Love him or hate him, we can’t ignore that when it comes to parenting, Donald Trump seems to be a pretty good father. The proof is evident in the behavior of his kids. Certainly, kids who have an ax to grind don’t act like his kids do.
First, adult sons and daughters who harbor deep anger toward a parent never speak highly of him or her, regardless of how famous they are. In fact, fame can be an ideal opportunity for angry kids to humiliate their parents. Trump’s older kids, Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Jr. don’t behave this way. In fact, they have no reason to publicly support their father so enthusiastically other than the belief that their father is a good and capable man. Sure, they may want to applaud him to further their own careers, but they don’t need to do this. They are each highly successful on their own. If they had lukewarm sentiments about their dad, they would at least fade into the background. But they haven’t. They have taken advantage of large public platforms to convince us that he has strong character and extraordinarily strong abilities to improve America. They wouldn’t do this if they believed that his intentions were other than altruistic. The fact that they have successfully convinced millions of Americans that he has what it takes to lead our country can only come from sincere sentiments.
Second, both his daughter-in-law and son-in-law are two of his most ardent supporters. How many in-laws boast about their father-in-law not only privately, but also publicly? Lara has no motive to boast other than genuine admiration and Jared could certainly stay silent.
When it comes to his business life, Trump puts his grown kids front and center. Fathers who want to dominate the spotlight, don’t do this. They own the public space and keep their adult kids in the background, in part, to avoid the risk that their kids will make derogatory statements about them. Trump takes the risk because he is confident they won’t humiliate or criticize him. He knows they will always support him.
When Trump’s older kids were young, he protected them from the paparazzi. He worked to keep his kids out of the spotlight until they wanted to jump into it of their own volition. His first three kids went away to school so that the press would leave them alone. Tiffany and Barron now enjoy that same privacy so they too can live their own lives. The president-elect could easily push all of them into the spotlight to make himself look like a good father, but he doesn’t. Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Jr., along with Lara Trump, put themselves in the public and political arenas to bolster President-elect Trump’s career.
When it comes to raising his family, Trump appears to have nothing to hide. Most fathers would be afraid to give their kids the freedom to say what they want about their dad. Who among us would have the confidence to give our kids such a large media presence to say whatever they want about us? Not me. Only a father who feels confident about the job he has done would do so.
Many divorced couples carry resentment and anger after their breakup with their spouse and psychologists know how damaging the animosity can be on the couple’s kids. Donald has kept his kids from a lot of pain by embracing friendships with his two ex-wives. And while Ivana Trump passed away in 2022, we still see photos of Marla Maples, Melania, and Donald standing together smiling for the camera at Tiffany Trump’s wedding.
The peculiar thing about the president-elect’s life is that he seems to have successfully split himself into two men: the father and the political genius. In his former role, he appears to have worked hard at having close relationships with his kids. To the best of his ability, he has tried to spend as much time as possible with them. This is no easy task when you are running a multi-million-dollar real estate empire and then while being president. Succeeding at both takes impossible time and energy and yet, with these challenges, he has somehow stayed close with his kids.
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The other side of Trump is hard to applaud. He has been accused of multiple incidents of sexual harassment and harmful sexual behavior toward women. He has admitted to being a poor husband at times, and his numerous public affairs with women confirm this. Good husbands don’t cheat on their wives or sexually harass other women. The peculiar part is that his five kids know this and still publicly support and encourage him. This occurs only because, in some genuinely incredible feat, Trump has found a way to communicate to his kids that being their father is a much higher priority than even being a husband, businessman, or politician. His life as a father is completely separate from his work life, and his kids must feel this. If they refused to forgive or ignore his deep flaws they would take every opportunity to denounce him on the worldwide stage.
Donald Trump is a complex man. He is both a good man and a villain. This is hard for people to understand. The truth is, however, that we are all complex beings. Like him, we are not simply good or evil, kind or cruel. We are both. Certainly, as a man, Trump has made poor decisions, and offended many people to the point where they despise him. But clearly, he has done something well when it comes to his kids. And their behavior is a testimony to his personal success as a father.
* * *
Meg Meeker, M.D., has spent more than thirty years practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine and counseling teens and parents. Dr. Meeker is a fellow of the National Advisory Board of the Medical Institute, and an associate professor of medicine at Michigan State School of Human Medicine. She is the author of the international best-seller “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strong-Fathers-Daughters-Secrets-Father/dp/1621573303/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=">Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters</a>.”
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.

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Five Reasons To Believe Trump Is A Good Dad

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Children

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr.

Eric Trump

Ivana Trump

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Lara Trump

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Melania Trump

Opinion

Parenting

Tiffany Trump

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/virginia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Virginia</a> NICU nurse has been arrested after at least seven babies suffered inexplicable broken bones.
Erin Strotman, 26, has been charged with felony child neglect and felony malicious wounding over injuries to one baby at Henrico Doctors&#8217; Hospital in Richmond, police announced Friday.
The maximum penalties for the two charges are 10 and 20 years in prison respectively, although authorities emphasized that they are still investigating the injuries to the other babies.
Three babies were hurt just weeks ago in November and December, and four more babies were previously injured during the summer of 2023.
The Henrico County Police Division <a href="https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2025/01/03/henrico-doctor-arrested-and-charged-in-connection-with-nicu-investigation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> it is conducting a &#8220;thorough investigation&#8221; that includes reviewing &#8220;dozens of videos from inside the NICU.&#8221; Detectives are looking into the cases from both 2023 and 2024 as part of this &#8220;broader investigation,&#8221; police said.
Last month, a couple spoke out, <a href="https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/henrico-doctors-investigation-2023-dec-27-2024?ref=henricocitizen.com#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a> Virginia Child Services informed them that one of their premature newborn twins, who had suffered a fractured leg, had been physically abused by a NICU employee.
“It’s my baby boy. I feel like I’ve done nothing to protect him and that hurts. It pisses me off,” Dominique Hackey, the twins&#8217; father, <a href="https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/henrico-doctors-investigation-2023-dec-27-2024?ref=henricocitizen.com#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> CBS 6 before Strotman&#8217;s arrest.
“Somebody needs to be held accountable for my son, for everybody’s kid, somebody needs to be held accountable, it’s too many in such a short period of time,” he said.
The injuries forced the hospital to stop admitting newborns to its NICU &#8220;out of an abundance of caution,&#8221; Henrico Doctors&#8217; Hospital <a href="https://people.com/woman-arrested-multiple-babies-suffer-unexplainable-fractures-same-virginia-hospital-8768674" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> on Christmas Eve.
&#8220;While fractures occasionally happen with pre-term babies since they lack full fetal bone development, we are actively working to determine how these fractures occurred,&#8221; the hospital <a href="https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/henrico-county/henrico-doctors-hospital-stops-nicu-admissions-after-babies-found-with-unexplainable-fractures/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
On Friday, the hospital also confirmed a &#8220;former employee&#8221; has been arrested in connection with the NICU fractures.
&#8220;We are both shocked and saddened by this development in the investigation and are focused on continuing to care for our patients and providing support to our colleagues who have been deeply and personally impacted by this investigation,&#8221; Henrico Doctors&#8217; Hospital <a href="https://www.hcavirginia.com/locations/henrico-doctors-hospital/specialties/womens-care/labor-and-delivery#nicu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement.
&#8220;We are grateful to those colleagues, who have dedicated their professional lives to the care and safety of our patients, as well as to law enforcement and the other agencies who have worked aggressively and tirelessly with us on this investigation,&#8221; the hospital said.
The case eerily echoes that of Lucy Letby, the British neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies around 2016. No deaths have been reported in the Virginia case, however.
She <a href="https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/henrico-county/former-nurse-makes-first-court-appearance-after-being-charged-with-child-abuse-in-henrico-doctors-hospitals-nicu-investigation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appeared</a> in court for the first time on Friday and is being held without bond and barred from contact with children. She is expected in court again on March 24.

