"Gender-appropriate professional attire" for public school teachers? | Fact Check: Son "stalled" immigration officials while Mexican father hid | $300k grants to lawmaker's neighborhood to redirected
No. 187 — Jul. 26-Aug. 1, 2026
The feds have cancelled a $1 million-per-year grant at Duke for teen pregnancy prevention for “age-inappropriate” curricula, but was this program a massive waste of money in the first place?
Another skirt-wearing male teacher in the Wake County Public School System has gone viral with Libs of Tiktok, with Rep. Erin Paré suggesting a law requiring “gender-appropriate professional attire for public school employees.”
Days after the story became public, the General Assembly is moving to pull $300k granted to a private Harnett County neighborhood where a state representative resides and direct the funds to the county government instead.
A Hispanic who was briefly detained by ICE in Cary last November has filed a complaint, claiming he was “targeted because of the color of [his] skin,” but contemporary interviews reveal he had actually been attempting to “stall” immigration officials to allow coworkers (including his own father) to escape. (The MSM, unsurprisingly, ignores this.)
Feds cancel Duke’s teen pregnancy prevention grant, but at what cost?
Duke University program faces layoffs after Trump admin cuts teen pregnancy grant - News & Observer
Trump Terminates Grants to Planned Parenthood for Pushing ‘Sexually Explicit’ Content on Kids - Daily Signal
Duke University is among 53 grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program which have been cancelled, with an email sent out by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health explaining that “some curricula normalize adolescent sexual activity and are not age appropriate, as they contain overly sexually explicit or pornographic content that is not necessary to achieve the TPP program’s statutory mission.”
Now the idea that Duke may be providing “medically inaccurate,” “age-inappropriate,” and “sexually explicit” might be unsurprising considering the university’s gender clinic has described having “transgender patients as young as 2,” but the relative cost of the program may still be shocking.
According to the News & Observer, the Duke program received an annual grant of $955,090, and “served more than 1,000 people” last year.
If we take “more than 1,000” to refer to some number of beneficiaries between 1,001 and 1,500, that comes out to a per capita cost of $637-$954.
Although that may seem high for a program “bring[ing] lessons about teen pregnancy prevention to middle and high schools across seven rural, eastern North Carolina counties,” it is in fact lower than the program average.
According to performance measures, TPP only reached 55,944 “participants reached with evidence-based and promising programs” in the fiscal year 2023; with a budget of $101 million allocated per year by Congress, this works out to $1,805 spent per participant reached.
Another skirt-wearing male teacher attracts national attention to Wake Schools
NC GOP lawmaker considering legislation to restrict attire for trans teachers - N&O
Wake school gets backlash over transgender teacher. Board member defends hire. - N&O
Wake County has once again attracted national attention to its schools, this time with an obviously biological male who wears women’s clothing while teaching at Middle Creek Elementary School in Apex.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Rep. Erin Paré (R-Wake) described receiving emails and phone calls about the situation.
“May be time to introduce a bill requiring gender-appropriate professional attire for public school employees, as WCPSS does not have a policy addressing this issue - as far as I can tell,” wrote Paré.
“It is important that WCPSS policies regarding employee dress and appearance should protect children from being exposed to more complex and mature gender-identity questions and concepts at too young of an age.”
Later in the week, images of the teacher in question went viral on X/Twitter, with Libs of TikTok and NC content creator Cassie Clark sharing details about the allegedly female or nonbinary educator:
Previous unrelated story:
Male Wake Co. Middle School Teacher Wears Skirt, Tells Students About Homosexual "Love Life"; Principal Denies Student's Transfer Request
A Wake County middle school's “inclusive” environment has been cited in denying a class transfer request for a female 7th grade student feeling unsafe with her male English teacher, who has been photographed at the school in a skirt and reportedly discusses his homosexual “love life” with his students.
Follow-ups
Legislature poised to retract grant to legislator’s HOA
NC lawmakers plan to claw back $300K for HOA after CJ investigation - Carolina Journal
Just days after the Carolina Journal reported that the state budget included $300,000 in special appropriations to the private neighborhood of which Rep. Joseph Pike (R-Harnett) is a resident, legislators are working to redirect the funds to a public entity.
