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

Untitled design – 2026-06-16T123306.554

The Daughters Of The American Revolution Could Declare Independence From Woke

Daughters of the American Revolution

gender ideology

Transgender

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

Joe Biden Campaigns In Western Pennsylvania One Day Before Election

The Shocking Advice A Biden-Backed Trans Group Gave Kids

Biden

Child Welfare

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

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

Special Reporting

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

President Biden Hosts Pride Celebration At The White House

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

Biden Administration

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When a transgender-identifying man flashed his prosthetic breasts on the White House lawn during the Biden administration&#8217;s penultimate Pride Month celebration, many thought we had seen the high water mark of the radical gender ideology that had captured the Democrat Party.
But internal documents unearthed by The Daily Wire reveal the shocking truth. In its waning days, the Biden administration was working behind the scenes to rip children from the homes of loving parents who refused to affirm a child&#8217;s transgender identity. Today, as a different president marks the first of June without any rainbow regalia, we&#8217;re proud to bring you the first in a four-part series exposing the Biden administration&#8217;s radical anti-family plot.
We begin with the story of Nicole, a loving mother whose refusal to indulge her daughter&#8217;s gender delusions put her at odds with her local school district, and later, the entire state of Oregon. The system that empowered the state to rip Nicole&#8217;s daughter from her home is precisely the kind of system the Biden administration was developing — and likely would have implemented had Vice President Kamala Harris defeated President Donald Trump.
***
Nicole was shocked when the police turned up at her front door to take her 15-year-old daughter away.
In July 2024, the Oregon Department of Human Services took the teen — called Jane Doe in filings to protect her identity — into protective custody as they investigated whether Nicole was causing Jane a “mental injury,&#8221; a form of child abuse under Oregon <a href="https://www.childwelfare.gov/resources/definitions-child-abuse-and-neglect-oregon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">state law.</a>
The issue at hand? Nicole would not &#8220;affirm&#8221; Jane&#8217;s &#8220;gender identity.&#8221;
&#8220;I asked, &#8216;What if I don&#8217;t let her go&#8217;?&#8221; Nicole told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Then you can be arrested,&#8221; a police officer told her.
Nicole says Jane had identified as transgender for several years — but she and her husband are Christians, who acknowledge the biological reality that you can&#8217;t change your sex. After performing its investigation, Oregon DHS sent Nicole a notice in September 2024 saying it had found the claim that she caused her daughter a &#8220;mental injury&#8221; for not affirming her transgender identity was “founded.”
&#8220;We believe you, Nicole REDACTED, are responsible for the Mental Injury of Jane Doe,&#8221; the document from Oregon DHS reads. &#8220;Your actions and statements towards Jane Doe have caused significant mental injury. The severe harm perpetrated showed a serious disregard for Jane Doe&#8217;s social and emotional well-being. Your adverse reactions to Jane Doe expressing their gender identity have caused serious harm to Jane Doe&#8217;s psychological functioning.&#8221;
Oregon defines “<a href="https://oregon.public.law/rules/oar_413-015-0115" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emotional abuse</a>” as “any mental injury to a child that shall include only observable and substantial impairment of the child&#8217;s mental or psychological ability to function caused by cruelty to the child.&#8221;
Nicole asked Oregon DHS to review and reconsider her case. Upon review, Oregon DHS again said Nicole&#8217;s refusal to &#8220;support&#8221; Jane&#8217;s gender identity had caused her a “mental injury.”
“The decision was based on the following: You refuse to support JANE DOE’s gender identity and instead provided hours-long lectures that have led to JANE DOE experiencing panic attacks and suicidal ideation. Your actions and behaviors have caused a severe negative impact on JANE DOE’s wellbeing,” states a document reviewed by The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire reached out to Oregon DHS, asking if it could confirm whether the state of Oregon views not affirming a child&#8217;s gender identity as emotional abuse that causes mental injury to a child. Oregon DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Nicole told The Daily Wire that Jane now lives with her gender-affirming father.
