A man who routinely boasted about being the first open drag queen to be elected to a school board in the United States was arrested last week for disturbing sex crimes involving children as young as 18 months. Travis J. Longo, 46, who is the vice president of the Cazenovia Central School District’s board of education in New York state, was initially charged over a “pattern” of sending explicit communications to a child under 12 years old. Once authorities seized and searched Longo’s phone, child pornography was discovered. Tyler Toomey, a spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of New York, said some of the videos on Longo’s device depicted the sexual abuse of infants. Longo, who was elected to the school board in 2024, has been charged federally with receiving and possessing child pornography and also faces four counts of endangering the welfare of a child in state court. “Who’d have thought that electing a drag queen to the school board could go wrong?” New York radio host and journalist Bob Lonsberry commented online. “Cazenovia NY school board Vice President Travis Barr-Longo was arrested last week on state charges of having sexually explicit communications with a child under 12, and on federal charges of possessing pornography ‘depicting the sexual abuse of infants.'” Longo routinely posted as his drag queen persona on his Instagram page. In one video, the school board member boasts about his leadership in the community and explicitly says that he’s not a predator. Drag queen NY school board vice president, who said during an interview that the last thing he is is a predator, has been arrested for possessing CSAM involving infants. Travis Longo served as Vice President of the Cazenovia School Board & founded Cazenovia Pride. Longo is… pic.twitter.com/hkqyYSsXYK — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 23, 2026 Cazenovia School District Superintendent Kevin Linck said in a statement that Longo is currently barred from any school grounds or district-sponsored events, but indicated that he’s still on the school board. “The District became aware of the arrest of our Board of Education vice-president Travis (Barr) Longo when the news was publicly disseminated at approximately 10:00 this morning,” Linck said. “Mr. Barr is not an employee of the District, he was elected by the Cazenovia voters to a 3-year term in May of 2024. The role of a school board member is not a student facing role. Please be assured that we take all such matters with the utmost seriousness.” “The District has retained and is working closely with legal counsel to review the matter thoroughly and determine the appropriate immediate steps. In the interim, the individual in question will not be permitted on any school grounds or at any district-sponsored events,” he continued. “The safety, well-being, and peace of mind of our students, staff, and community remain our absolute highest priorities. Because this involves an ongoing administrative and legal matter, we are strictly limited in the specific details we can share publicly. However, please know that we are taking all necessary actions to ensure a safe, secure, and focused learning environment. We will update you as more information becomes available.”

A woman was killed on Friday night after a Tesla crashed into her home in Katy, Texas, authorities said. Martha Avila, a 76-year-old grandmother, was putting away groceries when the Tesla plowed into her home. Avila was airlifted to a nearby hospital where she later died, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said. The doorbell camera captured the Tesla Model 3 driving about 70 mph through the residential neighborhood before speeding across the lawn and crashing into Avila’s brick home.     Credit: Jennifer Barbour via Storyful Michael Butler, the 44-year-old Tesla driver, said the car was in autopilot mode when it slammed into the house. Butler was also injured and taken to the hospital. He showed no signs of intoxication and cooperated during the investigation, the sheriff’s office said. Officials are actively investigating the crash and whether the Tesla’s autopilot system was functioning properly. They have not identified what caused the Tesla to veer off the road and crash at high speeds. The crash left severe structural damage to the house, and the family temporarily relocated to a hotel, according to neighbors. A spokesman for Zehl & Associates, the law firm representing Avila’s family, said they planned on filing a lawsuit. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a news story about the crash on X, writing, “Yes, this makes no sense. [Full self-driving] drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” Automotive analyst and consumer advocate Lauren Fix told The New York Post that the Friday night crash is one of many concerns regarding Tesla’s self-driving technology. “The mistake was calling it autopilot,” Fix said. “When someone dies in a car at that kind of speed in a neighborhood … there’s obviously either a software issue … or could be a driver issue.”  “This remains an active and open investigation,” a Harris County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office spokesman told the Post. “Once all evidence has been gathered, it will be presented to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to determine whether charges are appropriate.”

