<p>Vikings landed on the shores of the United States in early June, and while their numbers are few, they’re dominating American pop culture this summer.</p>
<p>Team Norway and its biggest star, 6-foot-5 Erling Haaland, are having an outsize impact on American hearts — and World Cup soccer — as they dazzle fans with their on- and off-the-field antics. Haaland has been a breakout star of the World Cup as he led Norway to historic success.</p>
<p>The world has enjoyed watching Haaland and his Norway teammates gather on the field after a win and lead fans in their viral post-game celebration, the Viking row. The celebration has been such a sensation that Google created a <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/erling-haaland-celebrated-google-viking-155607179.html">celebratory animation</a> of rowing Vikings that pop up when you search “Erling Haaland.”</p>
<p>Norway’s men’s soccer team went viral before the World Cup began when they released a team photo titled “<a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/david-yarrow-the-vikings-are-coming-colour">The Vikings Are Coming</a>,” captured by renowned British Photographer David Yarrow, in early June. The team is dressed like Vikings in the photo and posed in front of a fjord filled with Viking longships, holding ancient weapons as if they were going into battle.</p>
<p>The image is serious but playful, and it foreshadowed things to come: Norway&#8217;s players were going to war on the soccer pitch, and they were going to have a great time doing it. Haaland <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cjdpd18xx5lo">reportedly</a> played a substantial role in making the team Viking photo happen. He also played a substantial role in securing Norway&#8217;s first World Cup appearance in <a href="https://www.fifa.com/en/tournaments/mens/worldcup/canadamexicousa2026/articles/norway-team-profile-history">28 years</a> and has already scored seven <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/put-every-bit-pressure-english-113000056.html">goals</a> since tournament play began.</p>
<p>Haaland, who has over <a href="https://www.instagram.com/erling/?hl=en">60 million</a> Instagram followers, is a worldwide soccer legend at age 25. In his first season with his club team, Manchester City, he helped win a prestigious <a href="https://www.mancity.com/news/mens/erling-haaland-manchester-city-and-career-stats-so-far-63916947">treble</a> of soccer titles, the Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League, in a single season. He’s been awarded the Premier League Golden Boot, for scoring the most goals of any striker in the league, three times.</p>
<p>When Norway unexpectedly beat legendary soccer favorite Brazil to reach its first World Cup quarterfinal match in the nation&#8217;s history, Haaland seemed genuinely shocked by the win in a post-match vlog <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhXZ62GERi8">posted</a> on his YouTube channel. He told his fans, “This still doesn’t feel real because it&#8217;s just so far off. I could never think of this happening, which also make its so crazy in my head that we actually managed to beat Brazil and go through.”</p>
<p>While many professional athletes are known for their ego and arrogance, Haaland comes across as humble, grateful, and playful amid astonishing success. His happy-go-lucky attitude is a part of what makes Haaland such a likable player and person.</p>
<p>“We just played football and enjoyed it,” Haaland said about the Brazil match in the vlog. “I remember I said it right before the game started, &#8216;Guys, no matter what happens, just smile and enjoy it.&#8217;”</p>
<p>No one is enjoying the World Cup as much as Haaland, who has been documenting his experiences in America on his YouTube channel. A video titled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xld5GNGVvyc">Haaland takes over America</a>!” shows him loving American culture as he tries out a southern accent, using the phrase “Y’all,” and has a blast attending a professional ice hockey game with his teammates.</p>
<p>“The national anthem was incredible. Amazing. I had goosebumps all over,” Haaland said in the video. “I never, ever expected this. Atmosphere is unreal.”</p>
<p>After scoring the winning goal against the Ivory Coast in Norway’s first knockout round game, Haaland headed to <a href="https://wildbillswestern.com/">Wild Bill&#8217;s Western Store</a> in Dallas to buy himself a cowboy hat and boots. He posted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIwcSp99PoY">10-minute video</a> of the excursion, showing him and colleagues endearingly enjoying Texas hospitality and culture. Before leaving the Texas store, Haaland purchased a shirt that says “Y’all Can Kiss My Dallas” and posted a photo of himself wearing the shirt along with a cowboy hat and boots on Instagram, with the simple caption “Howdy!”</p>
<p>The picture went viral, and Americans loved seeing Haaland&#8217;s embrace of local culture. The image is now the front image on <a href="https://wildbillswestern.com/">Wild Bill&#8217;s Western Store</a>, which thanked Haaland for the visit in a social media post, writing, “As a family-owned business, moments like these mean the world to us. Thank you for stopping by and spending time with our team.”</p>
<p>My son, who is a huge soccer fan, has been watching every video Haaland posts. I think he’s a fantastic example for him of what it looks like to work hard and be successful while not taking yourself too seriously. In the online world that is often full of narcissism and despair, Haaland’s positivity and joy are refreshing to see. They remind us all that the pursuit of excellence doesn’t have to be devoid of joy.</p>
<p>A June social media post from Haaland showed he was largely unrecognized while walking around New York City. If Norway miraculously makes it back to the area for the World Cup final, that anonymity will be impossible to replicate. Soccer-shy Americans have embraced Haaland and his team of Vikings to the extent that fans are clamoring to <a href="https://nymag.com/strategist/article/erling-haaland-hair-ties.html">buy the</a> hair ties he uses.</p>
<p>Regardless of the outcome of their quarterfinal game against England, Norway players are already winners. They have one of the best and most likable soccer players on their side, have exceeded their own expectations, and have secured the Viking row as one of soccer&#8217;s GOAT celebrations.</p>
<p>They&#8217;ve shown the world that Vikings are still warriors today — and they&#8217;re also a lot of fun.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>


Cote D’Ivoire v Norway: Round Of 32 – FIFA World Cup 2026

How One Viking Turned America Into His Biggest Fan

erling haaland

Norway

Upstream

vikings

<p>LGBTQ activists in Seattle believe a sharp influx of transgender young adults is causing a civil emergency — and they want taxpayer help.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.seattle.gov/lgbtq" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seattle LGBTQ Commission</a> asked Mayor Katie Wilson in a May 2026<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DYfRlKWm3yM/?img_index=2&amp;igsh=MWRkd2toYWwwNjdnMQ%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> letter</a> to declare a civil emergency caused by a mass influx of “transgender and gender-nonconforming” individuals relocating to the city. The commission has asked the city officials to fund cash-strapped LGBTQ+ groups providing shelter and relocation services to transgender refugees.</p>
<p>&#8220;Due to the rapid influx of 2SLGBTQIA+ persons seeking refuge in Seattle for increased safety needs, civil rights protections, and access to essential services the Seattle LGBTQ Commission formally recommends that City leaders declare a civil emergency that ensures an effective and empathetic response to protecting these internally displaced persons (IDPs) at a time of urgent crisis for our community,&#8221; states the letter.</p>
<p>Transplants are coming to Seattle from red states such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas, and Idaho &#8220;due to anti-trans legislation, threats to personal safety, and barriers to healthcare and legal recognition,&#8221; according to the letter, which lists several transgender-affirming groups  &#8220;already responding to this crisis.&#8221; The listed groups include Gender Justice League, Seattle&#8217;s LGBTQ+ Center, and Traction, a nonprofit that helps &#8220;red state refugees&#8221; relocate to the Pacific Northwest through its<a href="https://tractionpnw.org/open-arms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Project Open Arms</a> initiative.</p>
<p>&#8220;Hundreds of thousands of Two-Spirit, transgender, nonbinary, gender-diverse, and gender-nonconforming (trans+) people and their families are seeking to escape legislative persecution and violence,&#8221; states Traction&#8217;s<a href="https://tractionpnw.org/open-arms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> website</a>. &#8220;Our goal then and now is to support U.S. &#8216;transplants&#8217; – trans+ people and their loved ones displaced by violence and persecution – seeking safer, more welcoming places to live.&#8221;</p>
<p>C. Michael Woodward, executive director of Traction, told The Daily Wire it&#8217;s had more than 1600 applicants for relocation services since President Trump&#8217;s election but has only been able to help around 130 individuals move, due to resource limitations.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m 63 and transitioned nearly 30 years ago. I&#8217;ve been doing trans+ and LGBTQ+ advocacy for almost that long, too,&#8221; Woodward told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Even so, I never once imagined we&#8217;d be doing this kind of work for our community, but here we are.&#8221;</p>
<p>Woodward said the group does not work with unaccompanied minors and has not been &#8220;presented with the opportunity to work with any emancipated youth&#8221; but would &#8220;handle those on a case-by-case basis.&#8221;</p>
<p>Traction is working to build &#8220;a nationwide network of groups doing similar work in other states,&#8221; according to its <a href="https://tractionpnw.org/open-arms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>.</p>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1132095 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/megs-piece.jpeg" alt="" width="1010" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/megs-piece.jpeg 1010w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/megs-piece-300x171.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/megs-piece-768x438.jpeg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1010px) 100vw, 1010px" /></div>
<p>Screenshot from June 25, 2026, Seattle City Council Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes meeting.</p>
<p>Many of Seattle’s transgender transplants are “young adults,” according to<a href="https://www.seattle.gov/lgbtq/who-we-are" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Kody Allen</a>, co-chair of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission and a social worker at a youth homeless shelter, who spoke on a panel about 2SLGBTQIA+ Communities in Seattle at a June 25, 2026,<a href="https://www.seattlechannel.org/mayor-and-council/city-council/2026-2027-select-committee-on-federal-administration-and-policy-changes?videoid=x188271" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> city council meeting</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;In my day job, I am a program manager for a homeless shelter. We have seen a massive increase in trans&#8211;specifically&#8211;and queer young adults who are coming here from other states,&#8221; said Allen. &#8220;We are turning away 10, at least 10 young adults a night, and we are the biggest shelter in the city. And many, many, many of our clients are trans refugees who have come here.&#8221;</p>
<p>The meeting focused on how changes in federal policy have impacted local funding. Members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ panel discussed how Seattle could build long-term infrastructure to provide social services, such as housing, to the city&#8217;s growing number of transgender refugees. Allen warned groups that provide &#8220;queer&#8221; and &#8220;trans specific healthcare&#8221; are facing a funding crisis and may not be able to stay open throughout the year.</p>
<p>&#8220;If these community-based organizations that are specifically for queer people close, the impact that would have, obviously on the people who use those services, but also every other community-based organization in the city who are also experiencing decreased funding because of the federal&#8211;this federal administration&#8211;would put a huge strain on the system,&#8221; Allen stated.</p>
<p>Dominque Stephens, who was <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVsCsq_DAG_/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appointed</a> by Mayor Wilson as Seattle&#8217;s special advisor on LGBTQ+ affairs, told city council the Mayor&#8217;s office was planning to create transgender homeless shelters.</p>
<p>&#8220;We want to make sure that we&#8217;re doing this in a very intentional way,&#8221; said Stephens. &#8220;We know that in our shelter expansion, there will be a trans specific site that will be stood up.&#8221;</p>
<p>Stephens explained the mayor formed a Trans and Queer Community Stabilization Interdepartmental Team to create long-term transgender infrastructure as the group figures out &#8220;what we do in terms of folks who are migrating here.&#8221;</p>
<p>Seattle City Councilwoman <a href="https://www.seattle.gov/council/members/alexis-mercedes-rinck" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alexis Mercedes Rinck</a> said Seattle needed to &#8220;stand firm&#8221; in welcoming &#8220;queer and trans people.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Across the country we have seen intense attacks against queer and trans people, both with hostile legislation and physical violence,&#8221; said Rinck at the meeting. &#8220;So, I want to say loud and clear, while we know we have more work to do here in the city of Seattle we need to stand firm in being a welcoming city for queer and trans people.&#8221;</p>
<p>A total of<a href="https://familypolicyalliance.com/help-not-harm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 27 states</a> have passed legislation protecting minors from receiving harmful sex-rejecting medical procedures such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries.</p>
<p>Washington State took a major step towards becoming a transgender sanctuary for minors when former Governor Jay Inslee <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/washington-to-allow-shelters-to-keep-runaway-children-from-parents-if-child-seeking-transgender-surgery-abortion?row=0&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;rowType=Web+Search+Overlay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed SB 5599</a> into law in May 2023.  The law allows homeless shelters to shield runaway minors seeking transgender medical procedures without contacting their parents. International Partners for Ethical Care Inc. filed a lawsuit challenging SB 5599 in<a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67697823/international-partners-for-ethical-care-inc-v-inslee/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> August 2023</a>, arguing it violates the fundamental rights of parents. After being dismissed by a lower court, the Supreme Court announced in June 2026 that it would<a href="https://aflegal.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-america-first-legals-landmark-case-defending-parents-right-to-challenge-laws-that-hide-their-childrens-gender-transitions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> hear the case on appeal</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;SB 5599 is directed toward families in Washington state, and sets up a terrifying scenario for parents whose kids have fallen prey to gender ideology,&#8221; a representative from International Partners for Ethical Care told The Daily Wire. &#8220;A child can run away from home in Washington to seek &#8216;gender affirming care&#8217; and the state authorities or shelters where the child may be found are not required by law to notify the parents of the child&#8217;s whereabouts with any urgency.&#8221;</p>
<p>Florida, Idaho, and 14 other red states filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs. The coalition of states expressed concerns the law could impact parents across state lines, writing they &#8220;fear that their own residents whose runaway children cross state lines may be harmed by Washington’s law&#8221; in the<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-840/396471/20260217151332802_Intl%20Partners%20v.%20Ferguson%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20for%20Filing.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> brief</a>.</p>
<p>International Partners for Ethical Care agreed the law could impact parents nationwide, telling The Daily Wire, &#8220;Nothing in the law&#8217;s language that would prevent it from being applied to children who arrive in Washington from other states.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Daily Wire asked the Seattle LGBTQ Commission and Mayor Wilson&#8217;s office for information on how many of the transgender refugees were 18 and under but did not receive a comment. Mayor Wilson did not provide any additional information on the transgender shelter expansion project discussed at the city council meeting.</p>


