Detransitioner Claire Abernathy hadn’t even made it to high school yet when her doctors encouraged her to undergo a double mastectomy. Despite <a href="https://www.iwf.org/2025/04/28/new-identity-crisis-documentary-mother-and-daughter-expose-medical-industrys-transgender-manipulation-and-lies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">her concerns</a> about the procedure, her mother, Carrie, was told that affirming Claire’s gender identity was the only way to prevent her from killing herself.
Now, years later, both mother and daughter <a href="https://www.iwf.org/2025/04/28/new-identity-crisis-documentary-mother-and-daughter-expose-medical-industrys-transgender-manipulation-and-lies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opened up</a> to IW Features about how the medical system manipulated them into making permanent and irreversible decisions — the consequences of which they are still grappling with today.
The worst part? They’re not alone.
The Abernathy family is part of a growing segment of our population coming to terms with the damage done by gender ideologues. Hopefully, they will serve as inspiration for other families fighting not just gender confusion, but a manipulative industry that turns this confusion into profit.
The adolescent brain is a work in progress. We all know this to be true — after all, why else would we restrict young men and women from getting a tattoo until they’ve turned 18 or from purchasing alcohol until they’ve turned 21? It doesn’t matter how much a kid feels like an “old soul.” A young person’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making and impulse control, continues to <a href="https://hillcrestatc.com/teen-brain-development/">mature</a> well into their mid-20s.
Because teens go through this lengthy, often angsty developmental stage, they’re that much more susceptible to risk-taking behaviors and less capable of fully understanding long-term consequences. This is why <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one in five</a> teen drivers involved in a fatal crash had some alcohol in their system — because teens are more likely to underestimate the effects of alcohol on their bodies and overestimate their ability to drive inebriated. Similarly, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.soscij.2016.08.004" target="_blank" rel="noopener">studies</a> show that as many as one-third of tattooed adolescents regret inking up their bodies. And unsurprisingly, <a href="https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/98697/dermatology/teenage-tattoos-are-most-often-regretted" target="_blank" rel="noopener">research</a> indicates that the younger a teen is when they get a tattoo, the more likely they are to regret it later.
So why aren’t America’s trusted, highly esteemed medical professionals drawing the same conclusions about so-called “gender-affirming” procedures? While comprehensive data on regret following medical interventions in gender-confused minors is still emerging, stories like Claire’s are proof that medicalization can and does have victims. At least if you cop some bad ink, you might be able to get it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/snl-pete-davidson-spending-six-figures-remove-all-tattoos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lasered off</a> later. But the permanence of gender-affirming procedures adds a sickening layer of complexity and potential for regret.
Teens might swear up and down they know what they want with their lives, like an unattainable dream job or goals to jet-set around the world childless and unbothered. But I’m willing to bet that teens can, and often will, change their minds. I know I did. If you asked 16-year-old Andrea if she wanted to get married and have children, she would have laughed in your face. And, if you asked her if she felt comfortable in her female body, she probably would have similarly scoffed.
Puberty is a really rough time for any young person. That’s not only something Claire expressed to me during her interview, but it’s a reality I have lived myself. I can recall the first conscious moment I felt insecure about my body: I was in elementary school, watching a movie starring young Lindsay Lohan, and I saw how her thighs didn’t touch when she sat down on a car seat.
<a href="https://depts.washington.edu/thmedia/view.cgi?page=fastfacts&amp;section=bodyimage">Studies</a> show that as many as 40% of nine and 10-year-old girls are already trying to lose weight, and as many as 70% of normal-weight teen girls <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/many-normal-weight-teens-feel-fat/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">think</a> they’re overweight. Should parents of young girls who wrongfully believe they are fat indulge their child’s delusions and allow her to diet, or worse, get liposuction? If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.
Yet, that’s exactly what the medical and entertainment industries are telling parents of gender-confused children that they must do.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Identity Crisis: Mother and Daughter Expose Medical Industry&#039;s Transgender Lies" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nj1OUvFZM4A?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In my home state of California, $28,890,512 has been spent on youth “transgender” medical interventions, according to <a href="https://stoptheharmdatabase.com/state/california/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">StopTheHarm</a>. Ethically speaking, plastic surgeons are supposed to assess the physical and emotional maturity of teen patients before they go under the knife for cosmetic procedures. So why does nearly every story of detransition reveal that medical professionals rarely, if ever, address underlying psychological issues — Borderline Personality Disorder, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, etc. — in gender-confused youth ? And why is it that the only solution offered by most medical professionals is for these youth to have their healthy body parts modified?
And what can parents realistically do? Carrie’s experience reminds me of the old adage: Mother knows best. She knew something was off when the medical professionals rushed to transition her daughter, but was guilt-tripped and persuaded into proceeding with medicalization.
Looking back, Carrie said she realizes she should have trusted her parental intuition. Parents are often the first line of defense in protecting their child’s well-being. They should feel empowered to trust those instincts, especially when it comes to irreversible medical decisions. Carrie said it best when speaking with me: “You are the expert on your own child.”
Indeed, the Abernathy story is a timely reminder of the very real consequences of sidelining parental concerns and the dire importance of scrutinizing medical practices that clearly prioritize profit and ideology over patient well-being.
* * *
Andrea Mew is the managing editor of Independent Women Features. She is the producer of its new <a href="https://youtu.be/nj1OUvFZM4A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">documentary</a> “Identity Crisis: Mother and Daughter Expose Medical Industry&#8217;s Transgender Lies” and the author of the related breaking <a href="https://www.iwfeatures.com/documentary/detransitioner-and-mother-were-sold-the-lie-of-gender-transition-now-theyre-exposing-the-real-costs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">feature article</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Rear view of mother and daughter embracing sitting on bed

‘I Feel Robbed’: After A Double Mastectomy At 14, This Detransitioner Is Speaking Out

Gender Identity

gender ideology

Medical

Opinion

Teenagers

Transgender

transgender surgery

Women

North Dakota Republican Governor Kelly Armstrong vetoed a bill this week that would have required school districts to keep books determined to be &#8220;sexually explicit&#8221; out of the reach of students, saying that the bill was a &#8220;misguided&#8221; attempt to &#8220;legislate morality.&#8221;
Armstrong on Tuesday vetoed Senate Bill 2307, which would have prohibited school districts from maintaining &#8220;explicit sexual material&#8221; in classrooms and libraries and would allow concerned parents and others to initiate a review of materials they believe may be in violation of the law. In his veto message, Armstrong said that enforcing the bill would be &#8220;unworkable&#8221; and infringed on free speech.
&#8220;While I recognize the concerns that led to its introduction, SB 2307 represents a misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship. The bill imposes vague and punitive burdens on professionals and opens the door to a host of unintended and damaging consequences for our communities,&#8221; he <a href="https://northdakotamonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SB-2307-veto-message-signed.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.
The legislation would have expanded on a <a href="https://legiscan.com/ND/text/HB1205/id/2789486" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> passed in 2023 that barred public libraries from keeping sexually explicit books in their children&#8217;s section. That law also requires public libraries to have a policy in place to keep explicit books out of the children&#8217;s section.
SB 2307 would have expanded those guidelines to school districts, requiring districts to ensure that students were not exposed to sexually explicit material through physical books or online resources offered to them. Districts would also have been mandated to put policies in place to ensure compliance.
The proposal would have created a way for &#8220;interested parties&#8221; to challenge decisions made by schools, and given them an opportunity to appeal to an oversight board and the local state&#8217;s attorney. Local prosecutors would also have been given the power to prosecute for violations of the law.
The governor&#8217;s office told The Daily Wire it had no further comment on the legislation other than the veto message.
In that message, Armstrong called the legislation &#8220;redundant&#8221; and &#8220;overly burdensome,&#8221; saying that it could lead to &#8220;the next literary masterpiece&#8221; being kept out of North Dakota libraries. He also believed it would open up a floodgate of complaints for innocuous books that would bog down library and school officials.
&#8220;In today’s world of social media, streaming services, websites, cable TV and movies where profanity, drug use, violence and nudity are harder to avoid than to find, the amount of time, money and taxpayer resources spent on where a book is placed in a library would be better used elsewhere,” he wrote in his message.
The legislation had passed the Republican-dominated state Senate 27-20 and the House 49-45.
“We are harming our children, that’s all there is to it,” said state Senator Keith Boehm during a hearing on the proposal. “The bill is all about protecting kids from this material. It has nothing against adults.”
The issue of sexually explicit books has been a major concern across the country as parents have rallied to protect their kids from graphic material at both public and school libraries.
Armstrong also <a href="https://northdakotamonitor.com/briefs/armstrong-vetoes-north-dakota-private-school-voucher-bill-but-signals-support-for-competing-bill/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vetoed another</a> Republican-backed piece of legislation this week. On Wednesday, he vetoed a school choice proposal that would have created Education Savings Accounts for private school students. The governor said that the bill failed to &#8220;deliver the school choice North Dakota needs, especially in rural areas where nonpublic school options are few and far between.” He asked lawmakers to send him a bill that would provide education vouchers to a broader swath of students.

