14-Year Old Suicide Victim Was Receiving Death Threats For Being Gay
Kenneth Weishuhn, Jr., the 14-year old who died by suicide this weekend after being mercilessly bullied by classmates, was receiving death threats on his cell phone and was the subject of a Facebook hate group. Weishuhn was just a freshman at South O’Brien High School, which serves three small towns in northwest Iowa, including Primghar, Kenneth’s hometown of 909 people. School officials apparently were aware of the bullying but did not notify Kenneth’s family.
“Mom, you don’t know how it feels to be hated,” Jeannie Chambers,  Kenneth’s mother, said he told her, KTIV reports:
Kenneth Weishuhn didn’t know either, until he told his friends last month that he was gay.
“People that were originally his friends, they kind of turned on him,” said his sister Kayla Weishuhn.
Teasing started in school, according Kayla, a sophomore. She says it was the boys in her class, that bullied her brother over his sexuality.
“A lot of people, they either joined in or they were too scared to say anything,” she said.
She says they took their teases online, to websites like Facebook, creating a hate group against gays and adding Kenneth’s friends as members. However, it was only the beginning, family say he started receiving death threats from South O’Brien students on his phone.
“When I’d question him about the phone calls, like he just blew it off, so I just thought everything was ok,” said his mother.
According to Kenneth’s mother Jeannie, those South O’Brien boys were given a warning, but she was never contacted by the school. She’s unsure whether she’ll press charges against the students she says drove her son to his death.
“I really don’t want to ruin somebody else’s life, or take someone else’s son or daughter from them. But, I don’t know what it’s going to take to get it to stop,” said Chambers.
“To make someone feel so horrible about themselves, so miserable. To make them hate themselves they way my brother must have,” said his sister.
There will be a vigil in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday April 24th at 7:00 PM.
The New Civil Rights Movement, which yesterday was the first to report Kenneth Weishuhn’s suicide, noted there is a Facebook group created in his memory. It now has over 1500 members, almost twice the number of people in Kenneth’s hometown.
One entry notes, “Its sad to see how people cannot just see past a persons identity and just see them as a human,†while another reads, “You took his happiness away from him..,†and another, “No one deserves to be bullied! My sympathies to the family and friends of Kenneth! And to the kids that bullied him hope you sleep okay knowing that you drove a young man to an early fate, you should be ashamed of yourself!â€
A Facebook page which appears to be that of the same Kenneth James Weishuhn lists his nickname as Rodney. The last entry was March 30.  A tribute video, below, was published to YouTube yesterday.
A Pinterest page with Kenneth James Weishuhn’s name says, “ I love Louis Tomlinson, A lot.†One section, titled, “When I get married. (:†has several photos of same-sex couples. Another, titled, “Inspiration,†offers several “It gets better†images, and a quote from Glee star Chris Colfer:
There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.
To which Weishuhn added, “I hope so.â€
Another image reads, “Never be bullied into silence.â€
There is a video created by Kenneth’s friends, which you can see at our original story.
Watch this news report from KTIV:
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President Donald Trump is reportedly suing Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, over the publication of a story alleging he sent a “bawdy” birthday letter in 2003 to Jeffrey Epstein, the now-notorious convicted sex offender who died in 2019.
“Court records show that Trump filed a lawsuit alleging libel against Murdoch, the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, and the reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida,” CNBC reported late Friday afternoon.
Trump vehemently denied the Journal’s report and publicly threatened to sue after it was published. The Journal had reported in its story that Trump had warned he would take legal action if the story ran.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday night. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his a– off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT”
READ MORE: FBI Told to Flag Mentions of Trump in Epstein Files, Dem Says in Scathing Letter to Bondi
Image via Reuters
One thousand employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through thousands of pages of the Epstein files were instructed to flag any mentions of President Donald Trump, according to Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee.
“According to information my office received,” Senator Durbin wrote in a letter (below) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday, “you…pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel…on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” Durbin charged.
