The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a Los Angeles-based immigration nonprofit that receives millions in government funding, is accused of establishing an immigration-to-elections pipeline across three entities, according to one state watchdog. CHIRLA maintains that the entities are separate. A CHIRLA organization in Mexico trains migrants planning to come to the U.S., while CHIRLA provides legal and naturalization services to immigrants in California, and its action arm endorses Democrat candidates. Meanwhile, CHIRLA and its action arm, CHIRLA Action Fund, partner on an “Immigrant Political Power Project” that seeks to build a voter base. According to its website, the Immigrant Political Power Project “targets new citizens, Latinos, and English learners to build a voter base from scratch, with enough power to sway state politics.” The project, staffed by “five immigrant women of color,” utilizes “teams of paid/volunteer canvassers/phone bankers, ranging in status from undocumented to legal permanent residents.” The project spreads the message that “immigrants must participate in EVERY election.” All the while, CHIRLA received more than two-thirds of its revenue from government grants in a four-year period from June 2021 through June 2025. Jenny Rae Le Roux, director of the CAL DOGE project established by Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, cried foul. “It defies common sense that taxpayers would fund an organization that converts taxpayer funds into a political activist network for California Democrats, for the explicit benefit of [Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass and [Democrat governor nominee] Xavier Becerra,” Le Roux, who is also a Republican candidate for Congress in California’s 47th Congressional District, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “The millions of dollars in public funding should be cut off, and a full investigation into the blurred 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) lines as well as the use of undocumented workers for political organizing is in order,” she added. A spokesperson for CHIRLA said that the various entities are separate. “CHIRLA Action Fund, CHIRLA, and CHIRLA Mexico are all distinct legal entities,” Jorge-Mario Cabrera, CHIRLA’s director of communications, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “While they share a mission of a just, inclusive society where immigrants are fully embraced, they are legally distinct entities with separate funding sources and activities. These different entities are fully compliant with rules set by the Internal Revenue Service and relevant election laws.” What Is CHIRLA? CHIRLA, an immigration group founded in 1986, aims to “advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees.” Cabrera said CHIRLA, which is exempt from taxes under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code, “does not engage in partisan political or electoral activities.” CHIRLA Action Fund, a separate 501(c)(4) entity, can engage in partisan electoral activity, and Cabrera said it endorses candidates and legislation that aim to “create a just society, fully inclusive of immigrants.” CHIRLA and CHIRLA Action Fund launched a “joint initiative” called the Immigrant Political Power Project, which Cabrera said aims “to educate voters and promote democratic civic participation.” CHIRLA’s website also has a page dedicated to efforts in Mexico. Cabrera told the Daily Signal that CHIRLA Mexico “is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization established in Mexico operating under Mexican law.” The web page for CHIRLA Mexico mentions offices in Tapachula, Mexico City, and Tijuana. It states that the group’s effort involves organizing seminars to prepare migrants for an opportunity to enter the U.S. legally. California DOGE claims this involves a “civic pipeline” from immigration legal services to naturalization to voter registration to political mobilization. Cabrera told the Daily Signal that “CHIRLA does not assist non-citizens in voting in state or federal elections as they are prohibited from participating by law.” “CHIRLA does provide resources and support to all immigrants, regardless of their legal status, ensuring they have access to necessary information, legal assistance, and community support,” he added. Taxpayer Funding CHIRLA has received more than two-thirds of its revenue from government grants, according to IRS filings covering the period from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2025. The $80.7 million it reported receiving from taxpayers amounted to 67.9% of its $118.8 million in revenue for those four years. CHIRLA’s website states that Gov. Gavin Newsom designated CHIRLA as one of 12 organizations to administer a program designating $175 million in COVID-19 relief aid for “undocumented immigrants.” The Department of Homeland Security awarded CHIRLA $950,000 across three grants under President Joe Biden. Two of the grants, awarded in October 2022 and October 2023, involved “citizenship education and training.” The Los Angeles City Council District 13 Public Benefit Trust gave CHIRLA $195,626 on May 5 for “supplies & other services.” Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents District 13 in the Los Angeles City Council and who has been endorsed by CHIRLA Action Fund, told the Daily Signal he is “proud” to support CHIRLA. “Our office is proud to support CHIRLA’s work assisting Los Angeles families being torn apart by inhumane federal immigration policies, and any suggestion that supporting those families constitutes anything other than representing the interests of our constituents is false and unsupported by any facts or evidence,” Councilmember Soto-Martínez said in a statement Tuesday. “CHIRLA undergoes regular, independent audits of our private and public funding,” Cabrera, the organization’s communications director, told the Daily Signal. He mentioned that CHIRLA received California grants to fund naturalization services, renewals of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, visa services, family reunification services, and more. He also mentioned funding for “education and outreach programs on anti-hate campaigns, water and heat advisories, and COVID-19 vaccine access and education.” “Most of the funds that CHIRLA has received were subcontracted to 88 nonprofit organizations in LA County,” Cabrera added. Becerra Endorsement CHIRLA Action Fund endorsed Xavier Becerra, the Democrat candidate for governor, on April 13, and it endorsed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for reelection six days later. CHIRLA Action Fund endorsed Gavin Newsom for governor in 2018 and 2022. Newsom oversaw the state government, which awarded CHIRLA millions. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, deputy director of communications for the governor’s office, told the Daily Signal that any suggestion that CHIRLA Action Fund’s endorsement of Newsom had any connection to the grants later awarded to CHIRLA is “false.” “California awards grants to qualified organizations to provide specific public services—not to support political activity or campaign work,” Crofts-Pelayo said. “Organizations that receive state funded grants must comply with all applicable federal and state laws, and the terms of their grants.” The campaigns for Becerra and Bass did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

A Virginia elementary school teacher was tasked with also providing counseling to students who wanted to discuss their sexuality as part of a public-school division’s efforts to be “inclusive” of LGBTQ+ feelings. He had the title “Social Emotional Learning coach.” Did we mention this was at an elementary school? But wait, there’s more. Absurd as that sounds, the teacher who had been assigned to provide that counseling, 37-year-old Michael Swiney, is currently being held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. The charges? Eleven counts of sexual assault involving minors. You cannot make this up. Moreover, why would you? It’s another instance of “Woke Virginia” damaging the children that it tells parents—while taxing parents—are safe in its care. This story is even worse, if that is possible, than the more infamous case of that teenage boy from Loudoun County who convinced everyone that he wanted to be a girl until he was left alone, two separate times, with “real” girls whom he raped. This is a teacher who was told that having conversations about sex with elementary school students was part of his job. Not long ago, any teacher having conversations like that would have been arrested. But it’s not like conservatives haven’t been warning about all of this as our society spirals toward the side of the same mountain that the debauched Roman Empire crashed into. We are indulging the LGBTQ+ stage-door mommies who are playing out a kind of bizarre Munchausen-esque scene with third graders talking to teachers about wanting to be a different gender and then showering the trans students with attention, which, if you recall elementary school, just gets more kids wanting that attention. Meanwhile, we are using up time and resources that could actually be used to help children with real cases of gender dysphoria while apparently trying to win the “Most Woke School District USA” pageant. What about the school’s principal? What about the school superintendent? Certainly, if there were allegedly four students who experienced 11 incidents, it was brought to someone’s attention, right? We cannot know because the Albemarle County superintendent, Matthew Haas, was allowed to resign June 20, and per the severance agreement, he will receive his regular pay and benefits through June 2027, which—wait for it—includes a 3.75% raise that took effect July 1, 2026, plus an $800 bonus. The best part: He’s not talking, and the school division is using the “we don’t discuss personnel matters,” coupled with “we cannot discuss ongoing legal issues,” to avoid answering the question: “Who knew what, and when?” Albemarle County parents are calling for an independent prosecutor to be appointed—by someone, anyone. Phil Riese, a spokesperson for the group, told me, “There’s just a lot of questions that the school leadership is not answering and here’s my number one demand: Let’s have an independent third-party investigation that can look into how Albemarle County schools handled these sexual abuse allegations. Let’s let a law firm not in Albemarle County, but a law firm from somewhere else in the state come in and have access to all the emails and ensure that this was handled correctly. Because without that, parents may never know what really happened and how leadership handled these allegations.” Riese added that, according to statements by the school board, they were only made aware of the allegations the day before Swiney was arrested. However, Haas was aware of the investigation in January but failed in his obligation to tell the school board for five months. Parents want to know why he was not fired for cause instead of collecting his salary (and getting a raise) for more than a year. Riese went on to say that requests to Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones have gone unanswered, but they would welcome an investigation by the Virginia State Police or even the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Virginia. Just not someone already circling the wagons. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