&#8220;Because I tell them she&#8217;s a girl and I won&#8217;t say that she&#8217;s a boy whatsoever, they won&#8217;t let me have a relationship with my daughter,&#8221; Nicole told The Daily Wire. &#8220;They took all of my parenting rights away.&#8221;
&#8220;Nicole&#8217;s story is not unusual,&#8221; parents&#8217; rights advocate Erin Friday says. &#8220;Gender confused kids are being groomed by adults to use the child welfare apparatus to escape from the only parent who truly has the child’s best interest in mind. The system that was designed to safeguard kids has morphed into a lethal weapon against loving parents.&#8221;
Nicole is now going to court to clear the names of her and her husband, who was also named as having “founded” charges of emotional abuse. Her case is set to go before a judge in September 2026.
“I gave birth to a beautiful, loving little girl, and that she will always and forever, no matter what she does to her body, will be a girl,” Nicole told The Daily Wire.
“Now my husband and I are in a battle with the State to clear our names because we didn&#8217;t lie to our daughter and tell her that she is a boy. This has cost us thousands [of dollars] and more heartache that I can&#8217;t begin to place into words, and with no end in sight.”
<h3>Oregon’s Radical Child Welfare Policies</h3>
Oregon is known for its radical embrace of gender ideology. It adopted a groundbreaking <a href="https://oregon.public.law/rules/oar_413-200-0308" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policy</a> in 2018 requiring child foster care parents and adoptive families to &#8220;respect, accept, and support&#8221; a child&#8217;s gender identity. &#8220;Gender identity&#8221; is a term used by transgender activists to describe a person’s feelings about their sex. Activists view not “affirming” a child’s gender identity as a form of abuse and neglect.
This rule shares similarities with a now rescinded Biden-era federal <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-08982/designated-placement-requirements-under-titles-iv-e-and-iv-b-for-lgbtqi-children#footnote-35-p34845" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulation</a> that required all foster care families to provide transgender affirming environments for LGBTQ+ youth.
Jessica Bates, a Christian Oregon mom, sued Oregon DHS in 2023 after she was barred from applying to adopt children because of “her objections to affirming a child’s transgender identity,” legal <a href="https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/23-4169/23-4169-2025-07-24.pdf?ts=1753374764" target="_blank" rel="noopener">documents</a> show. Bates, who was represented by legal counsel from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), initially lost her case but won on appeal and received a preliminary injunction in July 2025 allowing her to move forward with foster and adoption processes.
&#8220;This was really the first appellate circuit court decision ever to address this issue, and we think it reads very strongly in favor of free speech and religious liberty,&#8221; Jon Scruggs, ADF VP of Litigation Strategy, told The Daily Wire.
&#8220;Just because someone refuses to affirm gender ideology, you can&#8217;t deny their ability to foster and adopt. And if that&#8217;s true, I think it certainly flows into biological parents as well, that if anything, biological parents have even stronger rights and adoption applicants.&#8221;
The Oregon DHS Resource and Adoptive Family Training (<a href="https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/de98450.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RAFT</a>) for foster and adoptive families has a <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/odhs/providers-partners/foster-care/pages/training-certification.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">session</a> devoted to training caregivers to create “affirming homes.”
“You will learn about what it means to affirm (respecting, accepting, and supporting) children’s identities and practice affirmation in the resource home,” the training states.
The training makes clear that parents and caregivers must actively<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WHaID0aD0A&amp;list=PLsrX1nc_gB0qMKoMmmLYYczBJs7gBV3PB&amp;index=10" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> affirm</a> a child’s gender identity by using “correct pronouns” and ensuring a child has clothes that match their chosen sex.
In the final opinion in Bates&#8217;s case, the judge noted that Oregon trained foster and adoptive parents to not only be tolerant of a child’s gender identity, but also to proactively be affirming.
“The state’s own denial of Bates’s application shows that the state does not interpret its policy and the RAFT guidelines to be merely advisory. The state thus cited Bates’s refusal to ‘encourage’ children ‘in this behavior’ as grounds for denying her certification as an adoptive parent,” states the opinion.
<h3>Non-Affirmation Is Abuse</h3>
Oregon’s child welfare policies aren’t limited to the foster care and adoption system. They also affect children residing at home with their parents.