Postmaster General DeJoy Testifies Before House Oversight Committee

GOP Governor Vetoes Bill Meant To Shield Kids From ‘Sexually Explicit’ Books At School

Education

North Dakota

Politics

School Choice

School Library

Medical schools nationwide are forcing students to promote left-wing ideologies on race, gender, and obesity at the expense of proper patient care, according to a new watchdog <a href="https://speechfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CRITICAL-CONDITION_Speech-First-Medical-Schools-Report.pdf">report</a> released on Thursday.
The comprehensive investigation, produced by non-profit group Speech First, examined 54 public medical schools across the United States, seeking to document how &#8220;diversity, equity, and inclusion&#8221; (DEI) mandates are being enforced throughout medical education.
&#8220;This ideological conformity is required not only of students but also of faculty, who are often tasked with serving as enforcers of these mandates,&#8221; the report explains, noting that ideological requirements begin as early as the admissions process.
The report, first <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/medical-schools-nationwide-promote-weight-inclusivity-in-ongoing-dei-push/">obtained</a> by National Review, found that 99% of America&#8217;s top medical schools now “mandated commitments to racial justice ideology,” while 89% “did so for gender ideology.”
The report found 30% of examined schools mandate a form of “weight inclusivity,” instructing future doctors to avoid “fatphobia” despite the <a href="https://newsroom.heart.org/news/obesity-related-cardiovascular-disease-deaths-tripled-between-1999-and-2020">heaps</a> of medical <a href="https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/3420">evidence</a> establishing the correlation between obesity and health risks.
These DEI commitments manifest through “mandatory courses, rotations, orientations, statements, and policies,” and even modified Hippocratic Oaths.
As examples, dozens of investigated schools emphasize the impact of white privilege and systematic oppression on medical treatment, and have student guidelines enforcing adherence to a patient’s preferred pronouns rather than their biological sex.
At the University of Texas at Austin, medical students are taught to avoid stigmatizing language, replacing terms like &#8220;overweight&#8221; or &#8220;obese&#8221; with euphemisms such as &#8220;people with larger size,&#8221; while the University of Vermont&#8217;s program explicitly states that &#8220;weight is not an important indicator of health.&#8221;
At the University of Connecticut, for example, medical students must pledge to &#8220;work actively to identify and mitigate my own biases&#8221; and &#8220;specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism,&#8221; according to documents obtained by Speech First.
The University of Arizona requires students to gain experience in transgender medicine, where students are “instructed that gender transitioning in children is normal, beginning with social changes in pre-adolescence and progressing to puberty-suppressing medications.”
Several harassment policies at medical schools now explicitly prohibit &#8220;misgendering,&#8221; with Oregon Health and Science University classifying it as a form of harassment subject to disciplinary action.
Medical school faculty face similar ideological pressures, as the University of Illinois-Chicago&#8217;s faculty manual states that &#8220;all College of Medicine faculty, regardless of track or rank, are expected to demonstrate a commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.&#8221;
The report identifies multiple cases where medical professionals faced serious professional consequences for questioning these ideologies, including Dr. Allan M. Josephson, who was demoted and ultimately terminated from the University of Louisville after criticizing transitioning treatments for children during a 2017 Heritage Foundation panel despite a “stellar record,” according to the non-profit.
The investigation details how this ideological enforcement begins before the student is even admitted to medical school.
The University of Missouri asks applicants how they will &#8220;contribute to the overall diversity of the medical school&#8221; and &#8220;foster an inclusive learning environment,&#8221; functioning as what Speech First characterizes as a political litmus test.
Students, as well as faculty, who question these mandates risk significant consequences. Kieran Bhattacharya, a former University of Virginia medical student, was banned from campus after questioning a presentation on microaggressions during a 2018 panel. After challenging the concept, he was flagged by faculty as &#8220;antagonistic,&#8221; leading to disciplinary action.
Speech First&#8217;s study found that even the Hippocratic Oath has been modified at several universities, with the University of Connecticut School of Medicine recently updating the oath to reflect an anti-racist narrative.
“I will work actively to identify and mitigate my own biases so as to treat all patients and coworkers with humility and dignity. I will strive to promote health equity. I will actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism,” the updated oath reads.
The report concludes with recommendations for legislative action, including banning mandatory ideological activism courses and ensuring medical curricula prioritize science-based teachings over politically driven health ideologies.
“If this continues, I’m horrified we’ll get doctors who will shove kids into gender chaos, favor race over health, and lie to obese patients, endangering us all for a deranged fringe,” said Jared Gould, research fellow for Speech First, per National Review.

University of Minnesota White Coat Ceremony, August 2022, Star Tribune photo

Med Schools Replace Medical Merit With Obesity Denial And DEI Doctrine, Watchdog Reports

Censorship

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

medical school

Obesity

Social Issues

U.S.

If you talk to any experienced and honest teacher these days, from elementary school on up, one of the first things they will tell you is how quickly gender ideology has taken hold. Virtually overnight, students began adopting fake pronouns and made-up genders.
To call this phenomenon &#8220;unnatural&#8221; would be a vast understatement. It&#8217;s obviously engineered. Teachers and school boards are pushing this nonsense on children who are far too young to know any better. The public school system has committed itself to indoctrinating children, in many cases without their parents&#8217; knowledge or consent. But after what happened yesterday at the Supreme Court, it&#8217;s very clear that accountability is finally coming for these ghouls.
After many years of spewing LGBT propaganda with total impunity, school districts will soon face major new restrictions on their ability to pollute the minds of elementary-school-age children. Based on how the justices acted during oral arguments yesterday, “Mahmoud v. Taylor” could easily turn out to be one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings of this generation.
Before we review the oral arguments, here is some background. The case began after Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest school district in Maryland — introduced a new &#8220;gender and sexuality curriculum.&#8221; Initially, students (or their parents) could opt out of this curriculum for any reason. But after a short period of time, the school district claimed that it wasn&#8217;t feasible to continue allowing opt outs. So it&#8217;s mandatory now. To give you an idea of what exactly this curriculum entails, here&#8217;s an image from one book that children are introduced to.
<div id="attachment_911559" style="width: 690px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-911559" class="wp-image-911559 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GpJWV7kX0AE7j3U.jpeg" alt="Screenshot: What Are Your Words?" width="680" height="446" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GpJWV7kX0AE7j3U.jpeg 680w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GpJWV7kX0AE7j3U-300x197.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />Screenshot: What Are Your Words?</div>
This is what&#8217;s apparently known as an &#8220;LGBT storybook.&#8221; This one&#8217;s called, “What Are Your Words?” As you can see, one line of dialogue reads, “My pronouns are like the weather. They change depending on how I feel.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is a nonprofit, reported on some other books that were included in this <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/will-scotus-back-parents-when-it-comes-to-lgbtq-storybooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new curriculum</a>:
<blockquote>[O]ne book tasks three and four-year-olds to search for images from a word list that includes &#8216;intersex flag,&#8217; &#8216;drag queen,&#8217; &#8216;underwear,&#8217; &#8216;leather,&#8217; and the name of a celebrated LGBTQ activist and sex worker. Another book advocates a child-knows-best approach to gender transitioning, telling students that a decision to transition doesn’t have to &#8216;make sense.&#8217; Teachers are instructed to say doctors only &#8216;guess&#8217; when identifying a newborn’s sex anyway.</blockquote>
When parents of varying religious faiths — including Muslims and Christians — objected to the idea that their 5-year-olds needed to be taught about &#8220;sex work&#8221; and &#8220;gender transitioning&#8221; by Left-wing activists posing as teachers, the school district told them they had no recourse. In fact, the district slandered the parents as bigots. All these parents were seeking was the ability to opt out of this indoctrination. They didn&#8217;t even demand that the classes be removed from the curriculum. But the school district denied their request. So the parents sued.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1581-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
Which brings us to yesterday&#8217;s oral arguments. I want to begin with this question from Justice Alito, because it gets to the core of the issue. Alito wants to know why the school district is so hell-bent on forcing children to read books about homosexuality, transgenderism and so on. (To be clear, that&#8217;s what the school district is doing. They&#8217;re not merely providing these books in the school library. Teachers are actively telling students to read the books as part of class.) The truthful answer to Justice Alito&#8217;s question is simple: The Left understands that, if the LGBT movement is going to survive, it needs to indoctrinate new members at a very young age.
But the school district can&#8217;t say that out loud, of course. So instead, the lawyer representing the Montgomery school district&#8217;s superintendent, a man named Alan Schoenfeld, starts talking in circles about how impossible it would be, at a practical level, for the school district to allow students to opt out of this curriculum. But nothing he says actually makes sense. It gets so bad that, at the end of his rambling non-answer, Justice Kavanaugh chimes in to confirm that indeed, no one has any idea what the hell this guy is talking about. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 alito, whats the big deal" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q118nmS1g2s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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As best I can tell, the lawyer for the school district is claiming that, because students might talk among themselves about certain LGBT books that are discussed in this curriculum, it&#8217;s therefore impossible to allow students to opt out of this kind of curriculum. In other words, whether or not students opt out, there&#8217;s a chance that they&#8217;ll hear about the materials that are discussed in these gay adventure books.
But this ignores a couple of obvious points.The big one is that, when a teacher is communicating a lesson to a class, it has a very different effect, as compared to one student talking to another student about a book during recess or whatever. The teacher is in a position of authority. It&#8217;s much easier for a 5-year-old to discount something another 5-year-old says, than it is to discount the wisdom of a 40-year-old teacher he&#8217;s told to trust. If this is an argument for anything, it&#8217;s an argument for not having these materials in the school to begin with. Which of course is the correct answer. But either way, it is not an argument against allowing parents to opt out.
The lawyer for the school district knows this but he can&#8217;t admit it. So he ends up confusing everyone in the room with a bunch of doublespeak. This kept happening throughout the oral arguments. Listen to this moment where Justice Gorsuch points out that, in Montgomery County, teachers are told to actively correct students who dare to suggest that men can&#8217;t become women. Gorsuch then asks the lawyer for Montgomery County whether this could constitute &#8220;coercion.&#8221; The obvious answer is yes. But instead of saying that, here&#8217;s the gibberish that the attorney comes back with:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="006 gorsuch, coercion, correcting himself" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x3sWOLDR4Q0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Justice Gorsuch gives an example where a student says, &#8220;a boy can&#8217;t be a girl.&#8221; And then the lawyer states that it&#8217;s not &#8220;coercive,&#8221; in any way, for the teacher to correct the student&#8217;s comment, in front of the entire class. He then changes his mind and says the opposite.
Even when he&#8217;s not contradicting himself, the school district&#8217;s lawyer managed to make a mockery of the entire case. 
Here&#8217;s his opening statement, for example:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="007 beginning with mr shonfeld" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xkw27dw9T5g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Yes, according to this attorney for the school district, there&#8217;s no difference between teaching elementary-school students about wars, and teaching them that boys can become girls. Telling students about the War of 1812 is just like telling them that it&#8217;s totally reasonable to chemically castrate minors.
One of the ways we know this isn&#8217;t true, aside from using basic common sense, is that there&#8217;s no army of parents demanding that schools stop teaching students about wars. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s understood that teaching students about wars is not a general endorsement of violence. Additionally, everyone agrees that history is important and useful because it&#8217;s grounded in reality. On the other hand, gender ideology is just that — ideological.
This lawyer was not the only person to embarrass himself yesterday. That&#8217;s a given. After all, Ketanji Brown Jackson was also in attendance at the hearing. And as you&#8217;d expect, she did not disappoint. Single-handedly, she dropped the collective IQ in the room by about 10 points, just by opening her mouth. And of course, she opened her mouth on the side of indoctrinating children, because she takes the Left&#8217;s position on every issue. Behold, Ketanji Brown Jackson&#8217;s argument in favor of mandatory indoctrination in public schools:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="008 can just go to private school" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y-FJrhGbwrw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Yes, you can homeschool, says Ketanji Brown Jackson. You can pay for an expensive private school. Therefore, there&#8217;s no &#8220;burden&#8221; on these parents, apparently. It&#8217;s not a &#8220;burden&#8221; to have to pay more money, and change your child&#8217;s school, because Montgomery County decided to teach LGBT propaganda. And then the lawyer representing the parents responds, and points out that she&#8217;s completely wrong, and many other cases demonstrate why she&#8217;s wrong. And then she goes quiet and they move on.
Here’s one more clip from these arguments, involving Justice Alito questioning the school board&#8217;s lawyer. He follows up on this logic, about how the parents can supposedly just go to a private school. He begins by talking from the perspective of one of these parents:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="009 alito, too bad" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hgRo17KtvU8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
This is what it looks like in the Supreme Court when &#8220;sparks fly,&#8221; so to speak. Alito is making his disdain for the school district&#8217;s argument extremely clear, which is exactly what he should do. They&#8217;re trying to force-feed gender ideology to children, and instead of owning it, they&#8217;re lying and telling the parents to pay more money to find a private school that won&#8217;t interfere with their religious liberties. But the Constitution doesn&#8217;t work that way. And it appears the Montgomery County school district, and school districts all over the country, are about to discover that.
This is not a close case. That&#8217;s why even the far-Left outlet Vox <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250422191725/https://www.vox.com/scotus/409921/supreme-court-dont-say-gay-mahmoud-taylor">reported</a>: 
<blockquote>The Supreme Court’s &#8216;Don’t Say Gay&#8217; argument went disastrously for public schools.</blockquote>
At the moment, the most likely outcome is that, when very young children are involved, parents will retain the right to opt out of curriculums involving gender ideology, or any other extreme ideology that conflicts with their established religion. Everyone can see this coming.
And just to underscore that, yesterday Randi Weingarten, the head of one of the largest teachers&#8217; unions in the country, went on Fox News. And she admitted, right away, that she wouldn&#8217;t read these books in the classroom. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="010 Randi" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/luc0jWbW_HA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
We all know that Randi Weingarten isn&#8217;t saying this because she believes it. She&#8217;s maybe the most calculating political operative in the country, after Nancy Pelosi. But Weingarten understands when the Left is overplaying its hand. She knows that they&#8217;re on the cusp of yet another crushing defeat in their efforts to indoctrinate children, and she&#8217;s trying to soften that blow when it inevitably comes.
Unfortunately for Weingarten, the truth is, there&#8217;s no way to accomplish that. Gender ideology and LGBT activists, as we&#8217;ve discussed many times, are now extremely unpopular. They have alienated the entire country, to the point that they may have cost Democrats the last election. The only way an ideology like this can survive is by targeting children before they&#8217;re able to develop their cognitive abilities. That&#8217;s their only viable play. And in a few short months, after this case is inevitably decided against the public school system of Montgomery County, it&#8217;ll be much, much harder for these people to accomplish that.