Premature neonate in incubator

Virginia NICU Nurse Arrested After Seven Babies Suffer Broken Bones

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Child Abuse

Crime

Health

Health Care

Pro-Life Movement

U.S.

Virginia

For years, America’s gold-standard media outlets have largely ignored one of the most egregious medical scandals in our nation’s history. In the past half decade alone, thousands of children underwent life-altering medical procedures in an attempt to alleviate psychological distress by changing their physical sex traits. Despite the lack of evidence to support the efficacy of these procedures, legacy media outlets in the United States went out of their way to stay quiet while doctors profited and children suffered.
Journalists no longer have an excuse to ignore this debate. Last month the United States Supreme Court <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-gender-ideology">heard a case</a> that could decide the government’s constitutional authority to ban these practices. The case — United States v. Skrmetti — has already led to increased <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-transgender-care-skrmetti-rcna182505">media attention</a> on an under-reported topic, a welcome development that itself will save lives. But the damage caused by the media’s years-long silence is irreparable, and hindsight will show that those with the platform to do something should have spoken up sooner.
From 2019 to 2023, at least 13,000 American children <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/08/us-news/over-5700-americans-under-18-had-trans-surgery-from-2019-23/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">between the ages of 13 and 18</a> received some form of “gender-affirming care” from licensed medical providers in the United States. This euphemistically named practice generally refers to the administration of puberty blockers, the prescription of cross-sex hormones, and the removal of body parts such as genitals and breasts — all in an attempt to make children’s bodies align with their “gender identity” and thus alleviate psychological distress caused by the child’s perception that they were born the wrong sex.
Advocates for this “affirmative” model of care rarely discuss the harm medical transitioning causes. One detransitioner <a href="https://libertycenter.org/cases/hein-v-unmc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explained how</a> the very first form of “affirming” treatment she received was a double mastectomy at 16-years-old. And after taking off-label cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for four years, she couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning. The medical intervention that was supposed to save her life almost destroyed it. Stories like these are growing more common by the day.
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Despite this grim reality, <a href="https://www.alabamaag.gov/attorney-general-marshall-files-brief-supporting-tennessees-law-protecting-children-from-sex-change-procedures/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">activists have infiltrated</a> America’s largest medical organizations to push the narrative that these procedures are “lifesaving,” and “medically necessary” for children who want them. Though <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/09/disturbing-leaks-from-us-gender-group-wpath-ring-alarm-bells-in-nhs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leaked documents</a> revealed widespread attempts to obfuscate the truth of this dubious claim, the most influential media outlets in the country accepted the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-gender-affirming-care-targeted-us/story?id=97443087" target="_blank" rel="noopener">narrative uncritically</a>. A steady <a href="https://segm.org/Suicide-Gender-Dysphoric-Adolescent-Young-Adult-Finland-2024" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stream of studies</a> released in the past few years have proven it to be unfounded.
Just last month, the United Kingdom <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/britain-bans-puberty-blockers-transgender-minors-rcna183839" target="_blank" rel="noopener">made permanent its ban</a> on prescribing puberty blockers to children under 18-years-old due to the lack of evidence to support their efficacy at treating gender dysphoria. This ban was the response to an <a href="https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">extensive study</a> commissioned by the UK’s National Health Service — named the Cass Review, after the lead author and prominent pediatric doctor, Hilary Cass — that found little reliable basis to conclude “gender-affirming care” is effective in the long term for treating psychological distress.
The Cass Review is the most comprehensive systematic review of youth gender medicine ever conducted. And its findings prompted <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/puberty-blockers-paused-for-children-in-scotland-after-cass-review-8j6tkw89t" target="_blank" rel="noopener">swift and sweeping</a> action from the UK government. But perhaps equally as significant is the reaction from the media outlets within the United Kingdom. Widely read papers such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/cass-review-gender-identity-services-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Guardian</a> and <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/six-months-on-how-has-the-cass-review-reshaped-gender-medicine-cj33lsgnm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the London Times</a> directed extensive resources to covering the Cass Review and highlighted its findings. It is due in no small part to this media coverage that government action followed so quickly.
Yet here across the pond, the American media have been largely silent about the Cass Review, with very few legacy outlets devoting more than a handful of stories to it. While the medical procedures at issue are common in the United States and often lead to life-long sterilization, impaired sexual function, and permanent mutilation of otherwise healthy body parts, American journalists have all but ignored the issue. This failure is not only a journalistic one; it is a moral one as well.
Fortunately, some of the sandy heads in the fourth estate are finally coming up for air. Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/clementine-breen-lawsuit-transgender-medicine-center-for-transyouth-health-us-v-skrmetti-e22382f3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">highlighted a recent lawsuit</a> filed by a young woman who was rushed into “gender affirming” medical procedures by doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles when she was in her early teens. The <a href="https://libertycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Complaint.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legal complaint</a> describes the failure of practitioners adequately to assess the appropriateness of these life-altering medical procedures prior to prescribing them — an unfortunate occurrence that is all-too-common in the world of “gender-affirming care.” The organization I work for, the Center for American Liberty, is <a href="https://libertycenter.org/cases/clementine/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assisting with this lawsuit.</a>
And in another first, the Washington Post editorial board finally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/15/skrmetti-case-youth-transition-trans-supreme-court/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published a piece</a> recognizing the lack of evidence to support the purported efficacy of “gender affirming” procedures. The Post editorial board agreed states have an interest in protecting children from harmful medical practices and the lack of evidence to support “gender-affirming care” justifies more regulation.
While these editorials by two of our country’s most widely circulated newspapers are a welcome sign that the American media have finally realized the gravity of the situation, it is far too little, far too late. Thousands of children struggling with their mental health fell victim to an ideology that perpetuates false hope based on tribalistic commitment instead of sound medical evidence. Many of those who elected to permanently alter their bodies at a young age in an attempt to alleviate psychological distress will now have life-long medical complications due to the actions of “experts” who were supposed to have the answers. But the science has never supported these forms of treatment — and too many kids will suffer the consequences of this failure to speak the truth.
For whatever reason, American media have deliberately avoided one of the greatest social, medical, and ethical debates of our time. They might <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/21/health/gender-affirming-care/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">justify it</a> by claiming the “science is settled,” but we now know that simply isn’t true. And it never has been. Though some of the nation’s most respected news outlets are warming up to this fact, much more needs to be done to bring the truth to light. Only then can we have an honest discussion about how best to care for children struggling with who they are.
* * *
Eric Sell is Associate Litigation Counsel and the Shillman Legal Fellow at the Center for American Liberty.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Press conference for event with camera