&#8220;The logic of the state&#8217;s argument in the foster context is parents are endangering children&#8217;s lives by refusing to affirm gender ideology,&#8221; Scruggs told The Daily Wire.
&#8220;That logic crosses right over to biological parents and so that&#8217;s one reason we&#8217;re litigating this issue across the country.&#8221;
ADF is providing legal counsel to foster and adoptive parents across the country who are being discriminated against for not affirming gender ideology.
In October 2023, Oregon DHS received a &#8220;call of concern&#8221; about Jane&#8217;s safety while under Nicole’s care. An Oregon DHS report written by a caseworker, reviewed by The Daily Wire, noted Jane was &#8220;currently wanting to transition from female to male&#8221; and that Nicole was “not supportive of this.&#8221; The caseworker pointed out that Nicole and her husband believe &#8220;men are men and women are women.&#8221;
Jane had continued to identify as a boy, and in May 2024, out of concern for her well-being, Nicole asked Jane to watch videos showing the harms of gender ideology.
Nicole told The Daily Wire that she and Jane spent around two hours watching the videos, ate dinner, and went to bed. The evening seemed uneventful.
The next morning, Jane headed off to her public school. But when Nicole went to pick up Jane at the end of the day, she was nowhere to be found. Nicole spent almost two hours frantically trying to locate her and called 911 to report her daughter as missing. She was directed to a police officer, who said Jane went home with a friend because she felt threatened by the gender ideology videos Nicole had shown her the night before.
The police officer brought Jane to Nicole, with the order that she take her daughter to an emergency crisis center. At the center, counselors offered Nicole pamphlets about resources for LGBTQ+ community members, which she refused.
The Oregon Department of Education, in January 2023, released a 48-page <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/equity/civilrights/Documents/ODE-Supporting-Gender-Expansive-Students.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">document</a> titled “Supporting Gender Expansive Students: Guidance for Schools,” which provides practical ways for schools to be gender affirming. The department provides a template to help school staff create gender identity support plans and recommends that school staff keep secrets about students&#8217; &#8220;gender identity.&#8221;
So, while Nicole and her husband tried to reason with Jane at home, the teenager&#8217;s school had been providing her with information about LGBTQ+ identities. Her teachers were calling her by a different name, and her peers pressured her into transitioning to another sex.
Nicole told The Daily Wire that “schools, outside counselors, children&#8217;s friends, phones, echo chambers within social media, and affirming family members” all influenced Jane’s embrace of a transgender identity.
Nicole believed that in June 2024, Jane was starting to see some of the harms of transgenderism. But this change of heart was short-lived, which Nicole believes was due, in part, to the influence of a Christian counselor Jane was seeing for help addressing her underlying struggles.
The counselor advertised herself as having a “Christian worldview,” and Nicole specifically asked the counselor not to discuss LGBTQ+ issues with Jane.
The Daily Wire reviewed a document that suggests the Christian counselor supported Jane’s transgender identity and told Oregon DHS their “main concern is the parents have really particular beliefs about LGBTQ,” and told a caseworker “mom had the perception that since she is listed as a Christian counselor, that she would be against the LGBTQ,” according to an Oregon DHS report.
When Jane used her tablet to access an online “gender support group,” the Christian counselor was “really proud of Jane for reaching out to somebody when she felt she needed help,” according to the report.
Nicole told The Daily Wire the counselor&#8217;s office was &#8220;where a lot of issues occurred.&#8221;
After Jane was taken into state custody in July 2024, the Department of Human Services sent letters to Nicole’s family members, alerting them that Jane needed a place to live. Gender-affirming child welfare systems seek to find “<a href="https://sogiecenter.org/programs/caff/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">chosen affirming families</a>” for transgender identifying children whose parents refuse to transition them to another sex. Nicole told The Daily Wire that this action was devastating, isolating, and harmed her familial relationships.
&#8220;CPS sent letters to my entire family saying, &#8216;Are you willing to take Nicole&#8217;s daughter,&#8217; because, basically — she&#8217;s unfit,&#8221; Nicole told The Daily Wire.
It’s been almost two years since CPS showed up at her door in July 2024. That was the last time Nicole saw her daughter.
“We lost her to the State when she was fifteen, along with all of my parenting rights,&#8221; Nicole told The Daily Wire. &#8220;We just want to bring awareness out there to parents everywhere that this is happening.&#8221;
</div>