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Parental Rights Regarding LGBTQ Books In Schools

The Lawyers Promoting Child Indoctrination To SCOTUS Were Absolutely Humiliated

Books

Brett Kavanaugh

Children's Books

Elementary Schools

Ketanji Brown Jackson

LGBTQ

Matt Walsh

Neil Gorsuch

Parents rights

Samuel Alito

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Virginia

President Donald Trump has made it a priority to keep men out of women&#8217;s sports, bathrooms, and other sex-specific spaces. But thanks to little-known Obama-era regulations, states could be required to house boys in all-girl youth prisons.
Currently, states are barred from imprisoning juvenile inmates on the basis of sex. That means a 17-year-old boy who claims to be &#8220;transgender&#8221; could be locked up alongside an 11-year-old girl. States that don&#8217;t comply with these mandates risk losing crucial federal funding, making even deep-red states comply with the guidance.
Advocates tell The Daily Wire that Trump&#8217;s executive orders protecting women&#8217;s spaces may not automatically negate these rules. Unless amended, the <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/on/2017-01-03/title-28/chapter-I/part-115/subpart-D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">federal code</a> will continue to force youth prisons to consider housing transgender-identifying males alongside girls, raising serious concerns about their safety.
Amie Ichikawa, a woman who spent nearly five years in a California prison and now advocates to keep males out of female prisons, told The Daily Wire it was &#8220;disturbing&#8221; that juvenile facilities are blocked from making housing decisions on the basis of sex. She believes it&#8217;s even more dangerous than mixing genders in adult prisons.
“Kids in juvenile are extremely vulnerable, and to add mixed sex housing into it, that&#8217;s creating a totally unnecessary hurdle to have to jump over,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It’s setting them up for failure, and it&#8217;s just robbing them of any kind of normalcy or ability to focus on healing.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/on/2017-01-03/title-28/chapter-I/part-115/subpart-D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulations</a> for juvenile facilities were first issued by then Attorney General Eric Holder in May 2012 and became law that August. The Obama administration touted the rules as a way to end rape and sexual assault in prisons. But in practice, these regulations could allow for girls, sometimes as young as 12, to be housed alongside physically and legally adult males.
For example, a <a href="https://ocfs.ny.gov/programs/rehab/assets/docs/prea/2022-Brentwood-PREA-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 audit</a> of the Brentwood Residential Center for Girls in New York noted that there were two transgender offenders housed at the facility. One was identified as a &#8220;transgender male&#8221; and another as a &#8220;transgender female.&#8221; Since the facility houses females between the ages of 12-18, this means there could be an adult male lodging in the same location with middle school-aged girls.
Under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) — which <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-108publ79/pdf/PLAW-108publ79.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">doesn&#8217;t mention</a> transgender inmates — the Justice Department is authorized to come up with standards for prisons to end sexual assault at detention facilities.
Under the code&#8217;s section on juvenile facilities, prison staff are blocked from placing inmates based on biology.
“In deciding whether to assign a transgender or intersex resident to a facility for male or female residents, and in making other housing and programming assignments, the agency shall consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the resident’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems,” the regulation reads.
The prohibition is made explicit in a form used to audit detention facilities across the country for compliance with PREA. The form states that &#8220;if an agency by policy or practice assigns residents to a male or female facility on the basis of anatomy alone, that agency is not in compliance with this standard.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_909057" style="width: 2432px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909057" class="size-full wp-image-909057" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM.png" alt="" width="2422" height="848" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM.png 2422w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM-300x105.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM-1024x359.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM-768x269.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM-1536x538.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-10.05.16-AM-2048x717.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2422px) 100vw, 2422px" />August 2023 PREA <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/oya/PREA/2023-CampTillamookYTF-PREAAuditFinalReport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">audit</a> of Oregon&#8217;s Camp Tillamook Youth Transitional Facility</div>
While the Biden administration facilitated the movement of males into female prisons, Trump has taken a dramatically different approach.
Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a> in January directing his administration &#8220;to ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.&#8221; The order says that amending federal code 115.41, a portion of the law related to &#8220;standards for adult prisons and jails,&#8221; may be necessary to comply with this directive.
However, it is unclear if this potential amendment of the federal code would include the juvenile standards that have been imposed on states, since the &#8220;standards for juvenile detention facilities&#8221; are found in section 115.342, a different part of the code.
The Justice Department referred The Daily Wire to the White House when asked for more details on any proposed changes to the code.
Lauren Adams, a lawyer with the Women&#8217;s Liberation Front, a feminist organization that fights to keep men out of women&#8217;s prisons, told The Daily Wire that just because the section on juvenile facilities wasn&#8217;t mentioned doesn&#8217;t mean it couldn&#8217;t be encompassed by the order.
“That specific direction to consider amending that particular provision, it doesn’t mean that they also shouldn’t also amend the other relevant provisions,” she said. “We can’t let juvenile offenders be dropped out of the conversation.”
Adams added that it was especially important for the federal code to be updated because of the ongoing lawsuits that have been filed by male prisoners across the country to stay housed at female facilities in defiance of Trump&#8217;s executive order.
&#8220;As we see these challenges and the litigation, the more we see that going through the courts, the more important it’s going to be to do regulation. We need to be able to have something that has the force of law. Executive orders are very, very weak in terms of law,&#8221; she said. 
The prohibitions on juvenile facilities assigning housing by sex were still in effect throughout the first Trump administration, a review of PREA audits reveals. That was at the same time that Trump revoked Obama-era guidelines in the Bureau of Prisons Transgender manual and mandated that sex be used for the initial determination of placement.
<div id="attachment_909689" style="width: 2471px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909689" class="size-full wp-image-909689" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM.png" alt="" width="2461" height="800" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM.png 2461w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM-300x98.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM-1024x333.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM-768x250.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM-1536x499.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-18-at-11.24.39-AM-2048x666.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2461px) 100vw, 2461px" />Screenshot: April 2020 audit of Elbert Shaw Regional Youth Detention Center in Georgia.</div>
Now, a few months into Trump&#8217;s second term, one juvenile detention facility confirmed to The Daily Wire that it has not received updated guidance on the transgender housing standard. A spokeswoman for Echo Glen Children&#8217;s Center in Washington, where transgender identifying inmates have been housed, said the facility has not received any new directive on the standard.
According to the most recent data available from the Justice Department, 26 states and the District of Columbia have fully certified compliance with PREA regulations, while 23 states have submitted an assurance that they will ensure compliance. Only four states, including Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, and Utah, have declined to comply with PREA standards.
<div id="attachment_909133" style="width: 2194px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909133" class="size-full wp-image-909133" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM.png" alt="" width="2184" height="816" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM.png 2184w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM-300x112.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM-1024x383.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM-768x287.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM-1536x574.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-17-at-11.07.25-AM-2048x765.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2184px) 100vw, 2184px" />Source: DOJ.</div>
States that don&#8217;t comply with PREA guidance are penalized with federal funding cuts. If a state is non-compliant with PREA, including the transgender housing guidelines, the Justice Department yanks 5% of funding for grants given to the states from the department for &#8220;prison purposes.&#8221;
This includes programs like the <a href="https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/library/JAG-PREA-FAQ-2018_0.pdf">Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant</a>, the top source of federal <a href="https://bja.ojp.gov/program/jag/overview" target="_blank" rel="noopener">funding</a> for state and local jurisdictions for a wide variety of areas, including law enforcement, prosecution, indigent defense, courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, and technology improvement. The cuts could also apply to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Title II Part B Formula grant <a href="https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/content/ojjdp_prea_faqs_fy2015_5_7_2015_changes_accepted_final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">program,</a> which funds juvenile justice system improvements.
State and local juvenile facilities are audited every few years to ensure compliance with PREA, and a review of audit reports reveals a focus on special conditions for transgender-identifying offenders. Even in conservative states like Tennessee or Georgia, facilities have to affirm that they will not house offenders based on their sex.
For example, a recent <a href="https://www.williamsoncounty-tn.gov/DocumentCenter/View/25617/2024-PREA-Audit-Report?bidId=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PREA audit</a> of the Williamson County Juvenile Detention Center in deep-red Tennessee affirmed that the facility did not have a policy of placing inmates in alignment with their sex.
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According to the report, the detention center&#8217;s PREA coordinator stated that &#8220;housing and programming assignments for transgender or intersex residents are made on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the resident’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.&#8221;