Scenes from the Seattle Pride Parade, Sunday, June 25, 2017. (AP Photo/seattlepi.com, Genna Martin)

Massive Influx Of Transgender Refugees Is Causing ‘Civil Emergency’ In Leftist City

LGBT

Parental Rights

Seattle

Transgender

Washington State

<p><i>This article is part of </i><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Upstream</i></a><i>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>
<p><i>***</i></p>
<p>You&#8217;ve probably seen the viral slogan that pays homage to one of the finest displays of all-American spunk in our history.</p>
<p>The phrase &#8220;Americans: We&#8217;ll cross a frozen river to kill you in your sleep on Christmas. Not kidding. We&#8217;ve done it before&#8221; can be found on<a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/1629178171/americans-well-cross-a-frozen-river-to?gpla=1&amp;gao=1&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_custom2=21500569332&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAjw0o3SBhBVEiwAh28-jZnPcliDgHl8lsUJQFL77m-64UirfGjHarQC7XsD1iWXBKLzu-ZFIRoCOEsQAvD_BwE_k_&amp;utm_content=go_21500569332_164907277083_707558291651_pla-1231918577499_c__1629178171_560099097&amp;utm_campaign=shopping_us_-home_and_living_d&amp;gad_source=4&amp;gad_campaignid=21500569332&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRL-ma_EFwdA9hs_yE2WJ3eEL&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjw0o3SBhBVEiwAh28-jZnPcliDgHl8lsUJQFL77m-64UirfGjHarQC7XsD1iWXBKLzu-ZFIRoCOEsQAvD_BwE&amp;dd_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> mugs</a>, t-shirts, and memes. The humorous mantra describes when General George Washington led his struggling army across the Delaware River in the freezing cold to launch a surprise attack on Hessian troops stationed in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night in 1776. It was a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War, when the future of our fledgling nation was grim and unclear.</p>
<p>In the weeks leading up to that surprise attack, Washington and his men experienced a <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/fort-lee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">series of defeats</a> from the British in New York, forcing the Continental Army to retreat across New Jersey onto the shores of the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The Continental Army was demoralized, greatly outnumbered by the British, and in desperate need of new enlistments.</p>
<p>In a letter to his brother written on<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0299" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> December 18, 1776</a>, Washington described how the British “pushed us from place to place till we were obliged to cross the Delaware [into Pennsylvania] with less than 3,000 men fit for duty&#8221; and shared his fears of failure.</p>
<p>“If every nerve is not strained to recruit the New Army with all possible Expedition I think the game is pretty near up,” Washington wrote. “We are at present in a very disaffected part of the Provence, and between you and me I think our affairs are in a very bad way.”</p>
<p>The brutal cold of Pennsylvania&#8217;s winter was rolling in, and Washington’s men<a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/so-hard-a-winter" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> lacked</a> food, shelter, and shoes. Washington and his army weren&#8217;t receiving needed support from “disaffected&#8221; locals who focused on their own lives and remained apathetic toward America’s campaign for independence.</p>
<p>“These people would yield to, but not rally to, whoever held power. They had no strong political attachments and preferred to go about their daily lives with as little disruption as possible,” describes Kimberly McCarty on the Washington Crossing Historic Park<a href="https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/how-did-bucks-county-feel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> website</a>.</p>
<div id="attachment_1124299" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1124299" class="wp-image-1124299 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-768x513.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DSC_9543-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1124299" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Meg Brock</p></div>
<p>The effort for independence needed a sizable morale boost if the nation was to survive. To garner support for the war effort and encourage the Continental Army,<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Paine" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Thomas Paine</a>, an English-American revolutionary writer, published the first pamphlet in a series called “<a href="https://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/war/text2/painecrisis1776.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The American Crisis</a>” on December 19, 1776.</p>
<p>“These are the times that try men&#8217;s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman,” Paine wrote. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It is dearness only that gives everything its value.”</p>
<p>Washington was so moved by Paine’s words that he had “The American Crisis”<a href="https://www.amrevmuseum.org/read-the-revolution/the-american-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> read</a> to his troops in Bucks County on December 24, 1776, as they prepared for the surprise attack on Trenton.</p>
<p>The next day, while others celebrated the merriment of Christmas, Washington gathered his army and began crossing the Delaware River during a harsh winter storm. Unlike the “disaffected,” these men were willing to put aside their own comfort, safety, and livelihoods to secure American independence. It took hours to get all of the soldiers across the ice-filled river before marching nine miles to Trenton in the early morning for a surprise attack.</p>
<div id="attachment_1124301" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1124301" class="wp-image-1124301 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-768x513.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-6-of-8-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1124301" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Meg Brock</p></div>
<p>I grew up near Washington’s Crossing and have walked the<a href="https://www.wcpa-nj.com/continental" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> trails</a> on the Jersey side of the Delaware River that Washington and his men may have taken on their journey to Trenton. It&#8217;s hard to even imagine how uncomfortable, dangerous, and difficult that trek must have been during a winter storm without proper shoes or clothing.</p>
<p>Against all odds, Washington’s army had a miraculous victory in Trenton. It was a turning point in the war that changed the course of our nation.</p>
<p>​Washington’s Crossing became an iconic symbol of the American spirit when it was immortalized by the German-American painter<a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?artist=Emanuel+Leutze" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Emanuel Leutze</a>. Leutze’s painting of Washington and his men heroically weaving through chunks of ice to cross the Delaware River has been a fixture in popular culture for 175 years. The painting is currently hung at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but you don’t have to travel to New York City to see its likeness. It can be found on the back of a New Jersey State<a href="https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coins-and-medals/circulating-coins/quarter/50-state-quarters/new-jersey" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Quarter</a>, is featured in TV shows, and was recently<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DSdKO4dD69D/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> recreated</a> by legendary Philadelphia baseball mascot the Philly Phanatic.</p>
<p>The huge chunks of ice have long been a controversial element of the painting, as some believe their addition was historically<a href="https://stories.state.gov/washington-crossing-the-delaware/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> inaccurate</a>. However, chunks of ice have been seen floating along the Delaware River at least twice in the past decade. In 2018, I personally witnessed the<a href="https://newjersey.news12.com/chunks-of-ice-on-delaware-river-prompt-flood-warnings-37270364" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> boulders of ice</a> floating in the Delaware River when Southeastern Pennsylvania was caught up in a polar vortex. The ice returned to the<a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/shipment-salt-philly-stuck-delaware-river-ice/4345622/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Delaware River</a> in January 2026 during another deep freeze.</p>
<p>There are<a href="https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/winter-weather-challenge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> firsthand accounts</a> that the Delaware River was filled with ice during Washington&#8217;s crossing, but we&#8217;ll never really know exactly what the Delaware River looked like that night. We do know that in the midst of harrowing circumstances, Washington and his men provided one of the greatest examples of grit and the American spirit our nation has seen.</p>
<p>Historians believe that no soldiers died the night of Washington’s crossing; all miraculously had safe passage across the Delaware River to New Jersey. But an unknown number of soldiers<a href="https://www.washingtoncrossingpark.org/park/soldiers-graves/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> died</a> during the Continental Army’s Bucks County encampment from disease and previous injuries. A cemetery dedicated to these fallen soldiers is located four miles from Washington Crossing Historical Park.</p>
<div id="attachment_1124303" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1124303" class="wp-image-1124303 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-768x513.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/PA-8-of-9-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1124303" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Meg Brock</p></div>
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<p>Their graves are a reminder that from our nation&#8217;s very beginning, our freedom has been secured through the extraordinary sacrifices of everyday people. We are forever in debt to those who put aside their own comforts and safety for the betterment of future generations.</p>
<p>If you’re ever in Philadelphia, take the 45-minute drive northeast to visit the site of Washington’s crossing. You no longer have to get into a boat to cross the Delaware; you can drive your car across on a metal bridge and view the old trees and grassy embankments that line the Delaware River. If you visit on Christmas Day, you can watch a group of local historians perform a reenactment of the crossing. It&#8217;s a peaceful, beautiful place, rich in history, that reminds us all that a few individuals with the courage of their convictions can change the course of history.</p>
<p>Benjamin Franklin famously warned America is “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Freedom is a fragile gift, and the apathy of the &#8220;disaffected&#8221; has always been its silent adversary.</p>
<p>As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, may we follow the example of liberty-loving patriots who’ve gone before us. May we commit ourselves to employing the gift of our citizenship and seek out opportunities to serve our families, communities, and country as we safeguard the integrity of our constitutional republic.</p>
<p>Future generations are counting on us. We can&#8217;t let them down.</p>
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Washington Crossing The Delaware by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