Untitled design – 2026-05-31T203930.237

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

Parental Rights in Education

Public schools teaching children about sexuality and transgenderism without parental consent have been put on notice by the Department of Justice.
The Justice Department&#8217;s Civil Rights Division <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-launches-investigations-concerning-gender-ideology-pre-k-12-schools-36" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> Thursday it was investigating 36 Illinois school districts to find out if they have sexual orientation and gender ideology content in their pre-k and K-12 curricula, noting these districts receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding.
“This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.
“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children. This includes exempting their children from ideological instruction that contradicts their values or decisions about their children’s health and best interests.”
The Supreme Court sided with parents when it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-sides-with-parents-says-schools-cant-mandate-lgbt-curricula" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> in June 2025 that parents have the right to opt their children out of LGBT programs in public schools.
If Illinois school districts are discovered to be teaching students sexual orientation and gender identity content, the DOJ will determine if parents have been given the chance to opt out of the programming. The department will also be investigating whether students can access bathrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex and whether only biological females can compete on girls&#8217; sports teams.
Shannon Adcock, founder and president of the parental rights group <a href="https://www.awakeil.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Awake Illinois</a>, called the investigation a &#8220;huge win&#8221; for parents.
&#8220;The DOJ’s launch of investigations into 36 Illinois school districts for pushing gender ideology in Pre-K-12 classrooms without proper parental notification is a huge win for parental rights and child protection,&#8221; Adcock told The Daily Wire. &#8220;For years, groups like Awake Illinois have been on the front lines demanding transparency, opt-out rights, and adherence to Title IX — protecting single-sex spaces, girls’ sports, and biological reality in our schools,&#8221; Adcock told The Daily Wire.
&#8220;Every district under scrutiny should immediately restore parental authority and biological fairness,&#8221; she added. &#8220;We won’t stop until our kids’ schools prioritize truth, safety, and parental involvement over ideology.&#8221;

US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-EDUCATION-LGBTQ

Justice Department Investigating Schools That Secretly Teach Children About Transgenderism