Special considerations were also made in the audit to inquire whether transgender identifying inmates can shower separately and the person&#8217;s sense of their safety. Auditors also have to ensure that faculty staff are trained “to communicate effectively and professionally with residents, including, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming residents&#8221; and &#8220;respect&#8221; their identity. 
Ichikawa told The Daily Wire that these kinds of standard auditing practices show special attention is given to transgender-identifying offenders while considerations of female safety are bypassed.
Ichikawa, who was incarcerated after being convicted of kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, said that female inmates were never asked about their own perception of safety and well-being, in contrast to transgender-identifying inmates.
“Nobody in prison had that, so it&#8217;s not like they were reinstating some precious right that was stolen from them. They’re just providing exclusive human rights to this small group of people, and it’s created a huge power imbalance,” she said. “Everybody’s sense of well-being and safety should be taken into consideration, not just trans-identified. This is gender politics, it’s not even about safety anymore.”
When she was in prison in California, she said that she and her fellow female inmates feared for their safety when a male double rapist was transferred into their prison. They were never asked how their safety could be impacted by the transfer of a male rapist into a women&#8217;s detention center.
A review of PREA audits conducted over the last few years finds multiple examples of juvenile detention centers housing transgender-identifying inmates.
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For example, a <a href="https://dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/prea-EchoGlen-cycle4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2024 audit</a> of the Echo Glen Children&#8217;s Center in Washington showed it was housing two residents who identified as transgender, though no further details were given. That <a href="https://www.dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pubs/JR_0008.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">facility</a> has both male and female units, and admits boys between the ages of 11-17 and females between the ages of 12-15.
An <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/oya/PREA/2023-CampTillamookYTF-PREAAuditFinalReport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">audit</a> of Camp Tillamook Youth Transitional Facility in Oregon also showed that one transgender-identifying resident was in custody.
In the previously mentioned audit of the Brentwood Residential Center for Girls, the auditor interviewed one transgender-identifying male resident who claimed to be a girl. This resident told the auditor that he had never been searched or physically examined to &#8220;determine her genital status.&#8221; Under PREA, faculty can only determine &#8220;genital status&#8221; through routine physical check-ups or medical records. That resident told an auditor that staff were &#8220;respectful toward her identification.&#8221;
Women&#8217;s safety advocates, like Adams, say that federal code should be amended to allow prisons to implement categorical placement by sex. She also said that it makes no sense for transgender-identifying inmates to be given all kinds of special privileges that are not afforded to women inmates.
For example, she noted that in most cases, male guards are not allowed to search female inmates, while transgender identifying inmates can request either a male or female guard to search them. This means that a male inmate could force a female guard to conduct a search of him, raising safety concerns.
“I don’t know how we can say men are a danger to women when they are guards but not when they’re inmates, 
she said. “But they can be forced to shower with sex offenders.&#8221;
The battle on this issue is already ongoing at the adult level with multiple federal lawsuits in litigation over the placement of males in female prisons. It remains to be seen whether a similar battle will take place at the juvenile level.
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teen behind the cage or woman jailed, unhappy girl hand sad hopeless at fence prison in jail, no free and freedom struggle teen concept.

Despite Trump Orders, Juvenile Prisons Still Have To House ‘Trans’ Men With Young Girls

Barack Obama

Department of Justice

Eric Holder

Prisons

In 2007, when Hillary Clinton was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/us/politics/26DEBATE-TRANSCRIPT.html">asked</a> in a Democratic primary debate whether she would be comfortable having “King and King” — a children’s picture book about a prince who marries another man — read to her second-grade child as part of the school curriculum, she responded that it was a “matter of parental discretion.”
It’s remarkable how far off the deep end the Left has gone in just a few short years.
This week, the Supreme Court will <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_calendars/MonthlyArgumentCalApril2025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hear a case</a> brought by a group of parents claiming what Clinton argued years ago: Parents should be able to decide whether or not their children read LGBTQ storybooks at school.
Oral arguments will be heard for the parental rights case Mahmoud v. Taylor, which <a href="https://becketfund.org/media/religious-parents-ask-supreme-court-to-restore-opt-outs-for-pride-storybooks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">originated</a> when the Montgomery County Board of Education introduced LGBTQ storybooks to the elementary school curriculum and revoked its existing parental notice and opt-out policies. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian parents challenged the school district’s ban on elementary school opt-outs on the grounds that the policy burdened their constitutional right to free exercise of religion.
The diverse coalition of parents isn’t asking the school district to remove the LGBTQ storybooks from classrooms. They simply want the option to remove their children from the classroom when content is taught that conflicts with their religious beliefs. Parents are the primary educators of their children, and that vocation doesn’t stop when kids begin to attend school.
The board of education added storybooks that introduce gender ideology and sexuality to children as young as three or four years old. These storybooks are transparently part of an activist push to introduce children to same-sex relationships, transgender ideology, and LGBTQ vocabulary at a startlingly young age.
“Born Ready” features a female main character who repeatedly claims, “Inside, I’m a boy,” and whose parents immediately start treating her like a boy. “Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love,” Penelope’s mom tells her confused older brother. The book’s author, Jodie Patterson, serves on the board of the Human Rights Campaign, a radical LGBTQ advocacy group.
Another book in the Montgomery County curriculum, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">titled</a> “My Rainbow,” is about a transgender-identifying boy’s desire to have long hair to fit in with “cisgender girls.” Trinity Neal, a transgender-identifying boy, and his mother, DeShanna, a nonbinary activist, wrote the story based on their experiences. DeShanna <a href="https://history.delaware.gov/lgbtq/my-rainbow-and-trinity-neals-rainbow-wig/">advocated</a> for Medicaid coverage of Trinity’s puberty blockers, resulting in the first Medicaid coverage of transgender medical procedures in their home state of Delaware. Subsequently, Trinity <a href="https://history.delaware.gov/lgbtq/my-rainbow-and-trinity-neals-rainbow-wig/">became</a> the first minor in the state to change his birth certificate’s gender marker from male to female.
“Jacob’s Room to Choose,” about a cross-dressing boy whose school accommodates him by abolishing gendered bathrooms, was <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">published</a> through the American Psychological Association’s children’s book imprint. APA has prominently <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/02/policy-supporting-transgender-nonbinary#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAPA%20also%20affirms%20the%20essential,appropriate%20youth%20self%2Dadvocacy.%E2%80%9D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">supported</a> transgender medical procedures for minors and advocated for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
The other books at the heart of Mahmoud v. Taylor are similarly written at an elementary school reading level but focus on complex adult topics of sexuality and gender identity. “Love, Violet” <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">focuses</a> on a same-sex relationship between elementary school classmates. “Pride Puppy” <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">instructs</a> readers to identify leather, underwear, a lip ring, an intersex flag, and a drag king in its illustrations.
“What Are Your Words?” <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">encourages</a> kids to change their pronouns, promoting confusing pairs like “ey/em,” “ze/zir,” and “xe/xir,” and using they/them pronouns to refer to individuals in the story. And “Intersection Allies,” another book <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wu2be63z1cfa0jg6fq3je/APiCjohPQCCnkdX6jXcrOIE/Book%20Covers%20%2B%20Pages/Storybooks%20(Full%20text)?dl=0&amp;e=3&amp;rlkey=te8vom170eoxvb57ivge6ecue&amp;subfolder_nav_tracking=1">featured</a> in the case, includes a foreword by critical race theorist and activist Kimberle Crenshaw.
These storybooks are examples of radical propaganda written by progressive activists to shape the hearts and minds of the next generation. Kids may not know better than to believe what they’re taught, but American adults aren’t so convinced by these woke storybooks. Only 3% of Americans <a href="https://becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com/20250115160612/Religious-Freedom-Index-2024-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">believe</a> that instruction on human sexuality and gender identity is appropriate for pre-K or kindergarten-aged children. And 77% of Americans <a href="https://becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com/20250115160612/Religious-Freedom-Index-2024-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">believe</a> that parents should be able to opt their children out of gender and sexuality instruction.
Just a few years ago, I pulled my children out of Fairfax County Schools because of the progressive garbage they were being exposed to in their classrooms on a daily basis. My family is not alone. There is a large movement of parents who have made the same decision we have, but not every family is in a position to do so. Parents should undoubtedly have the right to opt their children out of reading these radical activist storybooks: Children are not wards of the state.
When public schools add storybooks that teach gender ideology as truth, the state has violated the right of parents to raise their children in their religious tradition, along with teaching them the corresponding religious beliefs about gender, human sexuality, and the meaning of marriage.
The government has no business mandating that elementary students learn radical gender ideology. Fortunately, parents will do whatever it takes to protect their children and exercise their parental rights — even if it means taking the case to the Supreme Court.
* * *
Terry Schilling is a parental rights advocate and president of the American Principles Project.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Mixed race teacher reading to class