One scandal proves nothing. Two may be a coincidence. But after years of violations and investigations, let’s admit the H-1B visa system is rife with fraud and abuse of American workers. We are not talking trivial numbers here. The site Layoffhedge has compiled records of H-1B Labor Condition Application filings from 2015 to 2026. There are 6,835,185—equivalent to the population of Los Angeles and Chicago combined—not including all their dependents. America’s recent graduates and laid-off or unemployed tech workers are angry. American companies are using cheaper foreign labor to replace, not just supplement, American workers. Universities from Pennsylvania to California are exploiting their uncapped ability to hire foreigners using H-1Bs, despite graduating thousands of students each year who need jobs. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has introduced the Colleges for the American People Act to remove the H-1B visa cap exemption for higher education and end this anti-American discrimination. The Department of Labor announced last Wednesday that it would open an investigation into the H-1B and Program Electronic Review Management systems to combat fraud. H-1B is a visa that supposedly allows foreign skilled workers to come here. Program Electronic Review Management is the process that allows them to permanently immigrate here. Anthony D’Esposito, inspector general for the Department of Labor, said Wednesday that Cognizant was among the dozens of firms that were issued subpoenas in the investigation. Cognizant, founded in 1994 as an Indian subsidiary of a U.S. company and now based in New Jersey, is the biggest player in a lucrative business model that effectively crowds out American workers. Companies known as “body shops” don’t hire workers for their own operations; they sell labor to other firms, staffing American corporations with cheaper foreign programmers, consultants, engineers, and others. Cognizant has 340,000 total employees, 70% of whom are in India. Most of Cognizant’s U.S. workers are on visas, primarily H-1B. Since 2009, Cognizant has successfully petitioned for over 52,000 new H-1B workers, the highest of any petitioning company. A 2024 Bloomberg report describes decades of malfeasance by Cognizant. Three American workers sued the company in 2017, alleging that Cognizant fired American workers so they could be replaced by lower-paid Indian workers. According to the lawsuit, a black female employee, Latreecia Folkes, was told to train her Indian replacement on a project. Another female employee, Christy Palmer, was, according to the lawsuit, “one of only two non-Indian workers and the only woman on her 15-person team.” She resigned in 2016 after what she said was routine exclusion from work and social events and no satisfactory action from the company in response to her complaints. In October 2024, a jury found Cognizant liable for intentionally discriminating against more than 2,000 non-Indian employees between 2013 and 2022. Bloomberg found that American workers at Cognizant were twice as likely to be fired or resign than workers on visas were. Further, black employees were let go at a rate 23 times that of Asian workers. A former Cognizant executive testified at the trial that he was asked to sign hundreds of fraudulent letters attesting to federal officials that Cognizant’s Indian employees needed visas to work on assignments under him, though few actually did. After complaining internally, he was fired. The H-1B is premised on the idea of a labor shortage and thus an urgent need for foreign workers. Petitioners are supposed to have specific jobs in mind and cannot speculatively petition for H-1Bs. Despite this, Cognizant petitioned for H-1B workers for whom it did not have jobs. Documents revealed at the trial “showed that 40% of the company’s H-1B visa holders remained in India for six months after being approved.” This is known as “benching” and is illegal. In 2026, a court found Cognizant liable for $8.4 million in damages to New York University professor Jean-Claude Franchitti, who was fired by Cognizant in 2016 after making complaints about the firm’s use of the H-1B visa to discriminate against American workers. Despite being designated an “H-1B dependent” employer, Cognizant is not required to attest to the U.S. government that it is not displacing American workers—which they are. Bloomberg reported that “outsourcing companies, including Cognizant, have used the visas mostly to fill lower-level positions.” Cognizant sponsored 6,400 H-1Bs between 2020 and 2024, of which more than 80% had bachelor’s degrees only. Meanwhile, at Amazon, Apple, and Meta, about 60% of H-1B holders have master’s degrees or higher. The “body shop” business model creates perverse incentives for employers seeking a quick buck. Firms have little stake in long-term employee development. The goal is lower overhead and rapid replacement when visa holders or American workers become too expensive or speak out against unfair practices.  Cognizant is not alone. According to Bloomberg, “each of the five largest outsourcing companies has either settled, lost or is currently fighting a discrimination lawsuit” within the past four years. Yet, incredibly, they are all still permitted to petition for thousands of H-1B workers. Ironically, Bloomberg itself has “successfully sponsored 3,082 new H-1B visa petitions.” The outsourcing industry has perfected the art of gaming H-1B lotteries and PERM labor certifications. Meanwhile, American STEM graduates and mid-career professionals watch wages stagnate and opportunities shrink. Studies demonstrate wage suppression in occupations most exposed to H-1B inflows. Harvard economist George J. Borjas found that “on average, H-1B workers earn 15% less than comparable natives.” Congress should stop treating each new investigation as an isolated scandal. Stronger audits and tougher penalties for fraudulent labor certifications are vital, but without serious reduction of the H-1B program, investigations are a circus act in an all-too familiar show: abuse, exposure, slap-on-the-wrist penalties, and a shift of the regulatory goalposts that employers quickly overcome. Subpoenas, headlines, and $100,000 one-time application fees aren’t enough. American workers deserve a labor market that puts them first. Congress and the administration should hear them, take the initiative, and prune the H-1B back down to size.