The American Media’s Failure On The Transgender Debate

The American Media's Failure On The Transgender Debate

Gender

gender ideology

Legacy Media

Transgender

transgender surgery

New details are emerging about the suspect in the shooting that took place at Abundant Life Christian School.
The Washington Post has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/12/17/madison-wisconsin-school-shooter-natalie-rupnow/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> on the “troubled home life” of the shooter:
<blockquote>The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others at her small Christian school here Monday had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy. …
“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurre[s],” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference, where he asked the public for patience as authorities investigated [the suspect’s] social media activity and state of mind leading up to the rampage. 
The teen is one of just nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by The Post. She is also among the younger recent shooters. … [The suspect’s] father is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter, according to a review of his Facebook profile. …
But one post, from August, has attracted more scrutiny than others. In it, a photo appears to show [the suspect] wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range. </blockquote>
Obviously, this means the Left is going to name and focus on gun control as the chief issue.
But, it seems to me, there is a bigger issue here: family turmoil.
I know these are the issues we are not supposed to discuss in American life. We are supposed to believe in a libertarian social ethos that says: When parents have a child and they break up for their own well-being and for the preservation of their own happiness, that has no impact on children whatsoever.
This has been a lie since it started in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. The divorce rate in those days was significantly lower than the current divorce rate. Today, the divorce rate in the United States shows roughly half of all marriages end in divorce.
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Many people will divorce and remarry multiple times. According to The Washington Post&#8217;s review of court records, the suspect&#8217;s parents first married in 2011, about two years after she was born. All social science demonstrates that living together before marriage is often a bad idea because it is an indication that people are not willing to make the commitment to marry before having a child.
Marriage should be the predicate for sleeping together and then having children. I acknowledge these are old-fashioned ideas, but they existed for a reason, just as social institutions did. It was deemed a smart idea to get married before living together because it channeled sexual passions into family building.
A man had to give up his waywardness and make a commitment to a woman before getting one of the things he wanted out of the relationship with the woman. And it meant a woman would have to be pretty discerning about just with whom she chose to have sex, as doing so could result in pregnancy.
The opposite perspective has been quite bad for the West in general. We have declining birth rates, unhappy families, broken families. None of this has been a boon to the West as a general matter, despite all of the West&#8217;s promises that a libertarian sexual ethos would make everyone happier.
Zero evidence exists that a libertarian sexual ethos makes everyone happier. General happiness surveys across the West show a radical decline since the 1970s, particularly among women who are supposed to be the people most liberated by the new sexual ethos.
In this particular case, the mother of the suspect had been previously married and divorced; then, she had another daughter with a different man, to whom she was never married. Court records indicate this girl had other permanent legal guardians. The half sister is now 20-years-old. The suspect&#8217;s parents divorced for the first time in 2014, agreeing to joint legal custody of their shared daughter, but specifying she would live primarily with her mom.
From the Post:
<blockquote>The couple remarried in 2017 and divorced for a second time in 2020, again agreeing to share custody but, the court records show, dividing [the suspect’s] time more evenly between them. During this period, [the suspect] would spend two days with her father, two with her mother, then three more with her father, before reversing the schedule the following week.
Shortly after [the suspect’s] parents split up for the second time, the couple remarried once more. But by April 2021 they were petitioning for a third divorce. A judge granted it a month later but noted that “parties [were] admonished concerning remarriage,” according to court records.
After seeking mediation to determine custody of [the suspect], they agreed in July 2022 that they would share legal custody but that the girl would now live mostly with her father. By this time, [the suspect] had been enrolled in therapy, which was supposed to help guide decisions about which parent she would spend weekends with, the records show. 
The 2022 custody papers said [the suspect’s] parents were on cordial terms. “The parents report a generally positive co-parenting relationship,” the document reads, “and will continue to communicate with one another by text messages and phone conversations.” </blockquote>
Let&#8217;s get real: It doesn&#8217;t matter if mommy and daddy get along when they&#8217;re not living together. What matters is the impact on the child.
This is what happens when the actual value of marriage is substituted for a transitory perception of passion and romance. Marriage is not built predominantly on feelings. It is predominantly built on duty. 
I know this is a strange idea to many people who are living in the post-modern West. But the reality of the world is that marriage was built on commitment.
Marriage itself is an institution that requires fealty to the institution, not merely to the other person who is part of the institution. This bizarre notion that marriage was supposed to be about a sort-of formalization of romantic love as opposed to a shared value system that was capable of building the next generation is a wrong idea.
And it has been a mistake for the West to embrace that.
Romance is an enormous part of marriage. But it is not the chiefly important part of marriage when children become secondary as opposed to the primary purpose. Not only is marriage defeated, but the children are also defeated.
The idea of romance being the primary focus of marriage took hold during the Romantic Period in the 19th century. But it turned out that human biology thwarted the plans of romantic love to overcome the institution of marriage. The institution, like all institutions built by civilization, was built by human beings in order to channel human passions. Then, they were made sacred by human beings in order to civilize their passions.
We build entire civilizations in order to channel those passions in positive directions. One of the most fervent passions people have is the passion for sexual relationships. It&#8217;s very powerful.
It can also be incredibly destructive. This is why marriage is such an important institution. The institution of marriage channels that passion toward the production and rearing of children, as opposed to simply leaving little boys and girls all over the landscape without proper mothers and fathers in functioning households.
Treating women poorly is what happens in a free-love system, which is how women currently feel. They feel men treat them like trash.
And many of the men are looking at the system saying it’s a consensual system. What&#8217;s the problem?
The answer is that the consent women are typically looking for is not merely sexual consent. It is consent to a long-term relationship that is meaningful, spiritual, and purposeful.
When a society lacks these things, the result is tremendous human suffering, true human suffering.
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This belief in a concept of “free divorce, easy living, get back together, break up, get back together, break up, find new partners, and the kids will just be fine, because, you know, kids can take it,” is a blight.
The kids can take it? No, you can take it. You&#8217;re the adult.
Is what happened in the school shooting the parents’ fault? Given the fact they were living the way they lived, it’s a reasonable question.
If you treat your children like a bizarre form of chattel, shuttling them between parent and parent because you want to live your best life, guess what? Things go wrong.
Once you have kids, you are no longer first priority. You&#8217;re not even second priority. As a father, you’re third priority. First priority: your kids. Second priority: your wife. And then comes you.
A disproportionate number of people who commit these types of acts are children of broken homes. And it turns out a disproportionate number of people who commit violent crimes are also products of broken homes.
Longstanding social science data indicates delinquency radically increases when no father is present in the home. Crime radically increases; teenage pregnancy radically increases.
This is what happens when a society decides it is very important to disengage from the institutions and civilization that channeled passions and, instead, just humor those passions and let everything else be left by the wayside.
I think the American people are ready for a serious conversation about what the good life looks like. There&#8217;s a lot of talk in politics these days about the common good and what we all hold together. What is it? What is sacred? What ought to be put beyond political debate?
It used to be beyond political debate that family comes first.
I think the American people are tired of all this, tired of the deep libertarian sexual ethos. I think we are in the middle of what could be a cultural renaissance.
That kinship principle — to be with your family in your home, to raise your children so that their children will have healthy children, to build familial wealth over the course of generations, to sit on the porch when you&#8217;re 80 years old with your grandkids playing in the yard, to know you lived a good, dutiful, purposeful life and will continue contributing to future generations — that is what Americans yearn for.
Because without it, the country falls apart.