George Washington’s Bravery Reminds Us America Is Worth Fighting For

America 250

Freedom

George Washington

<p>A notorious California Democrat who is looking to fill Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s congressional seat is again supporting legislation that protects sexual predators who commit crimes against children.</p>
<p>If passed into law, California&#8217;s AB-2691 would prohibit individuals convicted of sexual assault or human trafficking from holding public office in California. But thanks to Sen. Scott Wiener, an amendment was added to carve out an exception for those who committed crimes against children.</p>
<p>The bill unanimously passed through the California Assembly and was referred to the <a href="https://selc.senate.ca.gov/members">Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee</a>, where it was amended to provide protections for convicted pedophiles. The committee, which is chaired by Wiener, <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB2691">amended the bill</a> to clarify that the term &#8220;sexual assault&#8221; does not include several violations of California&#8217;s <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&amp;division=&amp;title=9.&amp;part=1.&amp;chapter=5.&amp;article=">penal code</a> involving the sexual assault of minors.</p>
<p>At a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAV_owqdREs">June 30</a> hearing on the bill, Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, stated that the amendments were so shocking that he and his colleagues couldn&#8217;t believe they were real.</p>
<p>&#8220;When we read the June 24th amendment to AB 2691, our honest reaction was that it could not be real. We assumed we&#8217;d misread it. We sat in our office and tried to imagine how anyone could stand up and defend it. So I&#8217;m here today, generally hoping someone will tell us why crimes against children are being carved out of this bill,&#8221; Burt stated.</p>
<p>&#8220;Barring people convicted of felony sexual assault and human trafficking from holding public office is good policy. We want to support the bill, but the amendments — we were told this committee chair demanded — exempt convictions for felony sodomy, oral copulation, and sexual penetration against children.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wiener, who is <a href="https://www.scottwiener.com/meet-scott">running</a> for Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s congressional seat, has a history of pushing legislation that protects sex offenders. In 2019, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/newsom-signs-bill-that-could-alter-sex-offender-registration-for-gay-sex-with-minors">Wiener</a> introduced a bill, which is now <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB145">California law</a>, that shields young adults from mandatory registration onto the sex offender registry if the sexually victimized minor is at least 14 and within 10 years of their age. Wiener is known for his LGBTQ+ activism and has spearheaded multiple bills in the California Senate that push <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-scott-wiener-nancy-pelosis-likely-replacement-probably-thinks-youre-a-bigot?author=Susannah+Luthi&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Meet+Scott+Wiener%3A+Nancy+Pelosi%E2%80%99s+Likely+Replacement+Probably+Thinks+You%E2%80%99re+A+Bigot">transgender policies</a> into state law.</p>
<p><a href="https://senate.ca.gov/sd37">Senator Steven Choi</a>, the Republican Vice Chair of the <a href="https://selc.senate.ca.gov/members">Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee</a>, said at the hearing that he &#8220;could no longer in good conscience support&#8221; AB-2691 because the bill &#8220;excludes heinous crimes like sodomy of a minor or sexual penetration of a minor.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;I supported this bill but I now believe that this bill must be opposed because of the absurd message that it sends — namely that it&#8217;s okay to have pedophiles and the child groomers in elected office. Until the highness of crimes involving minors are restored in the definition of a sexual assault under this bill, I will not be able to in good conscience support this bill,&#8221; stated Choi.</p>
<p>Wiener responded to Choi&#8217;s comments by defending the amended bill, claiming those who opposed the changes were doing so due to &#8220;pure politics and pure political cynicism.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been in politics a long time, and every time I think I&#8217;ve seen the height of cynicism in politics, there are some people who manage to set a new world record in political cynicism,&#8221; Wiener stated.</p>
<p>Wiener voted in support of AB-2691, which <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB2691">passed</a> the committee with the pedophile protections in place in a 4-1 vote.</p>
<p>At the same hearing, Wiener openly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dems-kill-bill-to-ban-sex-offenders-from-public-office?author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Dems+Kill+Bill+To+Ban+Sex+Offenders+From+Public+Office">opposed</a> AB-2753, a bill that would prohibit anyone on the sex offender registry from holding public office.</p>
<p>&#8220;I will be voting no on this bill and recommending that the committee vote no,&#8221; Wiener stated and explained that California&#8217;s sex offender registry was &#8220;extreme and broken&#8221; before he and other legislators started &#8220;fixing it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wiener recommended changes be made to the bill in alignment with analysis provided by the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments, which states the bill creates concerns for members of the LGBTQ+ community and does not provide flexibility for changes in law over time in determining what constitutes a sexual offense.</p>
<p>&#8220;The bill does not make allowances for changes in law over time, so things that may have been sex offenses in the past, such as consensual sex between two men, would preclude a person from running for office under this bill,&#8221; states the <a href="///Users/meganbrock/Downloads/202520260AB2753_Senate%20Elections%20And%20Constitutional%20Amendments.pdf">analysis</a>.</p>
<p>Wiener did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s request for comment.</p>


San Francisco Pride 2026

Nancy Pelosi’s Would-Be Successor Makes Another Move To Protect Pedophiles

California

Children

Scott Wiener

<div>Members of a historic female-only society are being warned they could violate human rights law if they vote to exclude &#8220;transgender&#8221; males from their ranks.</div>
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<div>Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) are voting on a resolution that would amend the group’s bylaws to clarify that only natural-born women can join the female-only society at its national meeting this week in Washington, D.C.</div>
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<div>&#8220;The proposed resolution would blatantly violate the D.C. Human Rights Law,&#8221; states a legal analysis addressed to voting members from the DAR Executive Committee. &#8220;Refusing admission to transgender women facially discriminates against them based on gender identity.&#8221;</div>
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<div>Gender identity is a term transgender activists use to describe a person&#8217;s feelings about their sex. The DAR&#8217;s headquarters are in Washington, D.C.</div>
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<div><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1123309 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1-433x576.jpg" alt="" width="433" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1-433x576.jpg 433w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1-226x300.jpg 226w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1-768x1021.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1-1155x1536.jpg 1155w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5342-1.jpg 1179w" sizes=" (max-width: 433px) 100vw, 433px" /></div>
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<div>DAR allows <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daughters-of-the-american-revolution-chapters-plead-with-trump-to-save-org-from-trans-radicals">men who believe they are women</a> to join the historic female-only society, which prompted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-daughters-of-the-american-revolution-could-declare-independence-from-woke?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Daughters+Of+The+American+Revolution+Could+Declare+Independence+From+Woke">local chapters</a> to put forward the resolution clarifying that only natural-born women could join the society. “The term ‘woman’ shall be understood to clearly mean a woman who was born female, and therefore, individuals who were born male shall not be eligible for membership; transgender women shall not be eligible for membership,” the proposed resolution states, according to a document reviewed by The Daily Wire.</div>
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<div>The Daily Wire obtained an internal memo and legal analysis of the resolution distributed by the organization&#8217;s Executive Committee to voting members of DAR. The memo was dated June 19 — days before members would vote to decide if DAR&#8217;s future will remain exclusively female. The Executive Committee wrote it felt an &#8220;obligation&#8221; to provide educational information on the proposed resolution, warning it would &#8220;prohibit transgender women from joining the DAR,&#8221; according to the memo.</div>
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<div>&#8220;At the 135th Continental Congress, voting members will consider a resolution submitted by a group of DAR chapters to prohibit transgender women from joining the DAR,&#8221; states the memo. &#8220;The National Board of Management has an obligation to ensure that members voting on consequential matters have access to information necessary to fully exercise that responsibility.&#8221;</div>
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<div>The DAR Executive Committee called upon <a href="https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/samuel-r-bagenstos">Professor Samuel Bagenstos</a>, a professor of law at the University of Michigan with a <a href="https://www.michigandaily.com/news/government/domestic-policy-corps-and-out-public-host-supreme-court-civil-rights-litigator/">history</a> of involvement in LGBTQ+ litigation, to provide members with legal analysis of the &#8220;risks this resolution would create&#8221; for DAR.</div>
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<div>&#8220;I worked on many regulations and initiatives involving the rights of transgender individuals,&#8221; Bagenstos wrote in his legal analysis.</div>
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<div>Bagenstos served in the Biden administration from January 2021 to December 2024. He served as General Counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from June 2022 to December 2024, as it made <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-biden-admins-scramble-to-find-data-to-support-its-pro-trans-foster-care-reform">radical moves</a> to push transgenderism onto children. Bagenstos notes in his <a href="https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/samuel-r-bagenstos">biography</a> that he drafted and issued major rules on issues such as &#8220;the treatment of <span class="caps">LGBTQ</span>+ kids in the foster care system.&#8221;</div>
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<div><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1123313 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5343-481x576.jpg" alt="" width="481" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5343-481x576.jpg 481w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5343-250x300.jpg 250w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5343-768x920.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5343.jpg 1179w" sizes=" (max-width: 481px) 100vw, 481px" /></div>
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<div>The Executive Committee told DAR members informed decision-making is &#8220;best served when voting members have access to relevant information and expert analysis&#8221; and that Bagenstos&#8217; legal analysis of the resolution was being distributed &#8220;in full and without modification,&#8221; according to the internal memo.</div>
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<div>The legal analysis from Bagenstos strongly suggested DAR will face harsh consequences if it adopts the position that men cannot be women.</div>
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<div>“I have reviewed the proposed resolution that would introduce a requirement to bar transgender women from admission to membership in the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In my legal opinion, implementing the proposed resolution would expose the National Society to significant risk of being found in violation of the District of Columbia Human Rights Law,” Bagenstos wrote in the opening paragraph of the legal analysis. &#8220;If found in violation, the National Society could be required to pay damages to those excluded from membership. More significantly, it would likely lose both its D.C. tax exemption and any licenses or permits to operate Constitution Hall.&#8221;</div>
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<div>The three page legal analysis provided by Bagenstos concluded with a strong message to members that the adoption of the female-only resolution would &#8220;very likely&#8221; have dire financial consequences for the organization.</div>
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<div>“The proposed resolution would very likely expose the National Society to liability for damages and injunctive relief—as well as the revocation of business licenses and tax-exempt status–under D.C. law,” wrote Bagenstos.</div>
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<div>Bagenstos did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.</div>
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<div>Founded in 1890, the DAR aimed to give women the same opportunities as men to “promote Historic Preservation, Education, and Patriotism” in the United States. Throughout its more than 130-year history, DAR has welcomed over a million members, <a href="https://www.dar.org/national-society/about-dar/did-you-know" target="_blank" rel="noopener">supported</a> American efforts in three major wars, and continues to <a href="https://www.dar.org/outreach/patriotism/military-support-service-veterans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">serve</a> active-duty military members and veterans, as described on its website.</div>
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<div>The Daughters of the American Revolution did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.</div>