The House of Representatives recently passed a bipartisan online child safety package. But the debate isn’t about child safety alone. It’s about preemption. The legislation is part of an ongoing national conversation over Big Tech’s outsized influence on children’s mental health, the rapid development of artificial intelligence, and the role parents should play as these technologies become part of everyday life. Frankly, parents feel overwhelmed as children adopt AI services almost as quickly as the technology evolves. Families are seeing many of the same addictive behaviors that emerged during the social media era, now with potentially even greater consequences. State attorneys general have responded by filing lawsuits against some of the largest AI companies, while lawmakers introduced hundreds of online child safety bills across 27 states during the first half of 2026. Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that Congress wants to move quickly. But Congress faces a difficult balancing act. Protecting children is a priority, but so is winning the AI race with China. Many lawmakers worry that an increasingly complex patchwork of state AI laws could slow domestic innovation and undermine America’s competitive position. That concern explains why the House passed a 10-year moratorium preempting state laws affecting AI development. Although the Senate ultimately rejected that proposal, the debate revealed the real issue: preemption. The question is not whether Congress should preempt state law, but to what extent it should do so. The answer depends on the strength of the federal protections Congress is willing to enact. Preemption is a bargain. If Congress wants states to step back, it must be prepared to step up. Simply put, broader preemption demands broader federal protections. There are three ways to strike that bargain between national uniformity and meaningful child protections. The first is a federal floor. This is the narrowest approach because it establishes minimum national standards while allowing states to adopt stronger protections. Federal minimum wage laws and many environmental laws operate this way. The House largely adopted this approach. Its package establishes baseline protections for certain online services, creates additional privacy protections for teens, imposes some restrictions on social media, and requires age-gating only for sexually explicit content. The tradeoff is straightforward: States remain free to adopt stronger protections, but the federal legislation does little to resolve the state-by-state patchwork that threatens to slow AI development. The second option is conflict preemption, and it offers the most promising path forward. Rather than broadly displacing state authority, conflict preemption preempts only those state laws that directly interfere with federal law, leaving states free to address issues Congress has not yet resolved. Based on public reporting, this appears to be the approach the White House and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are exploring through a compromise centered on the Kids Online Safety Act and the App Store Accountability Act. That would establish a national duty of care for social media platforms while creating a federal framework for age verification through app stores, where most children access AI services, games, and social media. Conflict preemption would provide substantially greater national uniformity without becoming a blanket liability shield for Big Tech. States could continue filling genuine gaps in federal law, while private litigation could proceed where consistent with federal law. That strikes a better balance between protecting children, encouraging innovation, and preserving an appropriate role for the states. The final option is field preemption. This is the broadest approach because it largely prevents states from regulating the same subject. Congress has traditionally reserved this type of preemption for heavily regulated issues, such as airline or pharmaceutical safety. Applying it to AI would therefore require a much more comprehensive federal framework than Congress has enacted to date. Field preemption would largely eliminate the patchwork problem, but it would have to answer the concerns raised by child safety advocates during the AI moratorium debate. That would require a far more comprehensive legislative package—one that includes the SCREEN Act’s age-verification requirements for pornography websites, the App Store Accountability Act’s parental consent requirements for app downloads by minors, the Kids Online Safety Act’s duty of care for online platforms, and the GUARD Act’s private right of action against chatbot companies. Given that broad federal preemption could displace much of the ongoing state litigation, anything less would be difficult to justify. That is a tall order for Congress. Congress does not have to choose between protecting children and maintaining America’s leadership in AI. But if lawmakers want only one national standard, they must earn it by providing meaningful national protections.  Broader preemption demands broader federal protections. