has lit 1,845 homes.
The program selects middle-aged women, most with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and trains them over six months to become solar power technicians. It is one of a small number of programs in Africa including Solar Sister.
https://apnews.com/article/tanzania-solar-women-engineers-zanzibar-electricity-7d9eaa24c97e820f1f1f243512a5dd55
Bravo!
Israeli settlers torch a mosque and scrawl hateful messages despite official condemnation
Israeli settlers torched and defaced a mosque in a Palestinian village in the central West Bank overnight, scribbling hateful messages in a show of defiance, a day after some Israeli leaders condemned a recent attack by settlers against Palestinians.
One wall and at least three copies of the Quran and some of the carpeting at the mosque in the Palestinian town of Deir Istiya had been torched when an Associated Press reporter visited Thursday.
On one side of the mosque settlers had daubed graffiti, including “we are not afraid,” “we will revenge again,” and “keep on condemning.” The writing scrawled in Hebrew was difficult to make out. It appeared to reference Maj. Gen Avi Bluth, the chief of the military’s Central Command, who issued a rare denunciation of the violence on Wednesday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had sent troops to investigate the scene and hadn’t identified any suspects. It said that it was transferring the case to the Israeli police and security agency.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-settlers-radical-west-bank-netanyahu-herzog-46127028ea1c06cf7cb57a81816b3ded
Israeli Nazis!
Families of two babies sickened by infantile botulism sue ByHeart over recalled formula
The parents of at least two babies sickened in an infantile botulism outbreak are suing the makers of the ByHeart baby formula at the heart of a nationwide recall.
Stephen and Yurany Dexter, of Flagstaff, Arizona, said their 4-month-old daughter, Rose, had to be flown by air ambulance to a children’s hospital two hours from home and treated for several weeks this summer.
Michael and Hanna Everett, of Richmond, Kentucky, said their daughter, Piper, also 4 months, was rushed to a hospital Nov. 8 with worsening symptoms of the rare and potentially deadly disease.
The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in two states, allege that the ByHeart formula the babies consumed was defective and that the company was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.
Both families said they bought the organic formula to provide what they viewed as a natural, healthier alternative to traditional baby formulas, and that they were shocked and angered by the suffering their children endured.
https://apnews.com/article/byheart-baby-formula-recall-botulism-679c822667df767a278b166c7142e68f
If you must use formula, you're safer using the established brands (Similac and Enfamil). But this shows once again the disgusting lack of cleanliness and oversight of infant formula factories! Remember, this isn't the first go-round!!
'I can't take any more of this,' then-Prince Andrew wrote as he was engulfed in Epstein scandal
As the man formerly known as Prince Andrew was drawn into the news surrounding sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he sought to distance himself from the scandal.
“I can’t take any more of this,” a sender identified in Epstein’s contacts as “The Duke” wrote to him in 2011, in one of thousands of partly redacted emails released Wednesday.
He could have had no idea of the fall from grace that lay ahead.
Fourteen years later, the former Duke of York has been stripped of all his titles, including the princeship he earned at birth. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — as he’s now known — was royally demoted two weeks ago by his brother, King Charles III, and faces eviction from the mansion where he’s lived rent-free near Windsor Castle.
But the bad news keeps coming.
https://apnews.com/article/prince-andrew-epstein-emails-mountbatten-08e9298ca7a8ad9c51459c520fc3a405
What is done in the dark will be revealed in the light!
Epstein Warned Trump Was 'Evil Beyond Belief' and 'Mad'
Jeffrey Epstein branded Donald Trump “evil beyond belief” and “mad” in an email sent hours after he was forwarded a Daily Beast piece questioning the president’s mental stability.
The message, released this week by the House Oversight Committee, captures the disgraced pedophile financier—who died in jail in 2019 aged 66—reacting to a Beast opinion article “How Close Is Donald Trump to a Psychiatric Breakdown?”
The op-ed drew on mental health experts who said Trump displayed signs of mania and posed an “imminent danger” to the public as legal and political pressure mounted around him. It was published the same weekend as porn star Stormy Daniels’ blockbuster 60 Minutes interview, which detailed her alleged affair with Trump and a hush-money deal at the center of his criminal case.
In the March 24, 2018, exchange with then–New York Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr. that included a link to the piece, Thomas told Epstein that Trump, now 79, was “scaring the s--t” out of him and warned the president “could well tank [the] global economy,” urging Epstein to try to speak to him.
Hours later, Epstein replied: “he feels alone. and is nuts !!! , I told everyone from day one. evil beyond belief. mad, and most thought i was speaking metaphorically. its obvious he could crack.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-warned-donald-trump-was-evil-beyond-belief-and-mad-after-mental-health-scrutiny/
This is probably why Epstein "committed suicide"
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