Wedding cake visual metaphor with figurine cake toppers

No, Divorce Isn’t ‘Fine For The Kids’

No, Divorce Isn't 'Fine For The Kids'

Ben Shapiro

divorce

Family Values

Fathers

Marriage

School Shooting

Western Civilization

Two kindergartners who were critically wounded in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shooter-at-christian-school-sought-child-executions-in-response-to-oppression-of-palestinians" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shooting</a> at Feather River Adventist School in Oroville, California, last week are showing signs of improvement after undergoing surgery, Action News Now <a href="https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/christian-school-shooting-victims-show-signs-of-improvement/article_b1ed00b0-b644-11ef-9206-af8c2934ea69.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Roman Mendez, 6, and Elias Wolford, 5, both came out of surgery on Friday and are recovering, according to their families. The young boys were shot on Wednesday when a crazed man opened fire in the school after meeting with the principal about enrolling his grandson, what authorities believe was just a &#8220;ruse&#8221; to get into the school. In writings obtained by law enforcement after the shooting, the shooter — a 56-year-old man with a criminal record and a history of mental health issues — wrote that he was seeking out “child executions” in response to “America’s involvement in Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians,” according to authorities.
&#8220;A little 5-year-old gets shot with a nine millimeter and survived, it&#8217;s a miracle,&#8221; said Wolford&#8217;s aunt Tawnee Preisner, according to Action News Now. &#8220;This has shattered his childhood, he&#8217;s still in really critical condition. All those other kids that were in the school. This is all very traumatic. One thing that is really devastating too, they were targeted because of their religion. Nobody should ever have to go through this.&#8221;
Preisner added that Wolford has been sleeping a lot since his surgery, but he has talked to his dad since the shooting. Mendez&#8217;s sister Vanessa Diaz wrote on social media on Sunday that the 6-year-old boy is awake and breathing on his own. Diaz said that the first words Mendez spoke after the tubes were removed from his mouth were, &#8220;Where is Elias?&#8221;
On Friday, the annual Christmas tree lighting in Oroville, a town of around 20,000, began with a <a href="https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/oroville-community-comes-together-for-special-vigil-held-for-the-two-boys-wounded-in-school/article_3d06ca50-b465-11ef-aeaa-efd2387c85bb.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prayer vigil</a> for the Mendez and Wolford. Kenn Malone, a local pastor and a chaplain for the Butte County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, said, &#8220;No matter where you go, there&#8217;s evil and there&#8217;s bad people but there&#8217;s a whole lot more good that goes on what people realize, so that&#8217;s how we do it, keep this thing going by this thing called love.&#8221;
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After shooting the two kindergartners, the shooter turned the gun on himself. District Attorney Mike Ramsey said it’s possible that the shooter would have been charged with a hate crime if he had survived. The shooter was a homeless man who moved around the Chico and Sacramento areas, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/butte-county-suspected-shooter-identified/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The 56-year-old white male was convicted of multiple crimes in the 1990s and early 2000s, including theft, fraud, and forgery. According to Sheriff Honea, the shooter also had a juvenile record.
Just last month, the shooter was arrested in South San Francisco after he was suspected of stealing a U-Haul truck. Law enforcement officers found him in the stolen truck, and he was transported to the San Bernadino County Jail. He pled not guilty and was released from jail on November 21. After he was released, the shooter stayed at various motels in the Chico area, which is about 30 miles north of Feather River Adventist School.

Screenshot X: Cap Radio News

Kindergarteners Who Were Wounded In Christian School Shooting Show Signs Of Improvement

