<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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She Wouldn’t Call Her Daughter ‘Trans.’ The State Took Custody.

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The Evidence Problem At The Heart Of Biden’s Trans Rule