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A new report exposes seven colleges and universities for featuring statements about “white supremacy” that, the report’s authors say, provide the intellectual framework for racial discrimination in admissions, even after a recent Supreme Court ruling invalidated racial quotas. “Everything on the campuses is framed through a racial lens,” Bill Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, told the Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. Jacobson founded a website dedicated to exposing critical race theory. CriticalRace.org compiled the list of colleges featuring “white supremacy” statements and exclusively provided it first to the Daily Signal. Jacobson warned that, even though academia is moving away from DEI—short for diversity, equity, and inclusion—many academics remain dedicated to the principles of critical race theory, which his group describes as “a radical ideology that focuses on race as the key to understanding society, and objectifies people based on race.” “You can close the DEI department, it’s probably going to be called something else,” he said. “At Cornell, DEI is now called ‘Inclusion and Belonging.'” He said the struggle against DEI is a “cultural war as to whether almost the entirety of our education system will be devoted to delegitimizing the United States.” “Show me a law in the United States that privileges whites over non-whites,” he said. “Bring me a program which, in its eligibility requirements, says only whites can apply. They simply don’t exist.” He accused critical race theory proponents of treating the country “like it’s still 1956.” Kemberlee Kaye, managing editor of CriticalRace.org, said that attempting to root out DEI is “almost like a whack-a-mole situation.” “These institutions have been so deeply captured that it’s not a matter of simply cutting funding to one office and that solves the problem,” she told the Daily Signal. She said colleges and universities are “rebranding things.” She noted that the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), and President Donald Trump issued executive orders cracking down on DEI. “They are deliberately doing this to avoid the DEI executive orders,” Jacobson said. Below is the list of colleges and universities using “white supremacy” rhetoric featured in the CriticalRace.org report. The Daily Signal reached out to each institution for comment but did not hear back. 1. San Diego State University San Diego State University’s webpage for “diversity” at the College of Arts and Letters states that the college houses many departments that “help provide students with culturally relevant curricula, critical thinking skills, and accurate knowledge to critique white supremacy and promote social justice.” 2. Boston University Boston University’s School of Social Work: Center for Aging & Disability Education & Research offers a three-step course on “Understanding Structural & Institutional Racism.” The course examines “racial capitalism, white supremacy, and structural and institutional racism” and the influence of “white supremacist ideology” on American society. 3. Loyola University Maryland Loyola University Maryland’s philosophy department released a “statement of solidarity with BIPOC Community at Loyola and Beyond” in 2020, and the page remained on the philosophy department’s website until this year. The statement pledged to “integrate a diversity of texts and viewpoints into our courses that address the moral problems of discrimination and inequality at all levels.” The statement pledged not to “‘whitewash’ the history of white supremacy in the philosophical canon.” The department claimed that “the history of the United States is the history of terrorizing and snuffing out Black life through police killings and white supremacist vigilantism.” 4. San Francisco State University San Francisco State University’s webpage on “Diversity and Inclusion” mentions the “Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Pedagogies for Inclusive Excellence Institute,” which “builds a community of JEDI protagonists by developing anti-racist pedagogy and dismantling white supremacy in online teaching.” 5. University of Tennessee, Knoxville The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature published a webpage titled “Fighting Anti-Black Racism through Story.” This page claims that “the ongoing police brutality against Black men, women, and youth is not a new phenomenon, but instead is a current manifestation of long-histories, state-sanctioned racism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy in this country.”  6. Portland State University Portland State University’s Multicultural Retention Services department released a statement “in solidarity & action for Black Lives Matter.” The statement claims that “Multicultural Retention Services stands in solidarity with the Black community as an extension of the work we do to combat white supremacy, racism, and anti-blackness.” Multicultural Retention Services claims that specific acts of police brutality “have been a product of white supremacy in this country.” 7. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ Wellness Strategic Plan includes an “Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Racist Statement.” The program claims that counseling professionals “recognize the importance of taking a stand and offering support by naming and addressing what causes the illness, wounds, and impairment, i.e. systemic racism and white supremacy.”  A Hostile Environment The report also notes that some leftist groups have used the term “white supremacy” to describe conservative political figures—including conservatives on college campuses. It notes that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan organizations into bankruptcy, accused the conservative campus organization Turning Point USA of seeking “to enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy.” Jacobson told the Daily Signal that, while no evidence shows that the man accused of murdering Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk had been directly influenced by the SPLC, the SPLC’s attack “contributed to the atmosphere” around Kirk’s assassination in September 2025. “Those sort of accusations are made at Cornell,” he said. “I think the SPLC undoubtedly contributes to the silencing of conservative voices.” Kaye noted that the SPLC currently faces wire fraud and bank fraud charges for allegedly directing donor funds to the very hate groups the SPLC claims it exists to oppose. “If we’re looking at white supremacy, the only absolute verifiable examples we have of that in modern times would be the vestiges of the KKK, which we now know are bankrolled by the SPLC,” she quipped.