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Porter McNeil (Updated and comments opened)

Friday, Sep 12, 2025 - Posted by Rich Miller

[Comments are now open.]

* Porter and I went to college together a long time ago. I’ll have more next week, but you won’t find a man like him again. From Alex Gough…

After a four year battle with cancer, Rock Island County Board Member Porter McNeil passed this afternoon. He kept swimming, attending political events, serving as a Rock Island County Board member, and being a great father to James, Jack, and Ellie and husband to Mary until the very end.

“Porter’s passing leaves an irreplaceable hole in the community he loved so fiercely,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “His infectious enthusiasm and fervent dedication to his family, his friends, and to doing the right thing for the neighbors he represented should serve as a guiding light for all public officials to follow. My thoughts are with his loved ones, his children — James, Jack, Ellie, and his beloved Mary. May his memory be a blessing to us all.”

“Porter was a dear friend whom I counted on in many campaigns,” said US Senator Dick Durbin. “He knew the Quad Cities and people respected his honesty and his values. He loved Mary and his family and couldn’t wait to call and tell me Jack’s latest political adventure. I’m going to miss him.”

“Porter McNeil had a great talent for communications and tremendous passion for politics but always as a vehicle to help improve the lives of his community and hard-working people,” said David Axelrod. “He also was an unfailingly gracious man, a loving husband, proud father and a wonderful friend. I will miss him.”

“In his time as a Member of the Rock Island County Board, Porter McNeil worked tirelessly on efforts related to economic development, legislative matters, and more recently passenger rail.” said County Board Chairman Richard “Quijas” Brunk. “He had a true passion for community, and that passion and its impact will be felt for years to come. We have lost a great member of our team, our community has lost a staunch advocate, and I have lost a friend.”

“Porter was a friend to me who helped build me up as a candidate,” said State Senator Mike Halpin. “So many of my words over the years actually belonged to him, as was true for candidates of nearly every level of public office. He was our fierce defender of Democrats in the press, but most importantly he was a good man - to his constituents, to his friends, and to the family he loved.”

Porter was a gifted communicator with a bachelor’s degree from Macalester College, St. Paul Minnesota and a Master’s Degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois. He served nearly a decade working on behalf of all Illinoisans in and around the Illinois Statehouse in Springfield.

As a member of the Rock Island County Board since 2021, he was active in helping to drive community economic development efforts, as well as by volunteering with numerous local community organizations.

As a campaign consultant he worked on dozens of campaigns including serving as a communications consultant to the Democratic Party of Illinois in 2024 and Illinois Communications Director for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign in 2004. He was a familiar face in the region, having appeared on WHBF-TV’s Sunday political talk show “4 the Record” 70 times since 2016.

His personal political highlights included attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention as a Kerry Delegate to experience then state Senator Barack Obama’s epic red state/blue state speech that electrified Democrats and working with David Axelrod & Associates to end the GOP’s 30-year control of the Iowa Governor’s Mansion in 1998. McNeil was also key in the introduction of State Senator Barack Obama to the Quad Cities on October 2, 2002.

RIP, buddy.

…Adding… Porter’s family is setting up a scholarship program in his honor. Please click here to contribute. Thanks!

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A quick briefing on Ted Dabrowski’s running mate (Updated)

Friday, Sep 12, 2025 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski announced his running mate today. Her name is Carrie Mendoza, an emergency medicine physician and activist. Oddly, Mendoza didn’t speak at today’s announcement (even though Dabrowski’s mother did) and neither candidate took questions from the media. As I write this, no press release has been issued. So, we’re kinda flying blind and we decided to put together a quick look at her background.

…Adding… We just received the release. Only a brief mention of his running mate…

Joining Ted Dabrowski on the ticket is Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a 25-year ER physician, mom of three, and longtime advocate for the quality of care of patients and against the political corruption of healthcare.

* Like her husband Myles Mendoza (who helped pass the state’s now-defunct tuition tax credit program when he ran Empower Illinois), Carrie Mendoza is a school vouchers advocate.

Dabrowski and Ms. Mendoza spoke at an event this past spring sponsored by the Liberty Justice Center: “Legal landscape of trans-related issues in schools and society: Liberty Justice Center talks to a full house at Mallinckrodt”

* From Wikipedia…

FAIR in Medicine program is led by Carrie Mendoza, an advisor to Genspect and Detrans help. It attempts to distinguish “talk therapy” from other forms of conversion therapy and has opposed a Department of Homeland Security nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity.[32] FAIR made comments to the Department of Education opposing Title IX nondiscrimination protections for transgender students.[32]

FAIR in Medicine’s website is here.