LGBT

Public Schools

A Biden-appointed federal judge has ruled American taxpayers must continue spending millions of dollars on transgender procedures in blue states.
A coalition of <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72077914/28/2/state-of-oregon-v-kennedy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">20 states</a>, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-backyard-battle-between-dem-governor-and-couple-next-door?author=Jordan+Schroeder&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Backyard+Battle+Between+Dem+Governor+And+Couple+Next+Door" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Josh Shapiro</a>, sued Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over a December 2025 <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/declaration-pediatric-sex-rejecting-procedures.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declaration</a> that told medical providers and organizations they can be denied Medicaid and Medicare funding if they continue providing harmful &#8220;sex-rejecting procedures&#8221; to children.
&#8220;Sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors, and therefore, fail to meet professional[ly] recognized standards of health care,&#8221; states Kennedy&#8217;s declaration.
Kennedy clarified in the document that the term &#8220;sex-rejecting procedures&#8221; includes puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, which are sometimes referred to as &#8220;gender-affirming care.&#8221;
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, who is known for his judicial <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/senate-republicans-question-oregon-judicial-nominees-support-diversity-2023-10-04/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transgender</a><a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/PronounsPrivilege.Kasubhai.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> activism</a>, vacated the declaration on April 18, calling it &#8220;unlawful&#8221; and &#8220;one man’s musings on gender-affirming care.&#8221;
&#8220;This Court is not persuaded by Defendants’ attempts to gaslight it into believing that the Kennedy Declaration does anything other than what it says: proclaims that gender-affirming care for minors falls below professionally recognized standards of care, supersedes state laws that say otherwise,&#8221; wrote Kasubhai in his <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ord.191371/gov.uscourts.ord.191371.93.0_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opinion</a>. &#8220;Secretary Kennedy’s unlawful declaration harmed children. This case illustrates that when a leader acts without authority and in the absence of the rule of law, he acts with cruelty.&#8221;
&#8220;HHS will continue to fight to protect our nation’s children, as this Biden-appointed judge’s ruling puts radical ideology ahead of their safety,&#8221; HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told The Daily Wire.
The lawsuit&#8217;s plaintiffs include: Oregon, Washington State, New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.
Washington State admitted to spending more than $31 million providing &#8220;gender-affirming&#8221; services to 10,000+ &#8220;transgender&#8221; individuals over three years in a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ord.191371/gov.uscourts.ord.191371.34.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legal document</a> submitted in the lawsuit. The federal government financed the bulk of the state&#8217;s spending, providing $25 million of the $31 million Washington State spent on transgender procedures from 2022 to 2024. It also spent more than $2 million on transgender interventions for minors just in 12 months, according to the document.
The data was provided in a declaration submitted by Dr. Judy Zerzan-Thul, Washington State Health Care Authority&#8217;s <a href="https://www.hca.wa.gov/about-hca/who-we-are/our-leadership" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chief Medical Officer</a>.
Washington State has nearly 6,000 &#8220;distinct Medicaid providers&#8221; offering sex-rejecting interventions, and not allowing providers who accept Medicaid and Medicare payments to &#8220;provide gender-affirming care&#8221; would cripple the industry, according to Zerzan-Thul.
&#8220;The consequence will be that no provider who accepts these forms of payment will be able to provide gender-affirming care to any child or adolescent patient,&#8221; states her declaration. &#8220;This action will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Apple Health to find health care providers willing to provide gender-affirming care to Apple Health clients, even if such services were entirely state-funded.&#8221;
Apple Health, the umbrella term for the state&#8217;s health insurance programs, spent $10.8 million providing sex-rejecting procedures to more than 10,000 &#8220;transgender individuals&#8221; in 2024, more than $10.6 million providing the procedures to 9,500+ individuals in 2023, and more than $10.1 million providing the procedures to 8,500+ individuals in 2022, according to the Zerzan-Thul declaration.
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/taxpayers-pay-millions-to-surgeon-who-performs-transgender-surgeries-in-prisons" target="_blank" rel="noopener">previously reported</a> that the Washington State Health Care Authority spent more than $4.3 million on a cosmetic surgery practice led by Dr. Geoffrey Stiller, MD, who offers an array of “transgender” surgical procedures, including facial feminization, “non-binary” double mastectomy, and “bottom surgery,” according to the Stiller Aesthetic <a href="https://www.stilleraesthetics.com/gender-affirming-overview" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a>.
Zerzan-Thul cited discredited gender medical guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as the state&#8217;s basis for determining that sex-rejecting interventions were &#8220;evidence-based, safe, and effective, medical treatments.&#8221;
&#8220;WPATH remains a globally recognized authority on gender-affirming care, and its Standards of Care have been widely adopted by medical institutions worldwide,&#8221; states the Zerzan-Thul declaration.
In its review of pediatric gender medicine, HHS noted that <a href="https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-11/gender-dysphoria-report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">medical gender guidance</a> from the Endocrine Society, WPATH, and the AAP has been found to be of &#8220;very low quality.&#8221;
The Washington State Health Care Authority did not respond to The Daily Wire&#8217;s requests for comment.

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr Testifies At Senate Finance Hearing