Will SCOTUS Back Parents When It Comes To LGBTQ Storybooks?

Children

Gender

Parental Rights in Education

Parenting

Public Schools

Schools

The United Kingdom&#8217;s highest court ruled Wednesday that the legal definition of &#8220;woman&#8221; is based on biology and does not include trans-identifying men who say they are women.
In the landmark <a href="https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">judgment</a>, the British Supreme Court ruled that the meaning of &#8220;woman&#8221; in equality legislation is a &#8220;biological woman and biological sex,&#8221; and the &#8220;concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.&#8221;
The ruling is a watershed moment in Britain&#8217;s shift on gender ideology, which has faced a referendum in Europe in recent years, especially as the harms of transgender drugs and procedures on children have come to light and sparked legal challenges.
The court case was about whether trans-identifying men with a &#8220;gender recognition certificate&#8221; that legally recognizes them as female are protected from discrimination as a woman under the 2010 Equality Act.
The court ultimately ruled that interpreting sex as simply as what someone&#8217;s gender certificate says would be &#8220;incoherent,&#8221; according to a summary of the ruling.
“The terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex,” Lord Patrick Hodge, one of the court&#8217;s senior judges, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/16/uk/uk-supreme-court-ruling-definition-woman-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the court. “The provisions relating to sex discrimination can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex.”
The five judges cautioned that they were not ruling broadly on whether trans-identifying men were women, saying that was beyond the role of the court.
Lord Hodge said the ruling should not be seen as “a triumph for one or more groups in our society at the expense of another – it is not.”
Critics of gender ideology were ecstatic nonetheless.
A group called For Women Scotland filed a challenge in 2018, butting heads with the Scottish government, which argued that trans-identifying men were legally women.
For Women Scotland celebrated with tears and hugs in the courtroom before a victorious exit, where they cracked open a bottle of champagne outside with other campaigners against gender ideology.
Other groups celebrated as well.
<p class="paragraph inline-placeholder vossi-paragraph" data-uri="cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/cm9js9dgx000c3b6oni5n6mv7@published" data-editable="text" data-component-name="paragraph" data-article-gutter="true" data-analytics-observe="off">“The court has given the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex – male and female – refers to reality, not paperwork,” the group Sex Matters said.
The LGB Alliance, which presented arguments in court, called the ruling a “watershed for women.”
In response to the ruling, the British government said it supports &#8220;single-sex spaces.&#8221;
“This ruling brings clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs,” a British government spokesperson <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/16/uk/uk-supreme-court-ruling-definition-woman-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this Government.”

Womens’ Rights Supreme Court Judgement In London

UK Supreme Court Rules Trans-Identifying Men Are Not Women

UK Supreme Court Rules Legal Definition Of 'Woman' Is Biological

Britain

Transgenders

United Kingdom

World

United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled on Monday that the Bow School District in New Hampshire could continue to eject parents from school sporting events if they wore &#8220;XX&#8221; wristbands supporting biological females in sports.
McAuliffe issued a <a href="https://nhjournal.com/judge-rules-school-can-ban-xx-protests-over-males-in-girls-sports/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">45-page ruling</a> against parents Anthony Foote, Kyle Fellers, Eldon Rash, and Nicole Foote, saying that school athletic events were considered a &#8220;limited public forum&#8221; and therefore the school district could act if it was deemed necessary to &#8220;protect&#8221; students from &#8220;adult speech that can reasonably be seen to target a specific student participating in the event.&#8221;
The protest occurred in September 2024 when the parents learned that their daughters&#8217; soccer team would compete against a team that included a trans-identifying male player, Parker Tirrell, and decided to wear the wristbands in silent protest.
But McAuliffe ruled that the bright pink wristbands would likely be interpreted as &#8220;demeaning and harassing&#8221; and seen as &#8220;directly assaulting&#8221; anyone who happened to identify as transgender.
&#8220;The message generally ascribed to the XX symbol, in a context such as that presented here, can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women. Because gender identities are characteristics of personal identity that are ‘unalterable or otherwise deeply rooted,’ the demeaning of which ‘strikes a person at the core of his being,’ and because Bow school authorities reasonably interpreted the symbols used by plaintiffs, in context, as conveying a demeaning and harassing message, they properly interceded to protect students from injuries likely to be suffered,&#8221; McAuliffe stated.
Anthony Foote told The New Hampshire Journal that he had no intention of backing down from the fight, saying, &#8220;What was our offense? Supporting girls’ sports and defending biological reality? This ruling is a slap in the face to every parent who believes schools should be a place of fairness, not political indoctrination. The judge openly admitted that Pride flags are allowed because they promote ‘inclusion,’ but wristbands defending women’s sports are banned because they might ‘offend’ someone. That’s viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple — and it’s unconstitutional.&#8221;
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines shared the story, commenting, &#8220;A federal judge just ruled that two fathers can&#8217;t wear pink wristbands that say &#8216;XX&#8217; to silently protest male inclusion in women&#8217;s sports. The judge said the female chromosomes, XX, are a &#8216;demeaning and harassing assertion.'&#8221;
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A federal judge just ruled that two fathers can&#39;t wear pink wristbands that say &quot;XX&quot; to silently protest male inclusion in women&#39;s sports 
The judge said the female chromosomes, XX, are a &quot;demeaning and harassing assertion&quot;<a href="https://t.co/AKpAovWWQn">https://t.co/AKpAovWWQn</a>
&mdash; Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Riley_Gaines_/status/1912230227780202586?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Attorney General Pam Bondi responded to Gaines, saying, &#8220;I have asked my @CivilRights Division to examine this matter. This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents.&#8221;
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I have asked my <a href="https://twitter.com/CivilRights?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CivilRights</a> Division to examine this matter. This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents. <a href="https://t.co/5sJZ0dEQ1y">https://t.co/5sJZ0dEQ1y</a>
&mdash; Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) <a href="https://twitter.com/AGPamBondi/status/1912298418405319086?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand. @CivilRights is examining this closely. Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective &#8216;feelings,'&#8221; Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon added.
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This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand. <a href="https://twitter.com/CivilRights?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CivilRights</a> is examining this closely. Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective “feelings.” <a href="https://t.co/CE0G2iS5Gd">https://t.co/CE0G2iS5Gd</a>
&mdash; AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) <a href="https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/1912295300141556061?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
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XX Chromosome in the foreground, a scientific concept. 3d illustration

Judge Says School Can Ban Dads Who Wear Pink XX Wristbands To Protest Boys In Girls’ Sports

Judge Says Dads Can't Wear Pink XX Wristbands To Protest Boys Competing Against Their Daughters