California

Christians

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and The Heritage Foundation’s Sarah Parshall Perry on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a>
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on what’s being called the marquee case of this term. In United States V. Skrmetti, three trans identifying teens, a Memphis physician and the Biden administration challenged a Tennessee state law that aims to protect children by banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for the purpose of attempting to change a child’s gender.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us to break down this week’s oral arguments in United States V. Skrmetti and the broader implications is Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Sarah, thanks for coming on – always good to talk to you.
SARAH: Thank you for having me.
JOHN: So, this week we had the oral arguments for this landmark case. Now, we here at the Daily Wire have followed this case closely, in part because of the role <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a> in this. His investigation into Vanderbilt helped prompt the law that this center’s on. First, can you walk us through how we got to the Supreme Court hearing?
SARAH: Yes. This actually came from a parental rights challenge. Three parents of transgender minors brought this challenge against SB1, which was a law that was enacted with bipartisan support in the state of Tennessee, saying that not only did it interfere with their rights to achieve this particular very controversial and experimental medical care for their children, but it was also a sex discriminatory law, and that would make it illegal, unconstitutional, under the Equal Protection Clause. Well, both the Federal Trial Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found for Tennessee, basically determining that the state of Tennessee had satisfied the constitutional bar, and it had every interest in protecting minors from unproven sexism, scientifically sketchy procedures, and that this was well within their police power as the state. Well, by the time it got to the Sixth Circuit, the United States had filed a motion to intervene. It can do so when a state law challenging an equal protection clause violation is at issue. That&#8217;s what they did here. And so by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it only granted review of the United States&#8217;s claim and not the parental rights claim. So what we heard was oral arguments specifically dedicated to whether or not this was sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause.
JOHN: So, let&#8217;s unpack that a bit more. What is the argument for this being sex discrimination and the argument against it? 
SARAH: Well, Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. Solicitor General for the United States, argues for the Biden administration that because the law makes a distinction on boys who are identified as boys at birth who want to get testosterone, but will not allow girls who are identified as boys who want as male at birth – being transgender, of course – they cannot get access to testosterone, that that&#8217;s a facially discriminatory characteristic. But what the law actually does, and the state legislators were very careful to engage in this type of analysis, is to simply restrict for both males and females any access to the drugs determined by their age alone – which the Supreme Court has never held to be a class requiring elevated scrutiny — and also based on the use to which the drugs would be put. So restricted only based on use and age, nothing more, and treated men and women equally under the law.
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JOHN: And to be clear, what is barred here is to use these controversial procedures, these hormone treatments, these puberty blockers, in order to attempt to change the gender or sex of a minor, correct?
SARAH: That&#8217;s exactly it. In fact, there is no restriction on the use of these puberty blockers for endocrine disorders like precocious puberty, which obviously indicates that those are appropriate medical uses. And of course, the state of Tennessee restricts the use of other drugs for particular purposes as well. It wants to make sure that the dangers of “off-label use” — And that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s involved here. This is off-label use of unproven drugs for gender dysphoria. They want to make sure that that use is restricted, and they&#8217;re constitutionally permitted to do that.
JOHN: For those who aren&#8217;t familiar with that term, “off-label” – which is actually crucial in this case – what does that mean in this context?
SARAH: The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has never approved puberty blockers for &#8220;gender dysphoria.&#8221; It has never approved those particular drugs for which these minor children and their parents, and the United States, have all argued to get access to. Instead, it&#8217;s only approved them for endocrine disorders. So the state of Tennessee does not want minor children assuming the risk of off-label use and making determinations that could have lifetime consequences.
JOHN: Now, judging from what we heard on Wednesday, where do you think the justices are leaning in this case?
SARAH: I think there&#8217;s a very strong reason to believe that at least five of the justices are going to be skeptical of the United States’ arguments. In fact, Justice Alito himself was fairly excoriating in his refusal to allow Elizabeth Preloger, the Solicitor General, to be creative with her legal analysis and to ignore the science. In fact, he said that she&#8217;s relegated to a footnote in the bombshell Cass Review Report, which came out of England earlier this year, but in fact the science itself is we also know that Justice Kavanaugh said there is &#8220;a red light&#8221; here to prevent us from getting involved in new areas and constitutionalizing new areas of medicine. Justice Barrett said this is a question better left for the legislature, as did the Chief Justice himself, who actually quoted, without citing the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health by saying this issue is better suited for the people and their elected representatives. Strangely silent was Justice Gorsuch, who had nothing to say during two and a half hours, and he may be the swing vote in this.
<div id="attachment_838801" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838801" class="size-large wp-image-838801" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-864x576.jpg" alt="Police stand between demonstrators in support of gender affirming treatment, left, and demonstrators in support of the Tennessee case against gender affirming treatment for minors, right, outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. The US Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of state laws that ban gender-affirming treatments for minors less than five years after the justices outlawed job discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Credit: Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: Justice Gorsuch was notably silent. Do you have any sense of why that might have been the case?
SARAH: You know, it could be one of two things. First of all, I think it&#8217;s wise to remember that Justice Gorsuch was the majority opinion author in Bostock versus Clayton County dating to the year 2020. And in that case, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, relative to employment discrimination, was expanded not only to prohibit sex discrimination, but also to prohibit anti-racism and gender identity discrimination. Now, he was that opinion&#8217;s majority author. He may have been dealing with the fact that there is now a recognition that the Bostock opinion was a Pandora&#8217;s box. The Biden administration has used the Bostock opinion to expand the administrative state, and to force gender identity into concepts like medicine, school lunches, education, and more. That is something I think with which he will have to ultimately reckon because Elizabeth Preloger, the Solicitor General, mentioned the similarity to Bostock, so he very much may have been curling his toes underneath the table.
JOHN: So will this ruling potentially override that – will this set a new precedent in terms of that discrimination clause writ large?
SARAH: Well, as the other justices noted, particularly conservative justices, the analysis for a constitutional claim, a violation, for example, of the Equal Protection Clause and whether it discriminates based on sex, is slightly different than a discriminatory analysis based on sex under civil rights law. The Constitution holds to a higher bar, what&#8217;s called intermediate or heightened scrutiny, and that&#8217;s a higher bar for a state to achieve. But that analysis is different enough where Bostock is different from the current issue. I do think what it will do, however, is pin back the ears a little bit, the reach of the Bostock determination, and ensure that equal protection claims are not brought alongside statutory civil rights discrimination claims.
JOHN: All right so that was the conservative response – what did we hear from the Left-leaning justices?
SARAH: Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of histrionic commentary about trans kids dying and that these are proven scientific interventions, when in fact we know that is not the case. But the most interesting comparison came from Justice Kanji Brown Jackson, who cited Loving v. Virginia as a analogous case law study, and in Loving v. Virginia, that was the case in which the Supreme Court invalidated the interracial marriage ban from that state under the Equal Protection Clause, essentially overriding the judgment of the state legislature. She argued for the United States to be able to do so here, but ignored the fact that, once again, sex is not the defining characteristic at issue.
JOHN: Right – and Brown’s questions in particular gained a lot of negative attention online. Now, it&#8217;s notable that the conservatives seem to suggest that this issue is more appropriate to be dealt with by state legislatures rather than the court. And I think the implication there is that science is constantly being updated and reexamined, the best practices are often changing. Is the idea here that a federal court ruling can be too permanent in a sense for medical practices?
SARAH: Well, I&#8217;ll harken back to the Dobbs decision again, and we know the line of viability, for example, that Roe v. Wade set shifted and changed over the fifty years before Dobbs versus Jackson women&#8217;s health. And in writing the majority opinion, Justice Alito mentioned the fact that they should not be constitutionalizing areas of medical regulation. That was wholly within the state&#8217;s authority. I think they are very likely here to make the exact same determination, especially with so recent a ruling like that on the books.
<div id="attachment_838675" style="width: 816px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838675" class="size-large wp-image-838675" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 04: Transgender rights supporters and opponent rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case on transgender health rights on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in US v. Skrmetti, a case about Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for minors and if it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee." width="806" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg 806w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-300x214.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-768x549.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 806px) 100vw, 806px" />Credit: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: When do we expect a decision to be handed down on this case?
SARAH: Well, there are quite a number of high-profile decisions, but I would argue this is the most high-profile, which indicates to me we are not likely to see an outcome here until probably the end of June 2025.
JOHN: Okay, so beyond the Supreme Court and constitutional issues here, looking at the broader legal issues here – one of the things that the Matt Walsh investigation uncovered was an apparent financial incentive for promoting the kind of very controversial, permanent treatments that we&#8217;re seeing with these transgender minor operations procedures. Do you foresee legal trouble for those that have been involved in these kinds of programs?
SARAH: That&#8217;s a good question. We know that this is a three to $5 billion a year industry and some estimates are as high as $10 billion. On average, gender medicine yields a doctor $8,000 per single procedure in sole profit. So we know money had to be spent, quite a bit to do with this and with the incentive of doctors to medicalize these minor children, but there is good news. We&#8217;ve already seen a lawsuit coming out of California brought by Harmeet Dhillon&#8217;s law firm and she&#8217;s done excellent work. They are suing Kaiser Permanente for rushing three minor girls, three young teen girls, through the gender medicine gambit without getting informed consent. I do believe a reckoning is coming.
JOHN: You mention Harmeet Dhillon, we actually caught up with her recently and she gave as an overview of her cases involving transition procedures. Here’s some of what she said:
HARMEET: We literally filed the first, second, and third lawsuits on this issue in the country. I think other lawyers are joining us and so these cases are winding their way through the court system or through arbitration, because Kaiser tries to force people into arbitration, so do other medical providers. And one of the issues why there&#8217;s so few cases is because there&#8217;s statute of limitations that are very short that really keep the window very narrow for these young women — largely women — to file lawsuits. And so it&#8217;s heartbreaking the number of people we simply can&#8217;t help because of these statute of limitations issues. I do think that&#8217;s going to make a difference, but the bigger and faster and more effective long term difference is going to be legislatures banning these procedures on children. Medical boards taking away the licenses of doctors who commit medical malpractice, which I believe most of these doctors are doing. I mean, you literally have cases where people go in, some guidance counselor sends them for one session with some rubber stamper who then goes and gets the girl&#8217;s breasts cut off. It&#8217;s shocking and outrageous, it&#8217;s insane and it needs to stop. And we shouldn&#8217;t rely on the courts and lawyers. We should ask Republican legislatures and Democrat legislatures, frankly, if they care about humans, to stop this practice.
JOHN: Final question: How significant will this ruling ultimately be? Is it fair to say that this ruling will change how the issue of laws about trans procedures in the other states are handled by the courts?
SARAH: Yeah, I think that&#8217;s exactly accurate. In fact, there are other cases relative to the notion of gender identity pending on the Supreme Court&#8217;s docket. But I think the first shot across the bow is the particular notion of gender medicine, because that is at bottom such a controversial notion. I do believe for the 26 other states who are watching keenly what happens with Tennessee&#8217;s ban, when they themselves have almost identical bans within their own states. They are very hopeful that the Supreme Court will come down on the side of states rights and their ability to protect minor children, which is something that the Supreme Court has recognized for more than a hundred years.
JOHN: A consequential decision coming this summer. Sarah, thanks so much for coming on. That was Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a>
***
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Supreme Court Considers Tennessee’s Ban On Treatments For Transgender Minors