Judge Stops RFK Mandate, Says Taxpayers Must Spend Millions On Trans Surgeries

WPATH

This article is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
In this piece, originally published in <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-college-florida-gender-studies-activism">City Journal</a>, Colin Wright argues that faculty at New College of Florida continue to advance activist scholarship in ways that undermine the state’s post-woke reforms.
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When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to rein in “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/13/1110842453/florida-gov-desantis-is-doing-battle-against-woke-public-schools">woke indoctrination</a>” in public education, he wasn’t bluffing. Over the last several years, he and the legislature have pursued an aggressive legal and governance strategy to push far-left ideology out of taxpayer-funded institutions. The justification is straightforward: the people have the right to demand that public universities not become subsidized activist factories.
Laws can close academic departments and impose subject-area bans on paper, but campuses are still run day-to-day by faculty and administrators who may not be interested in what voters want. When progressive activists dominate a university, they will inevitably try to circumvent the law.
Such efforts appear to be happening at New College today. Though the Gender Studies department was shut down at the Sarasota school, and Florida law forbids the use of state and federal funds to “promote or engage in political or social activism,” faculty continue to oversee work promoting activist pseudoscience, treat opposition to explicit content in K-12 libraries as equivalent to Nazism, and celebrate “queer bibliographies” and “resistance” to elected officials.
Consider a 2025 undergraduate thesis covering the “Evolution of Gender” in drama and fashion.
Nova Myhill, a professor of English and Theater, Dance &amp; Performance Studies at New College, sponsored the thesis, which explicitly lists “Gender Studies” as its “Area of Concentration.”
At a glance, the thesis appears to be a broad, benign survey of gender-expression conventions through fashion in the context of theater. But it quickly advances to extreme activist views of sex and biology. The opening section, titled “Our Idea of Sex,” portrays sex in humans not as “concrete” or “permanent” but as something “closer to being reflections of societal preconceptions than anything based only on ‘biology.’” It claims that the idea that humans have two sexes became widespread only “around the mid-1700s” due to “changing values of what was important within identity, class and gender beginning to take the utmost importance when using clothing as a symbol or sign of identity.” It even asserts that “there was a time when we conceived of the human race as only ‘one-sex’,” and that our “re-envisioning of the sexes” during the Enlightenment into two categories — male and female — actually “led to the differentiation and specific designation of reproductive organs; the penis, testicles, ovaries, and uterus.”
If this were the only undergraduate thesis at New College promoting such radical activist views, it might be dismissed. It is not.
In January 2026, the college approved and archived an undergraduate thesis in the Division of Humanities that engaged in political activism and covered Gender Queer and Fun Home — books the sexually explicit content of which has prompted parents to oppose their inclusion in school libraries. Myhill also sponsored this thesis and is thanked effusively in the acknowledgements.
Oddly, this thesis includes two abstracts. The first, more formal one describes an exploration of “book censorship, theft, and destruction,” framed as actions “employed to specifically target queer, trans, Jewish, and other marginalized communities,” and ends by describing the authors’ “queer works” as “an act of cultural legacy, heritage transmission, and resistance.” The second reads like a direct taunt of DeSantis and New College’s policy reforms:
<blockquote>This thesis is about queers, trans people, gender, Nazis, book burning, moral panics, censorship, Magnus Hirshfeld, pornography . . . queer bibliography, the Phantasma, classroom libraries, Ron DeSantis, what it’s like to be erased, and also how people fight back . . . so why not read it already?</blockquote>
This isn’t “academic” in any meaningful sense, but rather activist writing designed to indoctrinate, recruit, and promote activism.
In one section, the thesis classifies Gender Queer as essential reading and mocks DeSantis for displaying redacted pages from the book during his November 2023 debate with California Governor Gavin Newsom. It frames Florida’s higher education reforms as part of an “anti-gender movement” with “chilling reach.”
The thesis also compares Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher F. Rufo’s rhetoric to the “paranoia and persecution of McCarthyism in the 1950s” and claims that he helped incite a “reactive moral panic” like the one behind Nazi-era book purges in 1930s Germany. It compares <a href="https://x.com/christopherrufo/status/1824307070839165333">Rufo’s tweet</a> about abolishing the college’s Gender Studies program to a “long and fiery radio address” delivered by “Joseph Goebbels.” Again, such comparisons are not objective scholarship but political activism.
Other recent theses at New College also veer in an activist direction, including a 2025 thesis on “Queer Resistance and the Fight for Change in Morocco,” a 2026 thesis on “Why Queer People Like Horror Films,” and another in 2025 titled “Who Holds the Mic?: Exploring Image, Control, and Identity in Queer.”
Of course, Florida’s higher-ed reforms don’t ban students from discussing controversial topics in class or engaging in activism in their free time. State leaders intended them to prevent public institutions from using public funds to “promote, support, or maintain” programs or activities that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “promote or engage in political or social activism.”
The work required to shepherd student theses entails faculty time and labor, institutional oversight, and curriculum funded by and developed under the authority of the university. It strains credulity to present as legitimate scholarship works that push false, ideologically charged views of biology or that describe themselves as works of “resistance.” A process that produces such works appears to flout Florida law’s intent to prevent state and federal funds from being used to “promote or engage in political or social activism.”
None of this is to say that shutting down New College’s gender-studies department was in vain. The volume of activist “scholarship” produced at the institution has declined markedly, and that’s a true achievement.
Nonetheless, Florida’s academic reforms are not self-enforcing. As always, personnel is policy. True believers on the faculty will look for workarounds. If nobody is paying attention, abolished departments will soon reappear inside more traditional ones — in this case, the departments of English and Theater, Dance &amp; Performance Studies.
Institutional responsibility lies with the faculty and administrators who decide which scholarship to approve, endorse, or reward. New College’s trustees and the state legislature can pass resolutions and rewrite statutes, but they cannot monitor every thesis committee or syllabus. 
That requires constant vigilance, because the pattern is predictable: abolish the department, then watch its ideology migrate to the English department, the history department, or the library.
If New College wants to fulfill its evolution into a post-woke institution, its guardians should not approve scholarship that treats its vital reforms as analogous to a second Holocaust. Leaders should hold faculty accountable when they use university resources to resurrect discarded programs and pursue activism under new names.
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<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/colin-wright">Colin Wright</a> is an evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute Fellow.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis engages with New College of Florida