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars. *** The United States has entered a “learning recession,” according to a new Education Scorecard report. Nationally, eighth-grade reading scores now stand at their lowest point since 1990, and fourth-grade reading has fallen back to pre-2003 levels. Only 31% of U.S. students are proficient. California’s results were similarly dismal. Yet this news doesn’t seem to be ringing any alarm bells in Sacramento. As the school year wrapped up, the state’s Department of Education was busy sponsoring a training for K–12 teachers that encouraged them to “take action” to transform schools into “liberatory systems.” Such training is no aberration. Activism and ideology, not student performance, are priorities not just in California but also in many other states. After the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act gave states more control over school accountability and teacher quality, states used that authority to embed “culturally responsive education,” or CRE, into the rules and expectations for educators. From teaching standards and program approval to licensing requirements and professional development, the result has been a bureaucratic system that pushes teachers to incorporate activism into classroom activities. CRE isn’t as benign as its name suggests. Many parents assume it means that teachers should understand and make reasonable accommodations for students’ differing backgrounds or give a full and honest account of our nation’s history, warts and all. But in many state frameworks, CRE goes much further. CRE rules and standards direct teachers to view society through the lens of an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, to treat institutions (including their own schools) as inherently racist or sexist, and to encourage students to engage in activism. Click here for more Manhattan Institute content. These frameworks often apply across subjects and grade levels. In some states, they begin with children as young as three or four. In many states — including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and California — teachers must demonstrate mastery of CRE as a professional competency to earn or keep a teaching license. Teacher preparation programs also must conform to the same expectations to receive state approval. With CRE built into the regulatory code and standards that set the rules for teaching, the entire teacher pipeline — from teachers’ colleges to licensure to ongoing professional development — is structured to help teachers push activist education into classrooms. State lawmakers built this system. They should dismantle it. The first step: examine licensure requirements, teacher-preparation standards, professional-development mandates, teaching standards, and agency guidance. These are the channels through which ideological requirements entered the profession. But rollback is not enough. States should also establish a new core competency for teacher licensure and program approval: the ability to teach controversial issues professionally and responsibly. Most teachers receive little training in leading discussions on thorny issues, presenting competing viewpoints, or helping students think through contentious subjects. Many avoid these topics altogether, while the most ideological teachers are often the most willing to teach them. That leaves students with either silence or advocacy, neither of which prepares them for citizenship in a free society. Instead of requiring teachers to promote activism, states should insist that they create classrooms where students encounter multiple perspectives, weigh evidence, and disagree constructively. By tying that requirement to license renewal and program approval, states can make responsible teaching on controversial issues a condition of entering the profession. With a growing number of young people believing that political violence can sometimes be justified, schools have a heightened responsibility to prepare them for civil disagreement. They can’t do that if teachers are trained as activists. State lawmakers created the problem of politicized classrooms. They have the ability and the responsibility to fix it. *** This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found here. Dana Stangel-Plowe is the chief program officer at North American Values Institute.

The Daily Wire obtained police audio of a phone call a concerned mother made to law enforcement that led to the discovery of a plot to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House.  In the phone call with law enforcement, the mother of 19-year-old Tycen Proper is heard voicing concerns about her son’s stockpile of ammunition and his plan to “fight the corrupt government.” Proper was arrested last week and charged in connection with an alleged plot to unleash sniper fire on attendees of the White House UFC event.  “I don’t, we don’t even know what he’s wanting to do. He’s wanting to leave this weekend and go with a group of people to help fight the corrupt government,” Proper’s mother said in a phone call released by the Knox County Sheriff’s Department.    Credit: Knox County Sheriff’s Department “I wanted to file a report just to have it on record,” Proper’s mother said. “And I’m in Danville, so I wasn’t sure if there was somebody in Danville that was on duty that I could just talk to. I could even go down to the police station and meet them.” “I believe that we already have people en route to you,” the police dispatcher replied.  “We took all the guns and ammo out of his room … and got it off our property,” Proper’s mother said. “He just came inside, and he’s probably going to discover it’s not in his room.” An earlier call from a family member gave the Knox County Sheriff’s Department a heads-up about the situation.  “They are having some issues with their son, and I think, I don’t think anybody’s in immediate danger as in this second, but I know that she has some concerns with weapons and ammo and a particular mindset that her oldest boy is in right now,” a caller said in a police call obtained by The Daily Wire.  The incident report from the police revealed that they showed up at Proper’s home on June 10 because the mother was concerned about him “purchasing firearms and meeting random people online.” After officers arrived, Proper was admitted to a hospital and they began coordinating with federal officials on an investigation.  Proper was eventually charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, attempted murder against any officer or employee of the United States, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and receipt or transfer of a firearm used to commit a felony, according to the complaint. When authorities searched Proper’s phone, they found Signal groups “that laid out detailed plans” to carry out an attack in Washington, D.C., with intricate maps highlighting sniper locations and potential drone launch locations.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic content and language. *** This is not how I usually start an article, but stop reading if you don’t want a peek inside the demented mind of Graham Platner, the Maine man whom the Democrat Party wants to send to the Senate. Platner posted the following joke on Reddit in October 2014. Platner has scrubbed the internet of most of his social media commentary, but all of the posts on Reddit were archived by The Maine Monitor. Writing as P-Hustle, Platner responded to a prompt on Reddit asking for “the most f*cked up, jaw-dropping, offensive joke you know?” Platner responded with his version of a joke. “I was eating out my grandmother and it tasted like horse cum,” Platner wrote. “So that’s how she died…” The post, while shocking, is not surprising. Other Platner posts on the online chat forum include an admission that he feels the urge to masturbate every time he sits in a porta-potty. “I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portash*tter … that blue water smell conditioned me,” he wrote in March 2017 in a thread on nostalgic military smells. Platner, in another post, described graffiti of a penis as “beautiful,” “engorged and veiny,” and moving “towards its penetrative glory.” Platner has deleted his nearly 2,000 comments on Reddit, where sexually explicit posts were only part of the problem. He had also laid out how he “became a communist” on the forum, and praised Hamas for its military tactics, saying, “I dig it.” In another post, he said a Purple Heart recipient didn’t “deserve to live.” The Daily Wire has also reported that Platner had an account on Kik, a platform notorious for enabling sexual predators. His account, similarly named “Phustle0331,” features a profile picture of Platner in just a towel, with his phone used to cover the Nazi tattoo on his chest. The account on Kik, which has been described as a “predator’s paradise” by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, was revealed amid reports that Platner’s own wife had told his campaign that he’d exchanged sexually explicit text messages with multiple women. Platner earlier this month coasted to victory in Maine’s Democratic primary, officially beating out Maine Governor Janet Mills for the slot. He will face Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the general election, attempting to end her nearly three-decade hold on the Senate seat. Platner remains ahead in the RealClearPolitics polling average, though polling has tightened since he became the nominee. Platner did not respond to a request for comment on his Reddit post.