‘$5 Billion Industry’: Breaking Down SCOTUS Oral Arguments On Transgender Case

'$5 Billion Industry': Breaking Down SCOTUS Oral Arguments On Transgender Case

minors

Morning Wire

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Tennessee

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Tennessee Attorney General John Skrmetti on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/landmark-battle-skrmetti-defends-law-protecting-minors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saturday edition of Morning Wire</a>. 
It’s being called the most significant case of the current Supreme Court term — United States v. Skrmetti. The attorney general sat down with us to discuss his pivotal role in the case and his defense of a state law aimed at protecting minors from transgender medical procedures.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now is Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Attorney General, thank you so much for coming on. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on what is setting up to be a landmark case on transgender medical procedures on minors. Your name is on this marquee case, it’s you against the federal government: United States v. Skrmetti. So, safe to say, no one is more attuned to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessees-ban-on-child-sex-changes-heads-to-the-supreme-court-live-blog" target="_blank" rel="noopener">what happened this week</a> than you. First, how do you feel the day went for your case? 
SKRMETTI: I thought it went very well. I can&#8217;t predict outcomes, you don&#8217;t know what the court&#8217;s going to do and the justices have months to deliberate. So without talking “horse race” here, I thought the day went well for us. My solicitor general Matt Rice did a great job making our case. I was very happy with his oral argument. The argument went long, which I think reflects that the justices care a lot about this, recognize there are some complexities here from a legal perspective, and that this could be a very consequential precedent. And so they want to get it right. So I thought they explored many issues very thoroughly, and I thought we put out a great case for Tennessee.
JOHN: Yeah, what were some of the questions from the justices that stuck out to you, that could be key in their decision-making?
SKRMETTI: Again, you don&#8217;t want to prognosticate too much, but I think the sex discrimination questions were very important. There was one lengthy line of questioning, but there were a number of questions about how this case might fit into existing sex discrimination case law. And I think that&#8217;s probably going to be a very significant issue for the outcome of the case. I think I can prognosticate that much. But the question is: Is this a sex discrimination case in a constitutional sense? Our position is, it is not, because you&#8217;re not treating like people differently. The argument is because boys can get testosterone, but girls can&#8217;t, and girls can get estrogen, but boys can&#8217;t, that you&#8217;re discriminating on the basis of sex. But our position is there&#8217;s not some universal distribution of hormones out there. You don&#8217;t just give boys testosterone. Anytime a drug is prescribed, it is for the purpose of treating a particular condition. And the evaluation of whether the drug is appropriate depends on that condition. There&#8217;s not some universal access to any given drug. So, if you&#8217;re giving a boy testosterone, for a testosterone deficiency, that&#8217;s relieving medical problems. That&#8217;s curing harms. If you give a girl testosterone for a psychological condition, gender dysphoria, it will create a host of physiological problems – potential lifelong loss of fertility, potential lifelong loss of sexual function. Depending on which hormone you&#8217;re talking about, you can have lifelong problems with blood clots, with tumors, with puberty blockers, bone density disorders, and all of them cause potential lifelong cognitive impairments. So the use of the drug is very contingent on which condition you&#8217;re addressing with it.
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JOHN: Part of this is encapsulated in the concept of off-label usage of drugs. Can you explain what that means for our audience?
SKRMETTI: Sure. So the FDA, kind of adopting the perspective that I just articulated, only evaluates drugs for certain uses. They don&#8217;t say, &#8220;This drug is good, everybody can get as much of it as they want.&#8221; They say, &#8220;This drug is appropriate for treating this condition.&#8221; So, a lot of times, a drug will be approved to treat certain conditions. The FDA doesn&#8217;t have sufficient research to evaluate whether it&#8217;s appropriate for other conditions, but doctors can still sometimes prescribe it. They can prescribe off-label, which means even though the drug is not approved for that use, the doctors have made an informed medical decision to use it in that context, but they&#8217;re still subject to regulation. The state has, for hundreds of years, been regulating the practice of medicine. Even though doctors have a great deal of latitude, there are legal limits on what they can do. Oftentimes those limits are in place because the potential harms dramatically outweigh the potential benefits. The state has made a judgment that it is simply not appropriate to let doctors do what they would otherwise be inclined to do. Of course, those are fairly limited circumstances. We give a lot of latitude to doctors. We have a lot of respect for their training and for their decision-making, but there&#8217;s still a role for regulation there.
JOHN: When your team researched the evidence, the medical justification for why you think this is a fair law in the first place, what did you find in terms of the efficacy of these gender transition procedures for minors? Is there evidence backing up what pro-trans activists will claim about this?
SKRMETTI: Every systematic review of the evidence has determined that there is little to no benefit to minors. There are individual studies – there was some of this in the court. You can attack any given individual study on either side, there are always arguments to be made, but the systematic reviews of the overall research literature have consistently shown no benefit to minors. That&#8217;s why European countries that pioneered the use of these procedures on kids have since reversed course. It&#8217;s not because they suddenly got very politically conservative. It&#8217;s because they looked at the evidence and they determined that, for kids, the risks far outweigh the benefits, that the unexplained dramatic increase in the number of cases was very concerning, that there simply wasn&#8217;t a medical justification for the broad adoption of these treatments in the juvenile context. So they&#8217;ve greatly restricted the availability of these treatments. And that same review of evidence informed Tennessee&#8217;s decision.
JOHN: Now, I wanted to ask you about the parental rights aspects of this law. The pro-trans activists have tried to argue that Tennessee’s law could violate parent’s rights. What do you make of that argument?
SKRMETTI: So when the case was originally filed, there was both the constitutional argument, involving sex discrimination, and a parental rights argument. We won both in the Court of Appeals in the Sixth Circuit. The United States only petitioned for cert on the 14th Amendment issue, and so when the court granted that petition, the only question before them is the equal protection sex discrimination claim. So, the parental rights issue is still lurking out there. Justice Barrett addressed that briefly. Now, there are other situations where parents aren&#8217;t allowed to do what they&#8217;d otherwise be inclined to do. We give parents a great deal of latitude with their children but that doesn&#8217;t mean that they can do whatever they want, particularly in situations where you&#8217;re talking about severely adverse consequences in the long run. Parents can&#8217;t just go ahead and let their kids engage in conduct like that because the kids can&#8217;t meaningfully consent, and the parents can&#8217;t consign them to a life of dealing with the consequences for many, many different choices. This is an area where the state&#8217;s power is near its apex, protecting kids from serious harm.
<div id="attachment_838675" style="width: 816px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838675" class="size-large wp-image-838675" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 04: Transgender rights supporters and opponent rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case on transgender health rights on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in US v. Skrmetti, a case about Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for minors and if it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee." width="806" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg 806w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-300x214.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-768x549.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 806px) 100vw, 806px" />Credit: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: Now, as we’ve documented here at the Daily Wire, Tennessee’s law was inspired by an investigation into Vanderbilt’s gender clinic by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-gender-ideology" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Walsh</a> that got the attention of a lot of people not just in the state but across the country. And now over two dozen states have laws similar to Tennessee’s How will this ruling of impact those state laws?
SKRMETTI: Well, presumably if Tennessee&#8217;s law is constitutionally sound, then the other half of the states in the country that have adopted similar laws will similarly survive constitutional scrutiny, and it will allow those states to exercise their sovereign authority to regulate the medical profession in a way that protects kids. So, this is definitely a case that will have broader consequences than just within the borders of Tennessee.
JOHN: A larger question, about the cultural context of this: We just saw an election where Republicans gained 10 points or more in almost every single state, even in very deep blue areas – even if they didn&#8217;t vote for Trump, they moved in the direction of Republicans. And one of the most cited issues was the transgender agenda. Do you see this year as a turning point on this issue? 
SKRMETTI: So I think it&#8217;s an issue that&#8217;s front of mind for a lot of people because the country has moved, at least in part, very, very far, very, very fast over the past few years. We&#8217;ve just seen radical changes in the rhetoric, in mainstream conversations about gender identity. To tell someone 10 years ago this would be the big case of this term at the Supreme Court, I think, would have baffled most Americans. So it&#8217;s something that people are reacting to. But I do think, even if there is a political element to it with respect to the election, it&#8217;s really important to note that this is not a political issue for a lot of people. This was a bipartisan piece of legislation. It was supported by members of both sides of the aisle when it came through the Tennessee legislature. The people advocating for this include, of course, traditional Christian conservative groups, traditional constitutional conservative groups, but also groups that probably don&#8217;t align with us on a lot of issues. There are medical groups that are fairly non-political. There are LGB groups that are very concerned about what they term “transing the gays.” So this is a coalition that&#8217;s much broader than just one side of the political divide. There are a lot of people who are really worried that we have adopted an approach to gender identity issues that&#8217;s going to leave a lot of kids very hurt.
JOHN: There’s certainly evidence that the national sentiment has shifted on this. Final question. The justices will deliver their decision this summer. In the meantime, how does Tennessee handle this particular law in the intervening months?
SKRMETTI: So, our law is currently in effect, and we will enforce it. That means we&#8217;re going to be protecting Tennessee kids from these lifelong treatments. One important fact is, the science shows, the evidence shows most kids dealing with gender dysphoria will outgrow it. It&#8217;s a hard thing to deal with, it&#8217;s a hard thing for everybody to deal with, but most of these kids who are being steered toward these life-altering treatments would be fine if they were just given time – and we want to make sure they have that time.
JOHN: Well, attorney general, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
SKRMETTI: Thank you. Take care.
JOHN: That was Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/landmark-battle-skrmetti-defends-law-protecting-minors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saturday edition of Morning Wire</a>.
***
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AG Skrmetti