Courts

female sports

Girls

Sports

Transgender Athletes

The internet is going hard on CNN anchor Anderson Cooper for referring to a woman who prefers “they/them” pronouns as “she.”
The incident took place during a Bernie Sanders town hall event on Wednesday. Cooper introduced Democratic activist Grace Thomas by saying, “She’s a local civil rights attorney. She’s a Democrat.”
That inspired Thomas to reply, “It’s they/them pronouns, actually,” leading Cooper to respond with, “Oh.”
Thomas followed up by asking Cooper why the Democratic party is losing so many young male voters. Social media viewers were quick to suggest that the interaction between the activist and Cooper was a prime example of what’s going on.
“The best part is that right after scolding Anderson Cooper for not calling her ‘they,’ she asks a question about why Democrats are losing men,” one person <a href="https://x.com/evitaduffy_1/status/1910349774290551073">observed</a> on X.
“Anderson Cooper just misgendered a civil rights attorney,” another response <a href="https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1910150077361856554">said</a>. “They are not serious. Keep on putting the pronoun police on camera, we will win every election.”
Former U.S. college swimmer Riley Gaines, who rose to national prominence by taking a stand against men infiltrating women’s sports, reacted by saying, “Calling for Anderson Cooper&#8217;s immediate resignation for believing what his eyes were telling him he saw. Bigot.”
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Calling for Anderson Cooper&#39;s immediate resignation for believing what his eyes were telling him he saw 
Bigot<a href="https://t.co/GpaZML7irO">pic.twitter.com/GpaZML7irO</a>
&mdash; Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Riley_Gaines_/status/1910175582609867160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
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President Donald Trump capitalized on the Democrats’ extreme stance on gender issues while campaigning ahead of the 2024 election. One of his most popular political advertisements included the line, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
While many Democrats fully support radical left-wing gender theory, the majority of American voters have taken a much more reserved approach to the issue, and are largely opposed to the most extreme suggestions, such as the idea of providing life-altering drugs and surgeries to children and allowing trans-identifying biological males to compete against women in sports, the Pew Research Center <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/americans-have-grown-more-supportive-of-restrictions-for-trans-people-in-recent-years/">found</a>. 
Some prominent Democrats are backing off the most extreme stances, including California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who is a potential presidential candidate in 2028. Newsom <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/profoundly-sickened-everyone-slams-newsoms-attempt-to-play-both-sides-on-trans-issue">told</a> Charlie Kirk during an interview last month that men in women’s sports is “an issue of fairness” that is “easy to call out.” 
Liberals blasted Newsom for backing down on the issue, while conservatives criticized him for trying to play both sides.

Anderson Cooper

Anderson Cooper Mocked After Getting Corrected By Activist During Town Hall: ‘It’s They/Them’

Anderson Cooper Mocked After Getting Corrected By Activist During Town Hall: 'It's They/Them'

Bernie Sanders

Democrats

Gender Pronouns

On his show this week, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-oliver">John Oliver</a> decided to spend 45 minutes defending the idea that men — or “trans women,” as he calls them — should play in women&#8217;s sports. The trans issue has destroyed the Democratic Party and utterly demolished the Left’s cultural and political credibility. But they can’t let it go. Transgenderism is a religious conviction. They must remain committed to it. Which is disturbing and bizarre and uncomfortable to witness — and extremely fortunate for Republicans. It&#8217;s also, let’s be honest, really funny. In fact, John Oliver’s commitment to the transgenderism bit is, by far and away, his funniest routine. It is in fact his only funny routine. It&#8217;s the one time when he lives up to his billing as a comedian, if unintentionally.
So today we’re going to pick through Oliver’s arguments for “trans inclusion” in women&#8217;s sports. We’ll go through it piece by piece. And in the process we’ll see how utterly vapid and hollow and deceitful John Oliver’s whole schtick is. And how morally and intellectually bankrupt gender ideology is. As one of the most morally and intellectually bankrupt people in all of media, it’s no wonder that Oliver is so attracted to it.
As we’ll see, Oliver trots out all of the standard tropes in his desperate attempt to make gender ideology seem like it isn’t insane. He blabbers for 45 minutes, hitting each talking point one by one, punctuated every five or six minutes with something that, I can only guess, is supposed to approximate a joke. But in this whole long diatribe he never once addresses the core, fundamental argument of the other side. He never once acknowledges, much less makes any attempt to respond to, our actual point. Instead we get all of the tropes. Starting with <a href="https://youtu.be/flSS1tjoxf0?feature=shared&amp;t=59">this one</a>:
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So he starts with the old “why are you so obsessed with this” routine, as expected. He then says that this “obsession” by Republicans is the reason why 6 in 10 adults don’t want men in women’s sports. The actual number is more like 8 in 10. But either way, he says that Republicans have waged a relentless propaganda campaign against trans people and that is why so many Americans now agree with them. Oliver has this, of course, completely backwards.
John, let me ask you this. What did the polls on trans athletes say 20 years ago? What about 30 years ago? If the poll numbers today are the result of a recent propaganda push by Republicans, that should be born out by comparing the poll results on the question today to the poll results 30 years ago, right? So what were the polls saying on this question 30 years ago? What do you think, John? Have you checked?
Well, don’t bother. I’ll help you. There were no polls on this question 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago. Organized sports have existed in this country for like 170 years. And yet you’ll find no polls on the topic of “transwomen” in women&#8217;s sports, you’ll find no discussion about the subject at all, until very, very recently. Women’s sports in particular have existed in some form or another since the late 1800s. And yet, again, there was no discussion about whether men who think they&#8217;re women should be included in women&#8217;s sports.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1571-member-exclusive?row=2&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
If someone had conducted a poll in, say, 1950, and asked whether men who identify as women should be able to compete in women&#8217;s sports, what do you think the result would have been, John? Do you think you would have found at least 60% who responded in the negative? You’d find a lot more than 60%, wouldn&#8217;t you? It would be more like 100%, wouldn’t it? And that&#8217;s in spite of the fact that in the 1950s there was precisely no one pushing what you would call anti-trans propaganda. Republicans weren’t talking about the issue at all. And yet everyone agreed — everyone, literally everyone on Earth agreed — that if a thing is called “women’s,” it should only be for biological women.
So what does all of this tell us? Well, it tells us first of all that Republicans and conservatives aren’t the ones who started this conversation. We were all living our lives contently, without having any discussion about transgenderism, or whether men should be in women&#8217;s sports or bathrooms. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody was obsessing over it. Until the trans activists, to include yourself, came along and started screaming in our faces about it. You guys brought up this subject. You guys started marching and waving your flags and injecting your propaganda into schools and TV shows and films and everywhere else. Your side started giving castration drugs to children. Your side started listing your pronouns. None of this existed, this entire subject didn&#8217;t exist, until you guys brought it up and started obsessing over it.
Those polls you mentioned are not a result of our propaganda but of yours. The fact that there are 40% of Americans according to the poll you mentioned — or 20%, if you&#8217;re using an accurate poll — who actually think men should compete in women&#8217;s sports is a result of the relentless propaganda from your side. Again: if we’d asked this question 50 years ago, there would have been 100% of people on our side. But the question wasn&#8217;t asked. It wasn&#8217;t asked because when 100% of people are on one side, it’s not the kind of thing you even think to poll in the first place.
Moving on, Oliver next does the thing he always does, where he finds the weakest and most easily mocked version of the counter argument, and then frames the entire rest of his rant around that <a href="https://youtu.be/flSS1tjoxf0?feature=shared&amp;t=348">one example</a>. Watch:
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Now, if you wanted to find an example of someone making the case against men in women&#8217;s sports, you have literally thousands of options to choose from. Thousands and thousands of people have made this case on camera. Female athletes, biologists, doctors, highly credentialed scientific experts in any number of related fields. But John sifted through all of that and went with Lance Armstrong, because Lance Armstrong is infamous for cheating in a sport. I’d say about 99.9999% of all the people who have made the case against men in women’s sports are not themselves famous for cheating in a sport, but Oliver went searching for the .0001% who had. And he uses the silly hypothetical offered by Armstrong — Rafael Nadal suddenly transitioning to a woman — as the framing mechanism for the rest of his argument. So Oliver has chosen the absolute weakest version of the opposing argument, offered by the weakest possible spokesman, and that will be the only argument he responds to the whole rest of the way.
Of course, even the weakest version of our argument, offered by the weakest spokesman, is still totally devastating to John’s side. Our weakest argument is made of steel compared to the flimsy, fantasyland nonsense that you hear from the pro-trans side. Armstrong is, in fact, correct. If all it takes for a man to be a woman is to identify as one, then if Nadal identified as one, he would now be a woman, and there&#8217;s nothing stopping him from dominating women’s tennis like Shaquille O’Neal in his prime playing basketball against a bunch of nine-year-olds. The point isn’t that Nadal is actually likely to make this transition. It&#8217;s that the policy that John Oliver advocates for, and the position he takes, would make that sort of absurdity possible. 
But Oliver is determined to miss the point, which he continues to do here:
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Oh, they don’t? Well first of all, John, how do you know that? There are many examples of mediocre male athletes who, after a while of not succeeding against the men, suddenly discover their latent female identity. Lia Thomas is just one of many examples. How do you know that the fact that he could go from the middle of the pack to first by a mile isn’t what motivated him to make the switch? That trans “sports scientist” says that the social cost of transitioning is too high. He says that he personally lost his marriage and family when he transitioned. In other words, he willingly blew up his marriage and family for the sake of living out his fantasy of womanhood. What does that tell us? It tells us that he is extremely selfish. So the argument seems to be that trans identified people would never transition just to succeed in sports — because they&#8217;re too selfish for that. But I’m not sure that logic tracks.
And at any rate, none of this matters. None of this is even remotely related to the actual point. The reason for their &#8220;transition&#8221; is totally irrelevant. It does not matter. It makes no difference. Nothing that John has said to this point — nothing — even comes close to actually addressing our argument. And that trend will continue here:
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&#8220;It’s not the case that any man is stronger and more athletic than every woman,&#8221; says John Oliver. And in saying this, he has expertly knocked down and dismantled an argument that literally no one on Earth, at any point, anywhere, has made. Nobody claims that every man is stronger than every woman. John Oliver himself is proof of that. He would likely lose an arm wrestling match against my 11-year-old daughter. It’s true that scrawny, pathetically weak men do exist in this world. We’re looking at one of them.
But that’s not the point. The point about athletic advantages is that ON AVERAGE men are significantly — not slightly — significantly stronger and faster. This is because men and women are built differently. Women on average have 20% less muscle mass in their legs, smaller fast-twitch muscle fibers, smaller lungs, smaller hearts, shorter legs, much more estrogen and much less testosterone, and a lesser capacity to produce oxygen when they exert themselves. That’s why a team of high school boys could beat the women’s national team in soccer. It’s why the top ten male finishers in nearly every Olympic event always beat the top ten female finishers in the same event. In fact, the top 25 or 50 or 100 male finishers will beat the top 10 females.
It’s why you can find hundreds of examples just like this one. Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, both males, finished first and second in the 55-meter dash at the women’s state indoor track and field championships in Connecticut a few years ago. Miller also finished first in the 300-meter. Miller won the gold with a time of 38.9 seconds. Second place was a full second behind him – a near eternity in track time. But if Miller had raced against the boys in the same event, he <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1101274590586851330">would have been</a> two seconds behind the guy who finished in 25th place. 
To reiterate: his “winning” time against the girls would have put him far outside the top 25 in the men’s field. The worst guy on the men’s track team can instantly become the best on the girl’s team. That’s the point. Or at least it&#8217;s the point about the athletic advantages. But even that point is not THE point. John Oliver still hasn’t addressed the actual point.
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Now, John goes on for a while about the dearth of studies dealing with “trans women” in female sports. He’s perplexed that there haven&#8217;t been more studies on the subject. But of course trans women are men, and there is ample scientific evidence and many, many studies demonstrating the physiological differences and athletic advantages enjoyed by men. He wants a study that specifically studies trans women, as if the fact that a man sees himself as a woman will in and of itself fundamentally impact his biology. But that is not the case. Which is why no one has bothered to study it. No credible scientist would ever say, “Hey, we know that men are faster and stronger than women. But what about men who think they&#8217;re women. Are they also faster and stronger?”
Their perception of themselves as women does not alter their biology. We don’t need a study to show us that, John. We just need to be not insane.
So what John is really talking about here are men who have undergone a “medical transition.” We’re being told that after “transition,” the physical advantages are diminished, supposedly. Does this mean that John Oliver is saying that only male athletes who’ve taken the drugs should be allowed to compete against women? No, he’s not saying that. At least he doesn&#8217;t appear to be saying that. His only real argument in favor of men in women&#8217;s sports is that, supposedly, men who&#8217;ve taken the transition drugs become weaker and slower. But he actually doesn&#8217;t follow that argument through to its conclusion and say that only men who’ve transitioned should compete. So again this whole thing is a red herring.
Also, why are men weaker and slower after transitioning? Why do they have less muscle mass? Well because the drugs are destroying their bodies. John Oliver is, here, proudly demonstrating that medical transition destroys the human body. It has a destructive effect on the physiology of the men who undergo these “treatments.” John seems to have little curiosity about that fact. He doesn’t linger on it or think about it very hard. Instead he just declares, “Look at that! Their bodies have been destroyed! Now they&#8217;re just like women!”
He doesn’t see any problem with equating a destroyed male body to a female body. He doesn’t see any problem with giving people supposed medical treatments that are designed to physically harm them. And he doesn’t even really think these treatments are relevant to the question of whether or not a trans woman is actually a woman or not.
That brings us to the argument that John has spent this whole diatribe studiously ignoring. The reason why our side actually opposes men in women’s sports is, as I explained during that hearing in California last week, very simply because men are not women. No matter how great or small their advantage. No matter if they’ve “transitioned” or not. No matter how they self-identify. Men are not women. The fundamental claim of the trans woman — that he is a woman — is false. It is objectively, scientifically, logically, empirically, in every way, and from every angle, false.
If there was a 30-year-old adult who wanted to play in a t-ball league against six-year-olds, we would all — even John Oliver — tell him no. But what if this 30-year-old was really un-athletic? Would that change our mind? What if he was very short, as short as a child? What if this 30-year-old would be only the tenth best t-ball player on the t-ball team? Would we let him play against the six-year-olds? No. Why? Because he&#8217;s not six-years-old.
Now what if the 30-year-old thought he was six.? What if he identified as six? What if he spent his whole life and had built his entire personality around the fantasy that he is six? Would we let him play in the six-year-old league in that case? No. In fact, we’d be even LESS accepting of him on the six-year-old team. Because not only is he still not actually six-years-old — he’s also deranged. The fact that he is deranged doesn’t make him six, and it doesn&#8217;t make us any more eager to let him play with six-year-olds. It has the exact opposite effect.
The same logic applies to women’s sports. Men are not women. Men who think they are women are still not women, and are, if anything, even less fit to be competing against them. This is the argument John Oliver won&#8217;t address. He will talk and talk and talk about the issue, but he won’t go anywhere near the actual point. The point that so-called trans women are not actually women. That’s our whole argument, John. I dare you to spend even five minutes addressing it. You’ve spent plenty of time on this topic. I think it&#8217;s time you actually get to the point.