* The Record Community News Group…

A novel that has been on New Trier High School’s reading list for six years drew the aim of a subset of district parents on Monday, June 7, during the monthly board of education meeting. […]

Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a Glencoe resident and New Trier Neighbors board member, was one of four speakers who referred to one scene in the book as “soft porn” and claimed it was not appropriate for the sophomore class.

* NBC News…

J.P. Leider, a University of Minnesota health policy researcher who oversaw the state’s tool to help Covid patients determine if they qualified for treatment, said that political groups may succeed in halting race-conscious policies, “but that doesn’t mean that those disparities don’t exist.”

“They’re very real, and they’re very measurable,” he said of health inequities.

Some medical professionals have pushed back on the utility of race-conscious policies in health care, saying they can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.

“I would want to teach the trainees to look at each patient as an individual, and what their unique identity is, and the unique situation going on with them,” said Dr. Carrie Mendoza, a Chicago-based physician who leads the medicine chapter for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, an advocacy group formed last year to oppose “woke ideology.” “Not lumping them into a group — that’s kind of dehumanizing.”

* More from Isabel…

Carrie Mendoza | ER doctor: Next COVID-19 fight is to flatten the bureaucracy:

* Transgender Map | Carrie D. Mendoza vs. transgender people: In an introductory video, Mendoza likened the “orthodoxy” of gender affirming care to forced sterilizations in Nazi Germany and Iran. […] Mendoza also drafted and distributed an open letter supporting Kenneth Zucker for publishing yet another ethically questionable article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior about “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” Mendoza also had study co-author J. Michael Bailey on to defend the article and Zucker. The paper was later retracted.

* Illinois Families for Public Schools | Dark money orgs on the ground in school board races in Illinois: FAIR’s Illinois chapter coordinator Carrie Mendoza is the wife of Myles Mendoza, former president of Empower Illinois, the group that led the effort to create Illinois’ voucher program (and currently benefits from administering the program as a voucher middleman org that skims millions off the top of the voucher funds they distribute). The former Illinois lobbyist for Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children (see below) Nate Hoffman is a member of FAIR’s board of advisors. They have attacked Evanston D65 on issues of race and gender as well as New Trier D203. They attended Evanston High School D202 events in the fall of 2021 to disrupt affinity group activities for parents.

* Southern Poverty Law Center | Group dynamics and division of labor within the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network: The group’s FAIR in Medicine program is led by Dr. Carrie Mendoza, who serves as an adviser to Genspect and Detrans Help – an organization that promotes therapists, doctors and detransitioners who are willing to testify before legislators and lawmakers against affirming care.[82] FAIR in Medicine also manages a “Gender Healthcare Policy Map” and attempts to distinguish “talk therapy” for transgender people from other forms of conversion therapy. Like SEGM, the group opposed a DHS nondiscrimination rule covering gender identity. FAIR, like Do No Harm, was founded to largely oppose anti-racist pedagogies in American education, and its members claim that therapists are trained to tell white patients that they are “oppressors.”[83] It has since become a key voice amplifying anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience.

* NPR Nevada | As some states ban gender-affirming care, Nevadans work to protect it: Mendoza pointed out the fact that there are trans individuals who go through gender-affirming care and later decide to de-transition. “They were feeling optimistic and good through a pathway, and when they got to the end of the pathway, which was surgery for a lot of them, they reflected, ‘Well, this actually didn’t fix some of my problems,’” Mendoza said. “I’m open minded. I want all these kids to do well, but I want to make sure that we aren’t irreparably harming them; causing sterility, or causing worse mental health issues later.”

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Trump says the National Guard will deploy to Memphis though he “would have preferred going to Chicago” (Updated)

Friday, Sep 12, 2025 - Posted by Isabel Miller

* AP…

President Donald Trump said Friday he’ll send the National Guard to Memphis to address crime concerns there with the support of the mayor and the governor.

Trump, a Republican, said on Fox News Channel “the mayor is happy” and “the governor is happy” about the pending deployment. The mayor is a Democrat, and the governor is a Republican.

He said the city is “deeply troubled” and “we’re going to fix that just like we did Washington,” where he’s sent National Guard and surged federal law enforcement.