‘A Very Consequential Precedent’: AG Skrmetti Unpacks Landmark Supreme Court Case

'A Very Consequential Precedent': AG Skrmetti Unpacks Landmark Supreme Court Case

Attorney General

Matt Walsh

In September 2022, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-looking-at-child-gender-transition-legislation-after-vanderbilt-transgender-videos-released" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released shocking video</a> of a doctor referring to gender transition surgeries as “huge money makers.” The footage revealed Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor, a physician, discussing how a “gender-affirming” double mastectomy could bring in around $40,000, and a female-to-male transition could bring in more than $100,000. These revelations raised ethical questions and prompted an investigation into the Pediatric Transgender Clinic where she worked.
Alarm bells went off when we heard “Pediatric Transgender Clinic.”
As a society, we recognize that young people do not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to make big, life-altering decisions. That is why you cannot vote until you turn 18. You cannot get a tattoo until you turn 18. Your frontal lobe does not fully develop until you are 25. Yet a hospital in the state was performing irreversible gender transition treatments on vulnerable children because those procedures were lucrative. 
 
There is no place for the exploitation of children in our state. Immediately after Walsh brought this to light, Tennesseans united in a call to action. In October 2022, responding to concerns raised by Walsh, lawmakers, and Tennesseans, all pediatric gender transitions were paused for a review while they completed a review. Thousands <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/rally-to-end-child-mutilation-live-from-nashville" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gathered at the capitol</a> later that month in Nashville for a rally to end child mutilation. We stood alongside Walsh, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and other state and national leaders to call for an end to this unethical practice. 
 
Notably, Chloe Cole, who was 18 at the time, shared her experience de-transitioning after undergoing “gender-affirming care” as a minor. She began taking puberty blockers and underwent “top surgery” at age 13 as a part of her transition from a female to a male. Cole, now 20, draws on her personal journey to advocate against transgender procedures for minors.
In response, we filed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-tennessee-introduces-legislation-to-ban-trans-treatments-for-minors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Senate Bill 1</a> and House Bill 1, the first bills of the 113th General Assembly in each chamber, which banned gender transition procedures on minors in Tennessee. This issue centers on children making adult decisions with lifelong consequences. The Tennessee General Assembly decisively passed the legislation in February of 2023, signifying a major step forward in protecting children in the Volunteer State. 
 
Of course, we expected challenges to the new law from the far-Left. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and his exceptional team led a skillful defense through months of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-officials-sued-by-biden-hit-back-with-promise-to-fight-child-sex-change-push" target="_blank" rel="noopener">court challenges from Liberal groups</a>.
As public servants, we have a responsibility to listen to the people we represent and legislate according to their priorities. The people of Tennessee spoke loud and clear on this issue. We believe strongly in the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1. 
 
Now, we look ahead to Dec. 4, when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Senate Bill 1. We pray that this case sets a national precedent for safeguarding vulnerable young people from irreversible and unproven medical procedures.
No matter what happens in Washington D.C., here in Tennessee, we will always prioritize our children’s safety and well-being first.
 * * * 
 
Jack Johnson serves as the Tennessee Senate Majority Leader and represents Senate District 27. William Lamberth serves as the Tennessee House Majority Leader and represents House District 44. They jointly sponsored Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 1 in their respective chambers.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Nashville, Tennessee, USA at Dawn