Rally for Transgender Equality

One Of America’s Most Iconic Women’s Groups Is Pushing Members To Allow Biological Males To Join

Daughters of the American Revolution

Women's Rights

<div>
<p><i>This article is part of </i><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Upstream</i></a><i>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>America is currently gripped by a nationwide epidemic with no sign of slowing down: Millions of Americans have caught &#8220;FIFA fever.&#8221; Symptoms of this joyful &#8220;infection&#8221; include sporting patriotic gear, high-fiving strangers, and an uncontrollable urge to chant &#8220;USA&#8221; in public.</p>
<p>Across the country, Americans are gathering in backyards, sports bars, and FIFA Fan Festivals to support the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team in its quest to become the first U.S. men’s team to win the World Cup. The team&#8217;s opening match drew a record-breaking <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2026/06/17/telemundo-fox-set-us-soccer-audience-record-with-us-paraguay/?publicationSource=newsletters&amp;issue=6a3275f8c2aa6f334e57bd33&amp;utm_source=sbj&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=edition_morningbuzz">27.5 million viewers</a>, making it the most-watched soccer game in <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/soccer/the-usmnt-paraguay-game-was-the-most-watched-soccer-broadcast-in-us-history/ar-AA25Sodz?apiversion=v2&amp;domshim=1&amp;noservercache=1&amp;noservertelemetry=1&amp;batchservertelemetry=1&amp;renderwebcomponents=1&amp;wcseo=1">U.S. television history</a>.</p>
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<div id="attachment_1121609" style="width: 777px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1121609" class="wp-image-1121609 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-767x576.jpg" alt="" width="767" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-767x576.jpg 767w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-768x577.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-1536x1154.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/IMG_5143-2048x1539.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 767px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1121609" class="wp-caption-text">Fans gather at the Atlanta FIFA Fan Festival. Photo by Meg Brock.</p></div>
<p>The International Federation of Association Football World Cup has returned to American soil for the first time in over 30 years, and 11 U.S. cities, alongside Mexico and Canada, are hosting matches from June 11 to July 19. Thousands of soccer fans visiting the U.S. for the first time have been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-soccer-fans-are-discovering-something-many-americans-forgot">delighted</a> by American hospitality, culture, and culinary delicacies such as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/world-cup-travelers-overwhelm-tsa-with-beloved-american-condiment?author=Trinity+Gentry&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=World+Cup+Travelers+Overwhelm+TSA+With+Beloved+American+Condiment">ranch dressing</a>.</p>
<p>Over the past two weeks, 48 countries have been competing in the group stage of the World Cup tournament. If you are unfamiliar with how the tournament works, teams are divided into groups of four that compete against each other over a series of three games. Teams receive three points for every win and one point for a draw, and the top two point-getters in each group automatically move on to the next stage of the competition — a 32-team single-elimination tournament. An additional eight teams with the most points among the groups will round out the teams competing for the world title.</p>
<p>The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team has already won its first two games, won its group, and secured a place in the knockout round. This is the first time a U.S. Men’s soccer team has won its group <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/live-blogs/world-cup-today-live-updates-news-results-latest/24EPcmy9Uk4B/jnUCPlFY4lbJ/?eafs_enabled=false">since 2010</a> and the first time an American men&#8217;s team has won two games in a row <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/06/20/usmnt-wins-group-d-world-cup-pulisic-injury-1930/">since 1930</a> — the year the World Cup began. The team accomplished this while one of its biggest stars, Christian Pulisic (who has been nicknamed &#8220;Captain America&#8221;), was out with an injury.</p>
<p>The U.S. has one of the most inspiring men’s soccer teams in decades, and if you&#8217;re not cheering for America&#8217;s team, you&#8217;re missing out. The team will have its final group stage game on June 25, and now is the perfect time to jump on the Team USA bandwagon.</p>
<p>World Cup excitement is sweeping through the U.S., and more than 2 million people have already visited FIFA Fan Festivals — a celebration of all things soccer held in World Cup host cities. The festivals, most of which are free to attend, broadcast World Cup games on huge screens, giving fans a central place to gather, cheer, and have an in-person soccer experience without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for a game-day ticket.</p>
<p>The FIFA Fan Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/worldcup/2026/06/23/atlanta-hosts-most-fans-at-world-cup-fan-festival-heres-whats-inside/90655772007/">almost 275,000 visitors</a>, including my family, in the first 10 days of the World Cup. My husband and son are huge soccer fans, and on Friday, we drove to Atlanta to watch the U.S. Men’s soccer team defeat Australia.</p>
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<div id="attachment_1121613" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1121613" class="wp-image-1121613 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-768x513.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9712-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1121613" class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Meg Brock.</p></div>
<p>I felt the patriotic energy as soon as we arrived in Atlanta, which was decked out in FIFA signage and imagery of top soccer players. My family and I were dressed head to toe in Team USA attire, and fellow USA fans were already greeting us with “USA” cheers while we parked our car.</p>
<p>We arrived at the FIFA Fan Fest entrance at 1 p.m., two hours before the U.S. played, and hordes of people were already lined up to get in. When the gates opened, large swaths of the crowd made a beeline for the Bank of America bracelet booth, which had gone viral for giving free bracelets with unique FIFA charms. Visitors have reportedly waited in line for up to four hours to snag one of the bracelets, and when we watched, the line swelled to hundreds of people in just minutes. It&#8217;s easy to understand why FIFA Fan Festival bracelets are so popular: They are cute, they&#8217;re free, and you can’t buy them in a store. You have to attend the event to get a bracelet, and there is something particularly cool about that.</p>
<p>While entrance into the festival is free, you are only allowed to bring in water, and the available food and drink were pricey. A round of Coca-Cola for my family of four cost over $26. But it was worth the price to have the peak Americana moment of drinking a cold Coca-Cola (which originated in Atlanta) in the summer heat, decked out in patriotic gear, while watching America’s team play a World Cup game on home turf. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment I will always remember, and I hope my kids remember it too.</p>
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<div id="attachment_1121615" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1121615" class="wp-image-1121615 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-768x513.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/MEG_9687-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1121615" class="wp-caption-text">An aerial view of the Atlanta FIFA Fan Festival. Photo by Meg Brock.</p></div>
<p>My family enjoyed walking around and getting caught up in the World Cup excitement, and it was wonderful to see so many Americans proudly dressed in red, white, and blue. At the start of the game, the crowd of thousands gathered in front of the main stage stood and sang along to the national anthem, united in its support of Team USA.</p>
<p>It was good for the soul to be a part of that moment. The online world is filled with constant reminders of the sharp ideological and political divisions within our nation, but sports have the power to bring us together and remind us of our shared humanity. Getting offline and getting out into the real world to cheer for America’s team reminded me of how hospitable, kind, and fun the majority of Americans are.</p>
</div>
<p>Our family could have just watched the game in the comfort of our own home, but it was far more memorable and meaningful to scream and chant &#8220;USA&#8221; alongside thousands of fellow Americans.</p>
<p>Even if you don&#8217;t like soccer, I wholeheartedly recommend you put on your most patriotic shirt, jump on the U.S. soccer bandwagon, and find somewhere to root for our home team alongside fellow Americans.</p>
<div>
<p>You don&#8217;t have to love soccer to love rooting for America. But be careful, FIFA fever is highly contagious, and you might just fall in love with the beautiful game.</p>
</div>


USA v Australia: Group D – FIFA World Cup 2026

When Was The Last Time America Felt Like This?