Since sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, Trump has openly mused about sending troops to some of the nation’s most Democratic cities — including Chicago and Baltimore — claiming they are needed to crack down on crime.

* Trump’s full remarks on the Fox News Channel…

Fox and Friends: The National Guard, because they say they belong in war zones. But our city, Chicago, six people shot over the weekend, killed the weekend before that 11 more…

Trump: And that’s a good weekend.

Fox and Friends: This is happening in every major city. There’s a lunatic that’s on the street, that some Soros DA, that is allowed out. What’s going to happen?

Trump: I think maybe I’ll be the first to say it right now, again, we’re going to Memphis. Memphis is deeply troubled. And the mayor is happy, he’s a Democrat mayor, the mayor is happy, and the governor, Tennessee, the governor is happy, deeply troubled. We’re going to fix that just like we did Washington.

I would have preferred going to Chicago. I had a man and a big, the head of a big, big railroad. They’re doing a merger, and he wanted to come see me and all that stuff. And I asked him, because, you know, that’s one of the largest train companies, maybe the largest, so you can figure out who it is, okay, Union Pacific. And he was in my office, and he started off 45 years ago with the railroad. Such a great — sir, sir, I’m a railroader. That’s the kind of guy that should run it, as opposed to a Wall Street guy that destroys the railroad, but he’s good financially. And he was a very impressive guy. And I said, ‘So what do you think, where should we go next as a city? Because we’re going to 1, 2, 3, and then we’ll do a few at a time, but we’re going to straighten out the crime of these cities.’ He said, ‘Sir, Memphis would be good because he’s on the board of FedEx.’ He said, ‘When I walk one block to my hotel, they won’t allow me to do it. They put me in an armored vehicle with bulletproof glass to take me one block.’ He said, ‘It’s so terrible.’ I said, let me ask you a question. So we’re going to Memphis. I’m just announcing that now, and we’ll straighten that out.

Fox and Friends: National Guard?

Trump: National Guard and anybody else we need. And by the way, we’ll bring in the military too if we need it, but National Guard. But Memphis is — look, it’s a great music city. It’s, you know, home of Elvis and everything else. But I said to him, ‘Where else should we go? Where would you say?’ He said, ‘Sir, please do me a favor. St. Louis has been so badly hit. It’s very hard, very, very hard.’ He said, ‘Don’t lose Chicago. You’re going to lose Chicago, sir. It’s a great city. You’re going to lose Chicago.’ And then we have this ‘la Pritzker’ on television every day. All he does is hit Trump. I said, does he realize last weekend he had 11 people killed and 28 wounded, 28.

Fox and Friends: Doesn’t bother him. He says he’s got the situation handled.

Trump: And he keeps saying, we have no crime problem. The week before — he had a week, we had 72 people injured and like 11 died. But every — if he does five, like you just said, five — that’s a good week. Every weekend they’re losing many people. It’s out of control.

But when this guy, who’s a smart guy here, he head’s a big-the biggest railroad, he said the way he said it. He said, Sir, please don’t lose Chicago. You about we are about to lose Chicago. It’s a great city. You can save Chicago.

Please pardon any transcription errors.

* Washington Post…

Memphis is the second-most populous city in Tennessee, behind Nashville. Memphis has historically experienced a high crime rate, though like other major cities, it has seen a drop in crime in recent years.

“Overall crime is at a 25-year low, with robbery, burglary, and larceny also reaching 25-year lows,” the Memphis Police Department said in a news release Tuesday.

Young, the Memphis mayor, acknowledged in a statement to local media Thursday that Trump and Lee were “considering” deploying the National Guard to Memphis.

…Adding… Mayor Johnson…

Mayor Brandon Johnson Response to Trump “would have preferred” to send National Guard to Chicago

“Because of the unified opposition from community leaders and elected officials in Chicago and throughout the state, the Trump administration backed down from its threats of sending in the National Guard to Chicago. We continue to call on the federal government to send additional resources to help us continue to drive down violent crime, but we reject any military occupation of our city. The way to reduce violence is by focusing on the strategies that work: effective policing, violence prevention, and investing in communities.”

* Related…

CNBC | Trump says National Guard will deploy to Memphis next, sidestepping Chicago:

* Fox Chicago | Trump pivots, will send National Guard to Memphis instead of Chicago: Trump made the announcement during an interview on Fox News, saying he “would have preferred going to Chicago” but described the city as “hostile” with “professional agitators.” Both Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson opposed the idea of a deployment there.

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