The files are from the criminal investigation into the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of child sex offenses.
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In his letter, Senator Durbin also posed a series of more than a dozen questions to Bondi. Among them:
“Have you personally reviewed all files in DOJ’s possession related to Jeffrey Epstein?”
“The records DOJ released on February 27 did not include a client list. Why did you
publicly claim on February 21 that the client list was ‘sitting on my desk right now to review’?”
“Why were personnel told to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned?”
“Please list all political appointees and senior DOJ officials involved in the decision to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
“What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?”
CNBC reported that “Durbin asked the Justice Department and FBI to explain what his office called ‘apparent discrepancies’ regarding handling of the Epstein files and findings from a Justice Department memo.”
In his four-page letter, Durbin also wrote, “in 2002, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Epstein, ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy, He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.’ Just yesterday, it was reported that the Department previously reviewed a ‘leather-bound album’ comprised of dozens of letters from Mr. Epstein’s friends in celebration of his 50th birthday in 2003.”
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“The letters were collected by Mr. Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell and included one from President Trump that allegedly ‘contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker … and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist.'”
“Despite tens of thousands of personnel hours reviewing and re-reviewing these Epstein- related records over the course of two weeks in March, it took DOJ more than three additional months to officially find there is ‘no incriminating ‘client list,’ and the memorandum with this finding includes no mention of the whistleblower or additional documents, the existence of which you publicly claimed on February 27.”
Read a copy of Senator Durbin’s letter below or at this link.
Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino have made a mess of the Epstein files.
It’s time to clear it up once and for all for the American people. pic.twitter.com/WQw13gmf1F
— Senate Judiciary Democrats 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryDems) July 18, 2025
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Image via Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after cutting 1,300 employees last week, is now ordering diplomats to not comment on foreign elections and internal affairs—limiting official communications to congratulating the declared winner.
“Rubio has instructed U.S. diplomats not to comment on the legitimacy or fairness of foreign elections, breaking with decades of American diplomatic practice,” The Daily Beast reports. In a memo, the Secretary stated that U.S. missions will no longer issue election-related statements unless there is a “clear and compelling” foreign policy reason for doing so.
“Diplomatic personnel writing official messages are instead instructed to ask themselves: ‘Would the President say this?'”
The memo, seen by Reuters, says the messages “should be brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.”
READ MORE: ‘He’s So Frustrated’: Johnson Defends Trump Over Explosive Epstein Birthday Letter
The memo makes clear, based on President Trump’s remarks, that the U.S. will “pursue partnerships with countries wherever our strategic interests align,” regardless of democratic values.
U.S. promotion of human rights, democracy, and press freedoms has traditionally been a “core foreign policy objective,” Reuters reported.
“Under Trump, the administration has increasingly moved away from the promotion of democracy and human rights, largely seeing it as interference in another country’s affairs.”
The Washington Post adds that for “decades, the United States has offered judgments on whether elections were conducted in a free or fair matter [sic], a judgment that can have significant impact in countries.”
“Scholars have accused the United States of democratic backsliding since Trump, who refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, returned to office this year.
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have defended right-wing and far-right political groups, including Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which reportedly has ties to right-wing extremists.
Secretary Rubio in May ignited a “spat” with Germany’s foreign ministry when it “hit back…after he criticized the decision to classify the Alternative for Germany party as a ‘right-wing extremist’ organization,” the Associated Press reported at the time.
READ MORE: ‘War Is Peace’: White House’s Navarro Mocked Over Claim Tariffs Are ‘Tax Cuts’
Image via Reuters
Trump Sues Murdoch Over WSJ’s Epstein Birthday Letter Story
FBI Told to Flag Mentions of Trump in Epstein Files, Dem Says in Scathing Letter to Bondi
‘Would the President Say This?’: Rubio Demands Diplomats Echo Trump
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