Comic Relief Stand-Up for LA:  A Benefit For LA Wildfire Recovery

Debunking John Oliver’s Insane Defense Of Men In Women’s Sports

Comedy

John Oliver

Women's sports

Stocks slow their fall as President Donald Trump stands firm on his tariff and trade plan. The Trump administration pulls billions of dollars in federal funding from Ivy League colleges over their handling of anti-Semitism. And Female athletes across the country are opting to take a knee rather than compete against men allowed on the same playing field.
It’s Tuesday, April 8, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>Market Unease As Tariff Talks Continue</h2>
<div id="attachment_904461" style="width: 820px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-904461" class="size-large wp-image-904461" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-810x576.jpg" alt="" width="810" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-810x576.jpg 810w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-300x213.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-768x546.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-1536x1092.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Donnie-Does-Bidness-2048x1456.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" />(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: President Trump is holding firm on his unprecedented tariff policy as markets swing and trade partners look to potentially make a deal.
The market rollercoaster continued Monday as uncertainty remains over how long Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs will stay in place and what they’ll mean for the cost of goods. Stocks in Hong Kong saw their worst day in nearly thirty years, plunging more than 13%. It was a similar story for markets across Europe and the rest of Asia. On Wall Street, we saw wild swings throughout the day, but ultimately, the DOW, S&amp;P, and NASDAQ each ended up within one percent of where they began when markets opened.
President Trump continued urging Americans to trust his plan. &#8220;It would be nice to serve a nice easy term, but we have an opportunity to change the fabric of our country. We have an opportunity to reset the table on trade&#8230; I don&#8217;t mind going through it because I see a beautiful picture at the end.&#8221;
Fake News: Around 10:10 yesterday morning, a popular X account posted that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause on all tariffs — that post understandably went viral. By 10:15, a CNBC guest repeated the claim, and markets soared, gaining trillions of dollars in value in minutes. The S&amp;P 500 spiked 7%, going from down 4% to up 3%. But moments later, the White House issued a statement calling the report “fake news,” and markets fell back down, erasing all of those gains.
“The market hates uncertainty,” Kenny Polcari, the senior market strategist for Slatestone Wealth, told Morning Wire when analyzing the aforementioned swing.  “It can take bad news. As long as there&#8217;s some certainty to it, the market can then adjust. But when the market remains so uncertain, the anxiety level rises, volatility rises, and it&#8217;s at that shoot first, ask questions later.”
China Doubles Down: Rather than expressing openness to a deal &#8211; as we’ve seen from dozens of other countries &#8211; China responded to Trump’s tariff with an additional 34% tariff of their own on American imports. Officials in Beijing accused President Trump of “bullying” their country, and in a remarkable twist, the Chinese Embassy in Washington posted old clips of then-President Ronald Reagan expressing his distaste for tariffs to contrast his position with the current administration’s. President Trump similarly expressed a willingness to go tit for tat, warning China on Monday: “If that tariff isn’t removed by tomorrow at 12 o’clock we’re putting a 50% tariff on above the tariffs that we put on.”
While Trump’s position has remained steady, there has been considerable backlash on Capitol Hill. A number of senators have crafted the Trade Review Act of 2025, a new bill that would require Congressional approval for future tariffs and give Congress the power to dissolve unilateral tariffs issued by the president. Seven Republicans have already joined a number of Democrats in endorsing the measure — including Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. They argue that Congress is the branch of government with power over foreign commerce and should be the leading voice on trade policy. The Trump administration said the bill “would severely constrain the president’s ability to use authorities long recognized by Congress and upheld by the courts to respond to national emergencies and foreign threats.” President Trump threatened to veto the legislation if it’s passed. 
&nbsp;
<h2>Trump Administration Suspends University Grants</h2>
<div id="attachment_904463" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-904463" class="size-large wp-image-904463" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Harvard-Campus-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />(Photo by janniswerner via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: The Trump administration is suspending hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding for elite colleges and universities over their handling of anti-Semitism and DEI programs. 
The administration revoked grants to various American universities, mostly those issued under the Department of Health and Human Services umbrella for research projects. The White House says schools are not eligible for this taxpayer money if they fail to protect Jewish students and uphold new civil rights standards, which includes doing away with race-based admissions.
“The President has made it incredibly clear that he expects that students who are going to universities can go to a safe campus without discrimination,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Fox News last week. “What we saw across Columbia and other universities was that the universities were not living up to that. I mean, when you see students barricaded in the library, people pounding on the glass, saying, &#8216;Death to USA, Death to Israel&#8217;…a lot of the Jewish interaction on campus has been driven underground, and that&#8217;s just not the way our education should be.”
Columbia University was the first school to have its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-shuts-off-spigot-for-numerous-research-grants-at-princeton">funding suspended</a> in early March, to the tune of $400 million. The campus was an epicenter of unrest during anti-Israel protests last year. The University of Pennsylvania, Trump’s alma mater, is losing about $175 million in federal funding over a biological male swimmer who previously competed on the women&#8217;s team. The school still hasn’t changed its policy on transgender athletes. $210 million in research grants to Princeton University were halted last week over charges of anti-Semitism, and $510 million in funding to Brown University was cut for the same reason.
Harvard University currently has $9 billion in grants and contracts under review pending an investigation into its handling of anti-Semitism. Former Harvard President Larry Summers commented to the Wall Street Journal that if Harvard folds, every school will. But so far, Harvard has been threading the needle carefully. Harvard’s current president, Alan Garber, acknowledged the anti-Semitism problem on campus and warned that losing $9 billion would &#8220;halt life-saving research and imperil scientific innovation.&#8221; It’s still unclear if the school will comply with all of the new federal standards.
Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton, told <a href="https://x.com/business/status/1907766531745853812">Bloomberg News</a> that this funding “has been fundamental to the excellence of American research universities, and it has contributed tremendously to the prosperity, health and security of our country.”  On Sunday, Eisgruber told <a href="https://x.com/business/status/1907766531745853812">NPR</a> that the funding halt was “a threat to academic freedom” and the “greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare.”
&nbsp;
<h2>New Title IX Task Force</h2>
<div id="attachment_904465" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-904465" class="size-large wp-image-904465" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Title-IX-Task-Force-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Despite Trump’s executive orders against biological males in women’s sports, many trans-identifying males are still being allowed to compete against women.
The Trump administration has announced a new “special investigations” team that will probe schools violating Title IX by permitting males to play on the girl&#8217;s team.  The Education and Justice Departments announced a joint task force to protect female athletes from “the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.” The Education Department receives a “staggering volume” of Title IX complaints. The task force will have investigators and attorneys “thoroughly&#8221; review potential violations, including males in women’s sports and males in women&#8217;s spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
Simultaneously, there’s been a trend of female athletes taking a stand against competing against males, and several have made headlines in recent weeks. Professional disc golfer Abigail Wilson <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/most-likely-ended-my-career-disc-golfer-who-protested-trans-competitor-says-she-has-no-regrets">walked off the course</a> at a tournament in Nashville on Friday to protest the participation of a male player in the women’s division, stating, “Females must be protected in our division. This is unfair, I refuse to play.”
Stephanie Turner was disqualified from a fencing tournament last weekend at the University of Maryland after<a href="https://x.com/icons_women/status/1907487751664247154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1907487751664247154%7Ctwgr%5E2cec98633dfd3b71e0297338e34237489f9fe9e7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fvideo-female-fencer-booted-from-tournament-after-refusing-to-compete-against-male-opponent"> forfeiting</a> a match against Redmond Sullivan. Sullivan used to compete as a male, but after switching to the female division, he won first place at the Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifiers. Turner told <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbod8p6SJQ">Fox and Friends</a>: “Women’s sports are designed to demonstrate female athletic excellence and that gets lost when there are men in the tournament.”
A UN <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/world-news/un-reveals-how-many-female-athletes-have-lost-medals-to-trans-opponents-in-explosive-report/">report</a> found last year that “over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals [to men] in 29 different sports.”
Last week, the Department of Agriculture <a href="https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/04/02/usda-freezes-funding-promises-further-action-if-maine-continues-violating-federal-law#:~:text=USDA%20Freezes%20Funding%2C%20Promises%20Further%20Action%20If%20Maine%20Continues%20Violating%20Federal%20Law,-Published%3A&amp;text=(WASHINGTON%2C%20D.C.%2C%20April%202,for%20certain%20Maine%20educational%20programs.">paused</a> federal funding to Maine’s athletic programs following Democratic Governor Janet Mills’ refusal to comply with President Trump’s executive order on Title IX. On Monday, Maine’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the funding cut. It&#8217;s the first such suit over a Title IX dispute and will likely not be the last.