On July 28, a conference report for “Budget Technical Corrections Modifications” (HB-562) included language to take the funds allocated for to Carolina Lakes Property Owners Association, and instead grant them to the Harnett County government “for any public purpose.”
According to a screenshot of an email attributed to the CLPOA, Pike had indicated to members of the organization’s board that “state funds might become available,” but that the board had “never met with [him] to evaluate a specific proposal and never formally approved any application.”
Previous Coverage:
General Assembly gives $300k to Harnett legislator’s HOA (No. 186 — Jul. 25, 2026)
Anchor baby? Hispanic claims racial targeting over brief detention while “stalling” immigration officials to protect Mexican father
Immigration agents detained NC teen despite US citizenship. Why he’s seeking damages - News & Observer
NC teen, an American citizen, fighting Trump administration over arrest in Cary immigration raid - WRAL
ACLU-NC Files Damages Claims Against the Federal Government on Behalf of North Carolinians Harmed by Immigration Agents - ACLU-NC Press Release
An American-born son of two Mexicans who was briefly detained by immigration officials in Cary last year during “Operation Charlotte’s Web” is joining an ACLU campaign to file complaints under the Federal Tort Claims Act, with mainstream media uncritically parroting the claim that he was “targeted because of the color of [his] skin” while making no mention of his own admissions that he was successfully “stalling” the agents while his father and other potentially illegal co-workers escaped.
Here’s how the Triangle Trumpet reported on the story at the time:
According to the narrative, 18-year-old Fernando Vazquez was innocently working as a landscaper at the Lightbridge Academy daycare and preschool location under construction on Reedy Creek Rd. in Cary when he was randomly targeted by immigration agents for no reason other than the “color of [his] skin,” only to be ultimately released several miles away after his legal status was finally acknowledged.
However, even the story as presented in a left-wing outlet like NC Newsline contains some hints that this may not a reliable narrator accurately relaying the circumstances.
Firstly, Vazquez admits that his reaction to seeing the agents was to call his father, also a worker on the sight, and tell him to hide. Then, he started swearing at them in Spanish in order to “make time to stall them” so his father and other workers could escape. Finally, the immigration officials did actually arrest another worker in the vehicle along with Vazquez, who appears to actually have been an illegal alien and was not released.
The Spanish-language reporting on the situation by the local Univision channel as well as a video recorded in Spanish by Vazquez reveal even more incriminating details, all but outright stating that Vazquez’s father and fellow workers were illegal immigrants (and not just fearful legal Hispanics), who were able to escape through Vazquez’s obstructionary actions.
Vazquez also appears to have told Univision that he refused to actually tell agents that he was born in America until he had already been placed in the vehicle.
Vazquez’s father, meanwhile, had successfully evaded the search by immigration officials by hiding in their work truck; Vazquez then returned to the jobsite after his release and drove his father to a safe place where he could hide.
Although the Univision report which interviewed Vazquez’s father at the residence he was laying low at during the immigration crackdown appears to have been deleted since, Vazquez told a similar recounting in an English interview with Victor Blackwell on CNN:
That’s when they approached me, they asked me where I was from...I didn’t respond to say anything. Then a Hispanic man in Spanish...he said, “where are you from?”
And at that moment, I did use vulgar language to him just so he could focus on me...so the rest of the workers, my dad, could run and hide. I wanted him to focus on me. I was trying to stall them.
When Blackwell asked the pertinent question as to whether he told the agents he was an American citizen while being questioned at the worksite, Vazquez responded: “At that moment, I didn’t. I was still just talking to him, just stalling them.”
It wasn’t until after he was handcuffed that Vazquez says the agents searched him and found a wallet with a North Carolina driver’s license.
Although Vazquez was only placed in a vehicle for “five minutes,” according to his telling, he now complains that “the entire experience left [him] feeling powerless, frightened, humiliated, and deeply shaken,” and that “it has had a lasting emotional impact on [him].”
In a statement given to WRAL, a representative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied that the federal agents under its purview engage in racial profiling.
The specific reason why agents stopped at this particular location on this day does not appear to have been explained; however, doesn’t the mere fact that Vazquez felt the need to “stall” them while his coworkers escaped and his father hid in a truck indicate that the immigration enforcement was exactly where they needed to be?
Previous Coverage:
American citizen wrongfully detained? (No. 151 — Nov. 22, 2025)