All American Patriotism

America

World Cup

<p>Advocacy groups are warning that a radical new bill could make it easier for gender-confused children to legally cut parents out of their lives.</p>
<p>The California proposal, <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1967" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AB 1967,</a> would allow minors to initiate legal emancipation from their parents while living in residential facilities like drug rehabilitation programs, youth shelters, and private alternative boarding schools. The bill — which the California Assembly passed in May, and which is <a href="https://fastdemocracy.com/bill-search/ca/2025-2026/bills/CAB00036846/#billtexts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">moving through</a> the state senate — is just the latest instance of California legislation that allows minors to make major decisions without parental consent by essentially electing to become wards of the state.</p>
<p>&#8220;This bill is part of a larger agenda designed to permit children to circumvent their parents&#8217; refusal to consent to sex-rejecting interventions,&#8221; Erin Friday, a parental rights advocate and President of Our Duty USA, told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Children cannot obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries without parental consent, but if a child enters foster care, he is subject to the<a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=16001.9.&amp;lawCode=WIC" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Foster Care Bill of Rights</a>. These rights guarantee every foster child both affirmation of a declared transgender identity and access to sex-rejecting interventions as enforceable statutory rights.&#8221;</p>
<p>Friday pointed to how AB 1967 builds on a bill California passed in 2023, <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB665" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AB 665</a>, which allows minors ages 12 and over to receive treatment at residential shelters without parental consent if a professional deems them &#8220;mature enough to participate intelligently in the outpatient services or residential shelter services.&#8221; Language in the bill claims a high percentage of LGBTQ+ youth reported that getting &#8220;permission from their parents&#8221; was a &#8220;barrier to accessing mental health services.&#8221;</p>
<p>California minors can also initiate the emancipation process by alleging they&#8217;ve been <a href="https://www.childwelfare.gov/resources/definitions-child-abuse-and-neglect-california/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emotionally</a> abused by their parents.</p>
<p>&#8220;Emotional abuse claims against a parent who is raising his gender-dysphoric child as his or her sex are sufficient to place the child into foster care,&#8221; Friday told The Daily Wire. &#8220;California has been systematically passing laws to ensure that children have a simple pathway to override their parents’ decisions, to obtain access to gender interventions.&#8221;</p>
<p>Transgender activists <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-harris-hhs-consulted-activist-who-said-parents-should-be-prosecuted-for-transphobia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">believe</a> not affirming a child&#8217;s gender identity is a form of emotional abuse. This idea was supported by the California legislature in 2023 when it passed a <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB957" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bill</a> that explicitly stated parental affirmation of a minor&#8217;s gender identity was essential to the child&#8217;s &#8220;health, safety, and welfare.&#8221; After significant public outcry, the bill was vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AB-957-Veto-Message.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clarified</a> in a statement that existing California law already views parental affirmation of a child&#8217;s gender identity as a vital part of their health and safety.</p>
<p>Greg Burt, vice president of <a href="https://www.californiafamily.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California Family Council,</a> says California&#8217;s ambiguous definition of emotional abuse raises concerns over how AB 1967 could be applied to parents who affirm a child&#8217;s true sex rather than their transgender identity.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are ultimately concerned that the legislature believes if you&#8217;re not affirming, that you are causing psychological harm to your own child,&#8221; Burt told The Daily Wire. &#8220;We are hyper-concerned when we see bills making it easier for kids to emancipate themselves from parents — make it easy for them to run away and make it easy for them to take away parental rights if they don&#8217;t find the parent affirming. This bill is just pushing that envelope.&#8221;</p>
<p>Under AB 1967, if a child residing in a safe, residential facility alleges parental abuse or neglect, it will trigger a <a href="https://www.childwelfare.gov/resources/use-safety-and-risk-assessment-child-protection-cases-california/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">safety assessment</a> of the custodial parent&#8217;s home. Authorities could conduct the assessment without notifying parents or physically visiting their home, Our Duty USA explained in a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing AB 1967.</p>
<p>&#8220;Parents do not receive any notice that a home assessment is planned or occurring. The &#8216;home assessment&#8217; can legally be completed based on the child&#8217;s statements alone, without any physical visit to the parents&#8217; home, and without the parents&#8217; knowledge,&#8221; states the letter reviewed by The Daily Wire.</p>
<p>&#8220;The bill contains no exemption for minors in parent-arranged placements, no minimum age floor within the dependency framework, and puts parents and children at odds. This bill empowers (encourages) children to make claims whether founded in falsehoods against their parents, when there is no indicia of abuse or neglect, outside of being placed in a facility the child opposes. This is part of the movement to permit &#8216;children&#8217; to choose their own families if they do not agree with their parents.&#8221;</p>
<p>The California Family Council shared similar concerns in a letter to the California Senate Judiciary Committee.</p>
<p>&#8220;As amended, the bill would allow a minor or a minor&#8217;s attorney to submit an affidavit alleging parental abuse or neglect by mail, facsimile, or email,&#8221; the letter states. &#8220;They accelerate state proceedings concerning a family without adding a single corresponding protection for parents. The bill is silent on whether parents must even be notified that their home is the subject of a mandated safety assessment.&#8221;</p>
<p>Friday told The Daily Wire the bill is of national concern because what happens legislatively in California rarely stays in California.</p>
<p>&#8220;California laws are routinely duplicated by other states once California shows them the way,&#8221; Friday told The Daily Wire.</p>


GettyImages-2267707696 copy

Radical Bill Will Make It Easier For ‘Trans’ Kids To Cut Legal Ties With Parents

<p>The federal government is suing an infamous transgender medical activist group and alleging it has deceived the public about the harms of child sex changes to make a profit.</p>
<p>The Federal Trade Commission announced it&#8217;s suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) over allegations the group made &#8220;false and unsubstantiated claims&#8221; that made it possible for medical providers to &#8220;sell&#8221; child sex-change interventions to the public, according to a <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/06/ftc-states-sue-world-professional-association-transgender-health-over-deceptive-claims-regarding-treatment-children">press release</a>.</p>
<p>“Today, the FTC filed a lawsuit against WPATH alleging that the organization made false and unsubstantiated claims regarding the necessity, effectiveness, and safety of puberty blockers, hormones and sex-change surgeries,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a press release. “Children, but especially their parents, must have complete and truthful information when making decisions to purchase medical services.&#8221;</p>
<p>Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas are also named plaintiffs in the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/WPATH-Complaint-Redacted.pdf">lawsuit</a>, which alleges WPATH has &#8220;deceived many consumers&#8221; into believing its highly influential medical guidance, called the Standards of Care version 8 (SOC-8), was based on strong scientific evidence. Health care systems, governments, and health insurers have used the SOC-8 to claim pediatric medical transition services are &#8220;medically necessary,&#8221; and fueled the rapid growth of the child sex-change industry, while WPATH failed to properly disclose the harms of child sex-change interventions.</p>
<p>&#8220;The success of WPATH’s systematic efforts to expand eligibility for transition services to children in order to profit its members is difficult to overstate. Through the SOC and its other efforts, WPATH has created and currently sustains a lucrative industry of pediatric medical transition services,&#8221; states the lawsuit. &#8220;Between 2017 and 2021, the number of children who were diagnosed yearly with distress about their sex traits in the U.S. nearly tripled from around 15,000 in 2017 to about 42,000 in 2021.&#8221;</p>
<p>The lawsuit notes that WPATH’s membership is predominantly made up of healthcare providers who profit from gender-confused children receiving harmful sex-change interventions.</p>
<p>Kurt Miceli, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire he applauds the action taken by Chairman Ferguson.</p>
<p>&#8220;We applaud Chairman Ferguson for taking decisive action against the engine of the transgender industrial machine, WPATH,&#8221; Miceli told The Daily Wire. &#8220;By falsely portraying pediatric gender transition as a lifesaving intervention, this activist organization promoted a narrative that irreversible, life-altering procedures were the only viable option for gender-confused children.&#8221;</p>
<p>WPATH&#8217;s recommendations that children receive irreversible medical interventions are based on low-quality scientific evidence and deceptive practices, according to the lawsuit. WPATH disregarded scientific protocols, was influenced by politics, and had the goal of ensuring child sex-change procedures would be covered by health insurance plans while crafting its medical guidance, according to the lawsuit. Despite these practices, the organization continued to promote itself as the &#8220;de facto authority&#8221; on transgender medicine.</p>
<p>&#8220;WPATH’s representations have further deceived many consumers into believing that its treatment guidelines are based on strong evidence derived from scientific methods,&#8221; the lawsuit states. &#8220;WPATH crafted the SOC with the explicit goal of guaranteeing that insurers would classify medical transition services as medically necessary and therefore covered by their insurance plans.&#8221;</p>
<p>The 123-page lawsuit references several declarations from detransitioners who have been physically harmed by gender medicine and continue to live with the physical and emotional pain caused by gender medicine.</p>
<p>&#8220;WPATH reinforced that narrative by removing nearly all age limits on sex rejecting surgeries for minors, suppressing the systematic evidence reviews it had commissioned, and failing to disclose adverse side effects associated with certain pediatric medical transition interventions,&#8221; Miceli told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Now, WPATH will answer for its deception in court. Let this be a lesson to the remaining medical associations propping up the transgender industry: you will be held accountable.&#8221;</p>
<div>WPATH called the lawsuit “baseless” and said the FTC’s claims had “factual and legal flaws” in a <a href="https://wpath.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/06.17.2026-WPATH-Statement-on-FTC-Statess-Announcement-of-New-Complaint-1.pdf">press release</a>.</div>
<div></div>
<div>&#8220;The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is not a medical provider and has no place interfering with the process of individualized medical decision-making,&#8221; states the press release.</div>