Tennessee Leads The Way: The Continued Fight For Our Children

Screen Shot 2022-10-21 at 6.21.16 PM

The Supreme Court Showdown That Could End Child Mutilation Forever

What Is A Woman

WPATH

Timcast

A Father’s Tragic Fight To Save His Son From Gender Ideology

Parents rights

The following is an edited transcript of a recent interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Harmeet Dhillon, managing partner at The Dhillon Law Group.
Post-election polling shows that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-kamalas-focus-on-gender-ideology-cost-her-the-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transgender issue</a> was a top three issue that drove voters to Trump and away from Harris. The data comes as more states are shutting down transgender procedures for minors and lawsuits are beginning to mount against healthcare professionals who’ve pushed the trans agenda.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us to discuss is Harmeet Dhillon, whose legal firm the Dhillon Law Group has been leading the fight against potentially permanent procedures performed on children. Harmeet, thanks for coming on.
HARMEET: Thanks for having me.
JOHN: First, many have said that the trans agenda – including boys in girls sport and trans surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants – was a &#8220;sleeper issue&#8221; this year. We&#8217;ve done some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harris-pledged-to-use-taxpayer-money-to-fund-sex-change-surgeries-for-illegal-aliens-in-detention-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reporting</a> at Daily Wire about this. Do you see data that it did in fact impact this election?
HARMEET: Well, I would say the data that I saw was from the Trump campaign and its allies, and they certainly focused hard on that issue. And I&#8217;m sure that was in response to data. We&#8217;ve done some work, a lot of work actually. We&#8217;ve been a national leader on the issue of suing doctors who mutilate girls and also representing parents whose civil rights are violated by not having access to the information they need to parent their children properly on this issue and many other issues. So we&#8217;ve done a lot of litigation on it. It did pick up in the national pulse. Our client, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/to-the-la-times-get-a-life-i-have-lives-to-save" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chloe Cole</a>, has been prominently featured by some messaging on these issues. She&#8217;s a girl who detransitioned, now a young woman, and is suing Kaiser Permanente here in California over that. She&#8217;s been a landmark voice on these issues, testifying around the country. I know it has motivated legislatures to change the law and that I think is definitely a talking point in those states. A lot of red states, purple states — it&#8217;s a huge issue. It&#8217;s not a huge issue here in California, even on the opposite side. I don&#8217;t see a lot of activists going to bat for this issue. And so I think we are really within a striking distance of President Trump being able to severely cut back on the prevalence of this issue through cutting back federal funding or other ways to do it. For once, America needs to catch up with Europe and the rest of the world where these procedures are simply not being done, for the most part, on children because they don&#8217;t work.
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<div id="attachment_774281" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-774281" class="wp-image-774281 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-864x576.jpeg" alt="Chloe Cole speaking with attendees at the 2024 Chapter Leadership Summit at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. 13 June 2024. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America. Wikimedia Commons." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-864x576.jpeg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1800x1200.jpeg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1200x800.jpeg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Chloe Cole speaking with attendees at the 2024 Chapter Leadership Summit at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. 13 June 2024. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America. Wikimedia Commons.</div>
JOHN: Right, there’s been dramatic movement away from these sorts of procedures in several European countries. Are you seeing progress on this issue in the courts, legally?
HARMEET: No, it&#8217;s too early in the courts. We literally filed the first, second, and third lawsuits on this issue in the country. I think other lawyers are joining us and so these cases are winding their way through the court system or through arbitration because Kaiser tries to force people into arbitration – so do other medical providers. And one of the issues, why there are so few cases, is because there&#8217;s a statute of limitations that are very short and really keep the window very narrow for these young women, largely women, to file lawsuits. And so it&#8217;s heartbreaking, the number of people we simply can&#8217;t help, because of these statute of limitations issues. I do think that&#8217;s going to make a difference. But the bigger and faster and more effective long-term difference is going to be legislatures banning these procedures on children. Medical boards taking away the licenses of doctors who commit medical malpractice, which I believe most of these doctors are doing. I mean, literally you have cases where people go in, some guidance counselor sends them for one session with some rubber stamper who then goes and gets the girl&#8217;s breasts cut off. It&#8217;s shocking and outrageous. You have to go through more hassle to get liposuction, I believe, than to get your breasts cut off as a young girl. So, it&#8217;s insane and it needs to stop. We shouldn&#8217;t rely on the courts and lawyers. We should ask Republican legislatures — and Democrat legislatures, frankly, if they care about humans — to stop this practice.
JOHN: Well, we&#8217;ve seen decisive action here in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-asks-scotus-to-uphold-ban-on-trans-surgeries-for-minors-amid-doj-challenge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tennessee </a>to shut down these potentially permanent procedures for children – that’s been really heartening for those working to end it. We’ll see what other states follow suit. Harmeet Dhillon, thank you so much for joining us.
* * *
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1Harmeet_Dhillon_(53067415294) copy

‘It’s Shocking And Outrageous’: Harmeet Dhillon On Why Trans Issues Were Top Of Mind For Voters

'It's Shocking And Outrageous': Harmeet Dhillon On Why Trans Issues Were Top Of Mind For Voters

2024 Election

Doctors

Harmeet Dhillon

There was an interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle this week that you might have missed if you were doing something more important than reading the San Francisco Chronicle like squeezing the pimple between your eyes until blood and pus poured down the front of your face and you spent the rest of the morning taking pictures of yourself smeared in gore with your tongue sticking out sideways and sending the selfies to all your friends with a message saying, “Look, I’m in the new sequel to Night of the Living Dead — laughter emoji.”
The article was written by Ariella Cook-hyphen-Shonkoff, a child therapist and art therapist based in Berkeley, California, and I was going to make a joke about that but how much funnier could it get? Her article is entitled, “How to Talk to Your Kids About Donald Trump’s Election.”
The article begins with this advice — and so help me, this is a genuine quote: “Before engaging with kiddos, give yourself some space to grieve. Hug someone close, walk in the woods, sit on a beach, cry under a blanket. Check your pulse. Are you feeling heated, reactive or in the throes of despair? If so, delay the conversation.”
Now, look, I know Democrats are genuinely suffering after Donald Trump particlized their every hope and dream of destroying our freedoms — and I don’t like to take pleasure in the emotional pain of others unless the emotional pain of others tastes like caramel swirl ice cream melted into a sugary liquid and then poured over the naked body of Ana de Armas so that she and it can be drunk down whole like a shot of tequila in a Tijuana Bar knocked back in a single gulp at three in the morning after being poured over the naked body of Ana de Armas.
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So let’s try to imagine how Berkeley child art therapist Ariella hyphen-name wants us to break the Trump news to our kids.
After sobbing under a blanket and taking your pulse, approach your child slowly with the blanket still over your head, leaving visible only your grief-wracked face with chaotic streaks of mascara that transform it into an almost perfect image of a vampire raccoon that might be waiting under the bed to jump out at your child at any moment.
Tenderly, sit your son down in the crinkling folds of his crinoline party gown, and gently say, “Brenda, my darling boy, I know we’d been planning to celebrate your eighth birthday by cutting off your testicles so you could pretend to be a girl until you’d grown old enough to make your own decision whether to commit suicide or simply mainline anti-depressants, but I’m afraid under Donald Trump, you may have to face the fact that you’re not really a girl, you’re just acting like some kind of sissy. You might even want to get some masculinity pointers from your father if I can find out where he lives and maybe convince him to come home by dumping this hyphen malarkey and taking his name like a married woman should.” Then, if Brenda starts to cry, you can just tenderly smack him a good one and say, “Man up, girly boy, you’re in Trump’s America now.”
After that, you might sit your daughter down and say, “Cruella, sweetheart, I know you were looking forward to puberty, when you could begin to empower yourself by amassing a gigantic body count of indifferent men who’ve used your flesh for their own personal pleasure so you can shout your abortion between nights of heavy drinking that leave you clinging to your vomit-covered toilet praying to God for some relief from your despair. But now, with abortion banned in Alabama, Arkansas and several other states you’ve never been to or heard of, I think you might consider going on a sex strike against any man who refuses to dedicate his life to supporting you while you raise the children sex creates and make a home for both them and him. Oh, and don’t forget to take his last name so he knows the sex strike is serious. And make sure he’s wearing a MAGA hat and isn’t some weak-ass dipstick like your father.”
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is the bestselling author of the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A WOMAN UNDERGROUND</a>,” is now available. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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