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Morning Brief: Market Unease, Defunding The Ivy League & New Title IX Task Force

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A <a href="https://adfinternational.org/campaign/support-billboard-chris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Canadian father</a> recently sat before an Australian tribunal in Melbourne for five days because he shared an article from <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13119521/Sex-secrets-trans-kinky-Australian-bondage-bestiality-nudism-drugs-sex-change.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Daily Mail</a> in an X post last year.
Let that sink in.
Chris Elston, better known as &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/BillboardChris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Billboard Chris</a>,&#8221; flew halfway around the world to defend not only his own free speech rights, but also those of all people. He is <a href="https://adfinternational.org/cases/billboard-chris-australia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pushing back</a> against an order from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. The order demanded X censor Chris’ February 2024 post criticizing the appointment of a transgender activist to a World Health Organization panel of experts, citing the Daily Mail <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13119521/Sex-secrets-trans-kinky-Australian-bondage-bestiality-nudism-drugs-sex-change.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> titled &#8220;Kinky secrets of UN trans expert REVEALED&#8221;
Linking to an article from one of the most-read news websites in the world, the post was <a href="https://x.com/Rob_ADFIntl/status/1906643539754205575" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deemed</a> by eSafety to be “cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult.” X initially resisted pressure to censor the content in any way but later geo-blocked the post in Australia when hit with a formal takedown notice. Billboard Chris, with legal support from ADF International, is challenging that order, and X joined in a separate suit.
This isn’t about one post. It’s about whether governments should be able to censor lawful expression because they don’t like the content — in this case, the rejection of gender ideology. 
The hearing at the Melbourne Administrative Review Tribunal spanned five days and took in over 2,000 pages of documents. Meanwhile, the complainant, Teddy Cook, never even appeared before the tribunal.
<a href="https://x.com/Rob_ADFIntl/status/1906643539754205575" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Day one</a> revealed how thin the complaint truly was. eSafety’s lawyers claimed that part of the problem was that Chris had revealed Cook’s place of work and posted private images. Chris, however, simply reposted the Daily Mail’s piece, which named Cook’s workplace (a detail already publicly available online) and, as anyone who uses social media knows, the featured images were pulled from Daily Mail article, not supplied by Chris. It becomes more ridiculous still. The Daily Mail had obtained the photos from Cook’s own social media. The argument didn’t just collapse under scrutiny — it exposed the flimsy foundation apparently sufficient for this bureaucracy to suppress dissent.
By <a href="https://x.com/Rob_ADFIntl/status/1907084293513318811" target="_blank" rel="noopener">day two</a>, it was clear how detached from reality the process had become. There was no evidence of actual harm. Cook, just nine days after the post, had tweeted: “living my best life.” But here we were, with psychiatrists and professors flown in to dissect whether a single X post could legally be considered “likely … intended to have an effect of causing serious harm”.
Chris testified to the Tribunal about the issue at the core of his advocacy: “It’s damaging to teach children they are born in the wrong body &#8230; children are beautiful just as they are. No drugs or scalpels needed.” Asked whether he was trying to provoke outrage, he responded: “No. I want to provoke discussion.”
That matters. Under Australia’s Online Safety Act, takedown orders can only be issued if content is not only offensive, but also “likely …intended to have an effect of causing serious harm.&#8221; However, eSafety seemed to argue that intent is largely irrelevant. If someone feels offended, even by public information, that alone might justify censorship.
On <a href="https://x.com/Rob_ADFIntl/status/1907754476250792285" target="_blank" rel="noopener">days three and four</a>, several more expert witnesses took the stand. eSafety’s own expert — a digital communications professor — asserted that biologically accurate terms are “harmful,” and that children should be able to choose their gender around age 12. Note Australian taxpayers are footing the bill for this expertise — reportedly more than $10,000 for just this one.
The final day brought closing submissions and a stark contrast in worldviews. eSafety argued the Tribunal should view the post in isolation, ignoring the broader debate, and insisted that Teddy Cook — a WHO-appointed expert and activist — shouldn’t be considered a public figure. Chris’ legal team, along with X, pushed back: any fair assessment must consider the wider social and political context. This wasn’t targeted abuse — it was participation in a critical public conversation.
This case is a warning to all who value free expression. If a Canadian citizen can be silenced in Australia for sharing a news article on U.S.-based platform X, then clearly, censorship is no longer bound by borders. What’s to stop any other government — from Canada to the EU to China — from deciding your speech “harms” someone abroad and demanding it be taken down too?
This is exactly how global censorship metastasizes: bureaucracies leveraging international tech companies to enforce vague, ideological speech codes on people who never voted for them, under laws they never consented to. And the more they get away with it, the bolder they become.
Fortunately, X put up a robust legal defense, and Chris, with the legal backing of ADF International and the Human Rights Law Alliance, was unequivocal in his message: he will not be censored as he fights to put an end to the evils of gender ideology.
Most evidently, gender ideology needs censorship to survive, and that is why Chris has been targeted. He hasn’t gone before this tribunal to protect himself — he’s doing it to protect the right of every person to tell the truth.
This is a test case with global consequences. Billboard Chris’ censorship challenge shows us exactly where we’re headed if we don’t defend free speech: toward a world where bureaucrats silence opinions they don’t like, even from the other side of the globe. It’s a world where truth must be approved, and feelings outweigh facts. That’s not just anti-democratic — it’s dangerous. Because once a government crosses the line of international censorship, there’s no saying where it will stop.
* * *
Robert Clarke is a barrister and director of advocacy for ADF International, which is supporting the case of Billboard Chris in Australia. Follow him on X at <a href="https://x.com/Rob_ADFIntl?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rob_ADFIntl.</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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