US-JUSTICE-GENDERS

The Lawsuit That Could Blow Up The Child Sex-Change Industry

FTC Sues Trans Org For Deceiving Public On Harms Of Child Sex-Changes To Make Money

detransitioner

WPATH

<p>The Daughters of the American Revolution has a generational opportunity to say what a woman is.</p>
<p>The group — open to <a href="https://www.dar.org/discover/become-member/how-join">any woman</a> 18 or older who can prove her bloodline descent from an ancestor who aided in achieving American independence — came under fire last year when it ruled <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daughters-of-the-american-revolution-chapter-is-fighting-to-keep-men-out">transgender-identifying men</a> could join the group. In response, members of the group&#8217;s Texas chapter have repeatedly introduced resolutions to restrict membership to biological women.</p>
<p>The DAR <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daughters-of-the-american-revolution-board-rejects-proposal-to-keep-trans-identifying-men-out" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rejected</a> those proposals in the past. But at the group&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dar.org/national-society/about-dar/continental-congress"><span style="font-weight: 400;">national meeting</span></a> on June 26, members will vote to amend the group&#8217;s bylaws to clarify that <span style="font-weight: 400;">only natural-born women could join the group.</span></p>
<p>Laura McDonald, a member of the DAR&#8217;s Texas chapter involved in the effort, is optimistic about the &#8220;historic&#8221; vote.</p>
<p>&#8220;Daughters all across the country have relentlessly pursued all avenues and have succeeded in their demand for this historic vote in hopes of restoring this once stalwart and prestigious institution to its founding principles,&#8221; McDonald told The Daily Wire. &#8220;The DAR should be a beacon during this confusing time in our country.&#8221;</p>
<p>The proposed resolution states that &#8220;the term &#8216;woman&#8217; shall be understood to clearly mean a woman who was born female, and therefore, individuals who were born male shall not be eligible for membership; transgender women shall not be eligible for membership,&#8221; according to a document reviewed by The Daily Wire.</p>
<p>Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel at Independent Women’s Law Center, told The Daily Wire that at the heart of the debate is whether women will continue to be a &#8220;distinct legal category.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;The debate is not merely about membership in a single organization. It is about whether women remain a distinct legal category entitled to sex-based rights, protections, and spaces,&#8221; Parlato stated. &#8220;Women&#8217;s organizations were established to serve women, not anyone who claims a female identity.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Daily Wire&#8217;s Michael Knowles <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michael-knowles-exposes-transgender-attempt-to-infiltrate-daughters-of-american-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exposed</a> internal DAR documents showing strong support for transgenderism in a viral September 2024 <a href="https://x.com/michaeljknowles/status/1838267625962405922" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X thread</a>.</p>
<p>McDonald points out that the DAR is uniquely suited to protect women&#8217;s spaces, since birth certificate scrutiny is already an essential part of the application process</p>
<p>&#8220;Even if they present a legitimate state-certified legal birth certificate that says they&#8217;re a woman, if it is suspected that it&#8217;s not an original document that proves, not only their lineage but their sex, we have the right to question that document,&#8221; McDonald said. &#8220;We love Daughters of the American Revolution so much that we&#8217;re willing to go to great lengths to restore it and preserve it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Founded in 1890, decades before women won the right to vote in American elections, the DAR was established by patriotic women who were<a href="https://www.dar.org/discover/about-dar/dar-history" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> frustrated</a> that they were excluded from joining the male-only Sons of the American Revolution, established in 1889. The DAR was created to give women the same <a href="https://www.dar.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opportunity</a> as men to &#8220;promote Historic Preservation, Education, and Patriotism&#8221; in the United States. Throughout its more than 130-year history, DAR has welcomed over a million members, <a href="https://www.dar.org/national-society/about-dar/did-you-know" target="_blank" rel="noopener">supported</a> American efforts in three major wars, and continues to <a href="https://www.dar.org/outreach/patriotism/military-support-service-veterans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">serve</a> active-duty military members and veterans, as described on its website.</p>
<p>&#8220;When female-only groups abandon biological reality and redefine woman to include men, they contribute to the erosion of women&#8217;s rights everywhere, from athletics and scholarships to shelters, prisons, and private associations,&#8221; Parlato told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Preserving female-only spaces is essential to protecting women’s equality under the law.”</p>
<p>The Daughters of the American Revolution did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s requests for comment.</p>


Untitled design – 2026-06-16T123306.554

The Daughters Of The American Revolution Could Declare Independence From Woke

gender ideology

<p><i>This is part four of a Daily Wire series exposing the Biden administration’s previously unreported efforts to enact radical anti-family policies in the name of protecting transgender-identifying children. In</i> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-the-biden-administrations-clandestine-5-year-plan-to-trans-child-welfare?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=READ+IT%3A+The+Biden+Administration%E2%80%99s+Clandestine+5-Year+Plan+To+Trans+Child+Welfare" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>part three</i></a><i>, we saw how Biden officials prepared for a second term by laying the groundwork to enshrine transgenderism in federal law. Today, we meet the radical activists who would have led this effort.</i></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When the Biden administration needed people to implement its radical transgender policies, there was an obvious place to look.</p>
<p>The University of Connecticut&#8217;s National Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Expression (SOGIE) Center was named a subcontractor of the $20 million<a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75ACF124F80019_7590_GS10F0064W_4730" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> grant</a> from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create Biden&#8217;s own Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Expression Institute.</p>
<p>Names were not the only thing the two SOGIE Institutes would have in common. The UConn group was at the forefront of pushing radical gender ideology on child welfare systems across the country, and the activists and researchers behind the group would have assisted the HHS&#8217;s Children&#8217;s Bureau in &#8220;transforming&#8221; child welfare systems with gender ideology and implementing Biden&#8217;s April 2024 rule requiring foster care parents to “affirm” a child’s “gender identity.”</p>
<p>The primary contractor of the SOGIE Institute grant, BLH Technologies Inc., was described as UConn&#8217;s &#8220;small business partner&#8221; in an email written by Angela Weeks, a University of Connecticut employee tasked with administering the SOGIE grant.</p>
<p>“I have exciting news! BLH Technologies Inc, our small business partner in the application for the Child Welfare SOGIE Institute, received notification that we won the award!” wrote Weeks. “This [Technical Assistance] center will provide guidance for child welfare agencies across the country on SOGI data collection, program implementation, and the implementation of the &#8216;Designated Placements Rule.'&#8221;</p>
<p>Weeks and Marlene Matarese, who held leadership roles at Biden&#8217;s SOGIE Institute, had spent years working together to develop gender-affirming child welfare programs through an initiative called the National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Two-Spirit Children and Youth (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210418181910/https://qiclgbtq2s.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">QIC-LGBTQ2S</a>) in Foster Care. This group was funded by a $10 million federal grant awarded to the University of Maryland School of Social Work in late 2016. The initiative developed &#8220;affirming&#8221; programs that re-educated parents to support a child&#8217;s gender transition, helped LGBTQ+ identifying kids find &#8220;<a href="https://www.kinnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/CAFF-Intervention-Practice-Manual-Final-9.6.23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">chosen affirming families,</a>&#8221; and <a href="https://sogiecenter.org/child-welfare-resources-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trained</a> social workers to<a href="https://express.adobe.com/page/yjbkzmPugwkgc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> collect information</a> about the sexuality of children.</p>
<p>Weeks, Matarese, and the research group moved from the University of Maryland in late 2022 to become part of UConn&#8217;s School of Social Work<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250127011132/https:/innovations.socialwork.uconn.edu/team/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Innovations Institute</a>.<a href="https://socialwork.uconn.edu/person/marlene-matarese/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Matarese</a> is currently an associate research professor at UConn, while<a href="https://directory.uconn.edu/?phonebook_search=angela%20weeks" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Weeks</a> is an administrative program manager, and both used UConn email addresses to perform SOGIE Institute tasks. Many of the documents cited in this series were obtained through public record requests submitted to the university.</p>
<p>UConn was<a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75ACF123P00007_7590_-NONE-_-NONE-/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> awarded</a> a $33,700 grant in April 2023 to create a series of training modules for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) staff to build its capacity to &#8220;serve and provide support to LGBTQ2SI+ children, families, parents, and others,&#8221; as described in the grant.</p>
<p>Matarese and Weeks worked with ACF officials to complete the training series in the summer of 2024, records show. One email shows Weeks explaining the concept of &#8220;sex assigned at birth&#8221; to an ACF staff member.</p>
<p>&#8220;My questions is are people also assigning gender at birth? As do birth certificates have &#8216;gender&#8217; instead of sex? I defer to UCONN on this point,&#8221; asked the staff member.</p>
<p>“We use both, depending on the context,&#8221; Weeks responded. &#8220;Sex assigned at birth is when folks add female/male to birth certificates. When people say, &#8216;it’s a girl&#8217; or &#8216;it’s a boy,&#8217; they are assigning gender.”</p>
<p><a href="https://sogiecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SOGIE-Center-Newsletter-February-2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UConn</a> was also home to the<a href="https://sogiecenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> National SOGIE Center</a>, a collaborative of transgender activist groups <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240704121902/https://sogiecenter.org/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">led</a> by Weeks and Matarese that showcased many of the interventions <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230331085312/https://qiclgbtq2s.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> by QIC-LGBTQ2S. UConn described the National SOGIE Center as “A collaborative, led by Innovations Institute with Angela Weeks as Project Director and Marlene Matarese as Principal Investigator, of national leading social justice organizations that work to promote the well-being of LGBTQ+ youth and their families,&#8221; on its<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250123170127/https://innovations.socialwork.uconn.edu/expertise/lgbtq/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> website,</a> which has since been deactivated but is available to read on the Internet Archive.</p>
<p>The Innovations Institute removed links to many LGBTQ+ affirming resources and the National SOGIE Center from its website after President Trump took office, and it&#8217;s unclear if UCONN is still leading the group. The Daily Wire contacted UConn several times and asked for clarification about its current involvement but did not receive a response.</p>
<p>The National SOGIE Center continues to produce LGBTQ+ affirming resources. It published a “<a href="https://coming-out-guide.sogiecenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Coming Out With Care</a>” guidebook in the fall of 2025 that helps young people navigate sharing their LGBTQ+ identity. The guide warns you “may lose family members” who have been exposed to “misinformation” when sharing your LGBTQ+ identity.</p>
<p>&#8220;Try to remind yourself that your parents and other family members may have been exposed to a lot of misinformation about sexual orientation and gender identity,&#8221; states the guide. &#8220;You may lose family members — this could be for a few days, weeks, months, or even years.&#8221;</p>
<p>The guide also recommends that youth research local consent laws to discover if they can make &#8220;medical decisions&#8217; without parental consent.</p>
<p>&#8220;Research if there is an age of consent law that lets youth (in some states, this may be between ages 12 to 18) make certain medical decisions without parental consent,&#8221; the guide says.</p>
<p>A recently uploaded<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE319wn9UBk" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> video</a> on the National SOGIE Center YouTube channel stressed the importance of parents supporting their child&#8217;s transgender identity. The video pushes the<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/trevor-project-suicide-prevention-lgbt-youth-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> debunked</a> narrative that affirming a child&#8217;s transgender identity protects them from harm.</p>
<p>In 2025, the Human Rights Campaign, a longtime partner of the National SOGIE Center, announced it was transitioning its<a href="https://www.thehrcfoundation.org/professional-resources/all-children-all-families-lgbtq-resources-for-youth-serving-professionals" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> child welfare program</a> to the National SOGIE Center in its<a href="https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=3ad45d2c9202aaece3bbece7e&amp;id=4135f00958" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> May 2025 Newsletter.</a></p>
<p>&#8220;We are excited to share an important update: after May 30, 2025, the management of the All Children &#8211; All Families (ACAF) program is transitioning from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation to<a href="https://sogiecenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> The National SOGIE Center</a>!&#8221; stated the newsletter. &#8220;This transition marks a new chapter in the program’s evolution, one grounded in continuity, deep expertise, and our shared commitment to advancing equity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ children, youth, and families.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-wouldnt-call-her-daughter-trans-the-state-took-custody?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=She+Wouldn%E2%80%99t+Call+Her+Daughter+%E2%80%98Trans.%E2%80%99+The+State+Took+Custody." target="_blank" rel="noopener"><b>PART ONE: SHE WOULDN’T CALL HER DAUGHTER ‘TRANS.’ THE STATE TOOK CUSTODY.</b></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-biden-admins-scramble-to-find-data-to-support-its-pro-trans-foster-care-reform?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Evidence+Problem+At+The+Heart+Of+Biden%E2%80%99s+Trans+Rule" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><b>PART TWO: THE EVIDENCE PROBLEM AT THE HEART OF BIDEN’S TRANS RULE</b></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-the-biden-administrations-clandestine-5-year-plan-to-trans-child-welfare?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=READ+IT%3A+The+Biden+Administration%E2%80%99s+Clandestine+5-Year+Plan+To+Trans+Child+Welfare" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><b>PART THREE: THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION&#8217;S CLANDESTINE 5-YEAR PLAN TO TRANS CHILD WELFARE</b></a></p>


Joe Biden Campaigns In Western Pennsylvania One Day Before Election

The Shocking Advice A Biden-Backed Trans Group Gave Kids

Biden

Child Welfare

<p><em>This is part three of a Daily Wire series exposing the Biden administration’s previously unreported efforts to enact radical anti-family policies in the name of protecting transgender-identifying children. In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-biden-admins-scramble-to-find-data-to-support-its-pro-trans-foster-care-reform">part two,</a></em><em> we saw how Biden officials pushed a policy even radical LGBT activists told them to drop.</em></p>
<p><em>Today, we see that the rule was just the tip of the iceberg. As Biden receded from view and Kamala Harris launched her campaign, Biden officials were laying the groundwork for what they would do if they kept the White House. The plan would have fundamentally changed child welfare across the country — enshrining transgenderism in federal law without a single vote.</em></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Shortly before the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump&#8217;s campaign dropped a game changing ad.</p>
<p>“Kamala is for they/them,&#8221; the ad warned viewers. &#8220;President Trump is for you.&#8221;</p>
<p>It has since become clear that Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-learned-to-embrace-the-transgender-culture-wars">embrace of the transgender issue</a> helped fuel his return to the White House. But what if Vice President Kamala Harris had eked out a victory? Would her administration have continued President Joe Biden&#8217;s embrace of radical gender ideology? Would she have walked it back? Or would Harris have taken things even further?</p>
<p>A 78-page plan reviewed by The Daily Wire shows how the Biden administration was planning to make affirming transgenderism the national standard within child welfare services without having to pass a single law. The crux of that plan was the creation of the Child Welfare Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression Institute (SOGIE). Funded by a $20 million <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75ACF124F80019_7590_GS10F0064W_4730" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grant</a> from the Department of Health and Human Services, <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USACFCWIG/bulletins/3bb7416">SOGIE</a> was on track to employ a 40-person team to push transgenderism on child welfare agencies across the country.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is a comprehensive, detailed strategy to turn child welfare systems in all 50 states into training camps and havens for radical gender ideology,&#8221; Laura Hanford, the senior policy analyst at the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Not a word about the major risks of sex-rejecting procedures, or about the comorbidities for gender confusion and its high correlation with sexual abuse, especially in such a vulnerable population.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even the people behind the plan acknowledged its radical nature.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Angela Weeks, a University of Connecticut employee tasked with administering the SOGIE grant, wrote to colleagues in August 2024 that “we wrote a proposal that was innovative, so much so that some other reviewers thought we should tone it down.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But &#8220;we chose to go big,&#8221; Weeks said, adding that it was &#8220;thrilling to see&#8221; the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), an </span><a href="https://acf.gov/about"><span style="font-weight: 400;">agency</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> within HHS, &#8220;wanted a contractor who would lead this work in a way that can create real change.”</span></p>
<p>The Biden administration first mentioned the SOGIE Institute in <a href="https://sam.gov/opp/076cf3af202e48eeac9766ab3a7e02b5/view#history" target="_blank" rel="noopener">January 2023,</a> when HHS announced it was looking for a contractor to help its <a href="https://acf.gov/cb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Children’s Bureau</a> address the &#8220;unique needs of transgender and gender diverse individuals&#8221; in child welfare systems. This was pursuant to Biden&#8217;s <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/06/21/2022-13391/advancing-equality-for-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-and-intersex-individuals" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Executive Order 14075,</a> which mandated the federal government “combat unlawful discrimination” and “address the significant disparities that LGBTQI+ youth face in the foster care system.”</p>
<p>The SOGIE Institute cited this order in its project work plan, stating it offered an “unprecedented opportunity” to make child welfare services “more responsive” to the “unique needs of [LGBTQIA2S+] youth and their families.&#8221; It called President Biden&#8217;s LGBTQ+ affirming foster care<a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-08982/designated-placement-requirements-under-titles-iv-e-and-iv-b-for-lgbtqi-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> rule</a> an “inflection point,” charging child welfare agencies to take radical action.</p>
<p>In the fall of 2024, the SOGIE Institute set about transforming local and state child welfare agencies across the nation.</p>
<p>The draft work plan outlines five years worth of initiatives, including efforts to collect data about the sexual orientation and gender identity of children in foster care, and trainings to help child welfare workers “maximize SOGIE knowledge and practice competencies.”</p>
<p>The institute also had plans to handpick child welfare workers from state and local agencies to participate in a “SOGIE Champions&#8221; program, where they would participate in a &#8220;robust training and coaching program that teaches the skills and knowledge necessary to implement evidence informed LGBTQIA2S+ best practices.&#8221;</p>
<div id="attachment_1107955" style="width: 732px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1107955" class="wp-image-1107955 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.35.28-AM-722x576.png" alt="" width="722" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.35.28-AM-722x576.png 722w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.35.28-AM-300x239.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.35.28-AM-768x613.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.35.28-AM.png 1139w" sizes=" (max-width: 722px) 100vw, 722px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1107955" class="wp-caption-text">Screenshot from the SOGIE Institute project work plan.</p></div>
<p>Biden officials were particularly interested in recruiting &#8220;champions&#8221; from child welfare systems in conservative states that opposed President Biden’s LGBTQ+ affirming foster care<a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-08982/designated-placement-requirements-under-titles-iv-e-and-iv-b-for-lgbtqi-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> rule</a>, records show. Liliana Chakrabarti, a child welfare program specialist at the Children’s Bureau, told SOGIE leaders that her staff had created a list of potential allies in 20 states whose attorneys general had opposed the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/states-press-hhs-over-illegal-rule-that-could-force-foster-care-providers-to-facilitate-trans-procedures" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rule</a>, an August 2024 email shows.</p>
<p>The SOGIE Institute planned to welcome its first group of “SOGIE Champions” in January 2025. Liliana Chakrabarti did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s request for comment.</p>
<p>The institute also planned to recruit and train “Lived Experience Consultants” who had been supported by child welfare systems and identified as &#8220;LGBTQIA2S+ or are parents or caregivers of LGBTQIA2S+ young people.” These individuals would consult with local child welfare agencies and help them embrace gender affirming policies.</p>
<p>The SOGIE Institute only operated for six months. But during that time, the group <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USACFCWIG/bulletins/3c5fab1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hosted</a> <a href="https://www.payab.pitt.edu/files/10TipsFosterSafteyLGBTQIA2S.pdf">webinars</a> on “Supporting LGBTQIA2S+ Young People and their Families Receiving Child Welfare Services&#8221; and “Ten Tips on Fostering Safety for LGBTQIA2S+ Youth in Foster Care.&#8221;</p>
<p>The “tips” included using non-gendered language, hanging pride flags in child welfare offices, and introducing yourself using chosen pronouns.</p>
<p>The group published a <a href="https://www.payab.pitt.edu/files/CWSOGIEInstituteGlossary.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">glossary of terms</a> that defined each letter of the LGBTQIA2S+ acronym, saying it would be used “for all the work throughout the Administration of Children and Families&#8221; and also provided definitions of terms such as “queer,” “transgender,” and “transition.”</p>
<p>&#8220;Child welfare is already widely tainted by gender ideology,&#8221; Hanford told The Daily Wire. &#8220;One can only imagine how much more thoroughly this 20-million-dollar plan would have rotted child protective systems, and how many more families would have been destroyed, had President Trump not won the election and halted the project.&#8221;</p>
<div id="attachment_1107951" style="width: 857px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1107951" class="wp-image-1107951 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM-847x576.png" alt="" width="847" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM-847x576.png 847w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM-300x204.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM-768x522.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM-1536x1045.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-10.39.46-AM.png 1597w" sizes=" (max-width: 847px) 100vw, 847px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1107951" class="wp-caption-text">Screenshot from the SOGIE Institute project work plan.</p></div>
<p>The work plan showed one of the long-term goals of the SOGIE Institute was to address the problem of “over-representation of LGBTQIA2S+ in foster care,&#8221; but Chakrabarti recommended that the SOGIE Institute focus on a more “realistic” goal.</p>
<p>“I think a more realistic long term goal would be: increased satisfaction of services by LGBTQIA2S+ youth in care,” wrote Chakrabarti.</p>
<p>Transgender activists believe not supporting a child&#8217;s transgender identity is a form of harm and abuse. Parents across the country, including in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/murdered-by-gender-ideology-mother-whose-daughter-committed-suicide-blasts-child-protective-services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a>, <a href="https://becketfund.org/case/m-c-and-j-c-v-indiana-department-of-child-services/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indiana</a>, and <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/17/exclusive-gender-confused-kids-taken-non-affirming-parents-one-family-fight-son-back/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Maryland</a>, have had their children taken away by child welfare services for affirming their child’s sex. In the first part of this series, <span style="font-weight: 400;">The Daily Wire reported on an Oregon mom who lost custody because she would not affirm her daughter&#8217;s transgender identity.</span></p>
<p>Erin Friday, a lawyer and president of Our Duty-USA, told The Daily Wire that gender-affirming child welfare systems are unnecessarily increasing the number of kids in foster care.</p>
<p>&#8220;The child welfare system was designed as a safety net for abused children, with family reunification as its primary goal,&#8221; Friday said. &#8220;It has since morphed into a system that wants to add to the foster care ledger.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;The primary beneficiaries are LGBTQ-affiliated nonprofits that can then seek additional taxpayer funding,&#8221; Friday added. &#8220;This scheme simultaneously uses the increased numbers to justify the false notion that parents are abandoning their gender dysphoric children.&#8221;</p>
<p>Under President Trump, HHS has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-sends-new-guidance-to-all-50-states-on-trans-kid-disputes?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=19&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Admin+Sends+New+Guidance+To+All+50+States+On+Trans+Kid+Disputes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">alerted</a> all 50 states that affirming “biological reality” does not constitute child abuse or neglect under federal law.</p>
<p>“Removing a child from their home must be based on objective evidence or imminent risk of serious harm. So a state’s decision to break up a family cannot be based solely on a parent’s objection to radical gender ideology or irreversible sex rejecting medical interventions,” said Alex Adams, the assistant secretary for the ACF, in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWhuT4EHHdQ&amp;t=2s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> published by HHS.</p>
<p>Despite this recommendation, few states have clarified their legal code to ensure that affirming a child’s sex is not labeled as a form of child abuse. Many American parents who won’t affirm the transgender identity of their children are at risk of losing custody of their kids to the state.</p>
<p>President Trump canceled the $20 million SOGIE Institute contract in January 2025 with Executive Order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">14151</a>, which eliminated diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, according to the <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75ACF124F80019_7590_GS10F0064W_4730" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grant</a> listing. But despite the loss of funding, members of the group have continued to push their views.</p>
<p>Before the creation of Biden&#8217;s SOGIE Institute, Weeks was the director of a collaborative of transgender activists organizations that provides guidance and training to child welfare agencies implementing gender affirming policies called the <a href="https://sogiecenter.org/">National SOGIE Center</a>. Partners of the collaborative include the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal. The National SOGIE Center has continued to produce LGBTQ+ resources and published a &#8220;<a href="https://coming-out-guide.sogiecenter.org/">Coming Out With Care</a>&#8221; guidebook in the fall of 2025.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-wouldnt-call-her-daughter-trans-the-state-took-custody?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=She+Wouldn%E2%80%99t+Call+Her+Daughter+%E2%80%98Trans.%E2%80%99+The+State+Took+Custody." target="_blank" rel="noopener">PART ONE: SHE WOULDN’T CALL HER DAUGHTER ‘TRANS.’ THE STATE TOOK CUSTODY.</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-biden-admins-scramble-to-find-data-to-support-its-pro-trans-foster-care-reform?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Evidence+Problem+At+The+Heart+Of+Biden%E2%80%99s+Trans+Rule">PART TWO: THE EVIDENCE PROBLEM AT THE HEART OF BIDEN&#8217;S TRANS RULE</a></strong></p>


Untitled design – 2026-06-03T121716.946

READ IT: The Biden Administration’s Clandestine 5-Year Plan To Trans Child Welfare

Special Reporting

<p><em>This is part two of a Daily Wire series exposing the Biden administration&#8217;s previously unreported efforts to enact radical anti-family policies in the name of protecting transgender-identifying children. Part one told <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-wouldnt-call-her-daughter-trans-the-state-took-custody?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=She+Wouldn%E2%80%99t+Call+Her+Daughter+%E2%80%98Trans.%E2%80%99+The+State+Took+Custody.">the story of Nicole</a>, a mother whose refusal to indulge her daughter&#8217;s gender delusions led the state of Oregon to take custody of the child.</em></p>
<p><em>Today, we peer behind the curtain of the Biden administration&#8217;s efforts to replicate Oregon&#8217;s system on a national level. In the waning days of the administration, Biden health officials pushed a rule they said would stop an epidemic of &#8220;family rejection&#8221; straining the foster care system. There was just one problem: even radical LGBT activists told the Biden team it had its facts wrong. That didn&#8217;t stop them.</em></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In April 2024, the Biden administration issued a rule pressing state child welfare agencies to stock their systems with foster homes that would “affirm” a child&#8217;s “gender identity,” insisting it was the best way to protect children&#8217;s mental health.</p>
<p>Less than a month prior, Biden officials were scrambling to find data to support their claim.</p>
<p>“I’m on a tight deadline and need to provide data on why LGBTQI+ children and youth are overrepresented in child welfare,” Julie Kruse, the Biden administration&#8217;s Senior Advisor for LGBTQI+ Initiatives at the Administration for Children and Families, wrote in an email to transgender activists unearthed by The Daily Wire.</p>
<p>“There are so many great surveys on disproportionality of negative experiences, WHILE these youth are in care but less quantitative data I’ve been able to find on family rejection and other factors that led a disproportionate number of LGBTQI+ youth to be in foster care in the first case.”</p>
<p>Kruse and others in the administration pushed the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-08982/designated-placement-requirements-under-titles-iv-e-and-iv-b-for-lgbtqi-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rule</a> to fix what they believed was a massive problem with foster care: a dangerously high number of teens were entering the system because their parents did not accept their gender or sexual identity. The rule&#8217;s rationale pointed to “family rejection” — including refusing to use a child&#8217;s chosen pronouns or not letting a child “learn about their LGBTQ identity” — as harmful, and directed agencies to make placements that support a child&#8217;s gender identity.</p>
<p>Bianca Wilson, an LGBT scholar, warned Kruse that this claim wasn&#8217;t supported by data.</p>
<p>“I encourage you to avoid the go-to explanation of ‘family rejection’ that is often adopted by queer organizations that do so in the absence of data to support it,” <a href="https://luskin.ucla.edu/person/bianca-d-m-wilson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wilson</a> wrote to Kruse in an August 28, 2023, email.</p>
<p>“Most of the queerkids in care (based on what we saw In LA and what NYC found) entered care before they were teens,&#8221; wrote Wilson, the lead investigator of the first <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/sgm-youth-la-foster-care/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> to <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Surveying-LGBTQ-Youth-Foster-Care-Nov-2016.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimate</a> the number of LGBT youth in foster care. &#8220;This means they likely entered care before [Sexual and Gender Minority] expression and identities were especially salient.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kruse got somewhat luckier with Angela Weeks and Marlene Matarese.</p>
<p>The pair had helped lead the cumbersomely named National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Two-Spirit Children and Youth in Foster Care.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190823151605/https://qiclgbtq2s.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">QIC-LGBTQ2S</a> was launched in 2017 and worked with child welfare agencies in Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to develop and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190823160412/http://www.qiclgbtq2s.org/lis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">implement</a> gender affirming child welfare interventions in partnership with the Children’s Bureau, with the goal of transforming child welfare systems to become LGBTQ+ affirming. The programs developed by the QIC-LGBTQ2S group were later <a href="https://sogiecenter.org/programs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">housed</a> and made accessible by the <a href="https://sogiecenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National SOGIE Center</a>, a collaborative of transgender activist groups working to influence child welfare systems.</p>
<p>Weeks sent Kruse a federally funded research <a href="https://sogiecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Cuyahoga-Youth-Count-2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">survey</a> conducted through the initiative she and Matarese led, which &#8220;found that 32% of young people (ages 12-21) identified as LGBTQ+.&#8221; But Weeks made clear that &#8220;there is less administrative data to help us understand the cause of this prevalence,&#8221; and that the extant data did not definitively show the reasons &#8220;LGBTQI+ youth&#8221; entered the foster care system.</p>
<p>Bianca Wilson, the researcher who discouraged Kruse from employing &#8220;the go-to explanation of ‘family rejection,'&#8221; specifically named the Cuyahoga study as insufficient to demonstrate Kruse&#8217;s point in her message, insisting that &#8220;no one has yet done the research needed to examine this question adequately.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wilson&#8217;s warnings did not dissuade Kruse. The Cuyahoga County report is the first study cited in the &#8220;family rejection&#8221; rule the Biden administration submitted to the Federal Register.</p>
<p>&#8220;The rule was premised on the incorrect notion that not affirming and supporting a child’s self-proclaimed sexual identity or identity that rejects his or her sex is unsafe, harassment, mistreatment, and abuse,&#8221; Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Rachel Morrison told The Daily Wire. &#8220;This radical premise, if adopted, would not be contained to foster care; it would have far-reaching implications for adoption, custody disputes, child care, education, and athletics.&#8221;</p>
<p>“The Biden rule created special rules for children in foster care who identify as ‘LGBTQI+’ based on misrepresentations of research and data, outdated studies, and biased surveys produced by ideologically-driven activist organizations,&#8221; she added.</p>
<p>President Joe Biden continued pushing the idea that “family rejection” was driving kids into child welfare systems during his presidency. Kruse and Weeks worked together to plan an October 2024 “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-the-biden-administrations-speed-dating-event-for-trans-activists-and-megadonors?author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=15&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Biden+Admin+Hosted+%E2%80%98Speed+Dating%E2%80%99+Event+For+Trans+Activists+With+One+Rule" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speed dating</a>” event first exposed by The Daily Wire, which brought together transgender activists, government officials, and major progressive philanthropists to promote and expand the impact of “family acceptance” child welfare programs.</p>
<p>The Biden foster care rule was <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-final-victory-over-biden-era-rule-forcing-radical-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vacated</a> by a federal judge in June 2025. The Trump administration <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-admin-squashes-controversial-biden-rule-forcing-foster-homes-affirm-childrens-lgbtq-status" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> in March 2026 that it was taking action to rescind the rule.</p>
<div>Wilson stood by her comment to Kruse on family rejection and told The Daily Wire that data indicate LGBTQ+ youth are overrepresented in foster care, but there is no systematic data to explain why. She attributed this to a lack of research funding and the government&#8217;s blocking efforts to collect SOGIE data.</div>
<p>&#8220;Yet, if you look at some research studies, it is also clear that family rejection because of prejudice against a child or youth’s SOGIE is sometimes a major issue leading to placement in foster care. So, family rejection is sometimes a major issue, but we do not have clear data to explain whether it is central to creating LGBTQ youth disproportionality,&#8221; Wilson told The Daily Wire.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/she-wouldnt-call-her-daughter-trans-the-state-took-custody?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Megan+Brock&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=She+Wouldn%E2%80%99t+Call+Her+Daughter+%E2%80%98Trans.%E2%80%99+The+State+Took+Custody.">READ PART ONE: SHE WOULDN&#8217;T CALL HER DAUGHTER &#8216;TRANS.&#8217; THE STATE TOOK CUSTODY.</a></strong></p>


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Megan Brock