At New College of Florida, Gender Studies Quietly Continues

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The First Lady is meant to embody unity, home, and family. She is the right hand of the president and, in her own way, a mother to the nation. Melania Trump has taken that charge seriously — focusing her platform on children’s well-being, online safety, and opioid abuse prevention, placing service above self and motherhood above politics.
So as 2028 rumors gather and the question of our next president looms, it’s worth considering who would stand beside him and what she would do with the platform.
If California Governor Gavin Newsom becomes our next president, ask yourself how detrimental it would be for our nation if his First “Partner,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom, assumes greater power. Not First Lady — First Partner. The title she bestows on herself tells you everything you need to know, and the damage would follow accordingly.
Siebel Newsom wouldn’t be the mother of our nation. She’d be the caregiver, the parent, whatever gender-neutral term doesn’t upset the acolytes of the far Left who propelled the couple to power.  She wouldn’t reserve that terminology for herself alone; she would conscript the rest of us into it as well.
We need not wonder how she would parent the country. She’s already told us by how she parents her kids.
I recently wrote about how she’s taken her children on what amounts to a Racism Safari through Red State America — hunting for “misogyny, racism, and bullying, oh my!” But a newly resurfaced video reveals the indoctrination began far earlier.
Siebel Newsom told an interviewer that she gives her boys dolls &#8220;to learn that caregiving is not just an activity reserved for women.&#8221; She added that when reading a book with a male protagonist, she simply &#8220;changes the he to a she&#8221; so her sons can see that &#8220;women can be at the center of a story. That women matter. That women are interesting.&#8221; You have to rewrite literature to teach your children that women are interesting? Isn’t this something they should be able to observe at home, or is that a problem in the Newsom household?
Then she went further. We are all, she said, &#8220;recognizing what it is to ultimately deconstruct all of these gender roles and ultimately be human.&#8221; She will &#8220;continue to do her work to try and deconstruct these limiting narratives about what it means to be human.&#8221;
Read that again. In order for the Newsom family to be fully human, they must first dismantle what it means to be a man or woman. I can’t imagine what their dinnertime conversations sound like, but it seems as if the Newsoms are engaging in a war against the imago Dei — the truth that every person is made in God’s image, with an unchangeable, sexed soul.
When elites like Newsom use their platform to rewrite children’s books, hand boys dolls as ideological instruments, and treat biology as a social construct to be dismantled, they don’t make us more human. They make us less. They tell boys that the natural drive to protect and provide is toxic. They tell girls that the capacity to nurture is something to be questioned.
The result? Confused children, skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and identity disorders, and a culture that treats objective reality as bigotry.
The leftist upper echelon calls this harmless. It isn&#8217;t. It is state-adjacent indoctrination with a smile and a reading circle.
True humanity is not found in endless deconstruction. It is found in accepting the Creator’s blueprint, in living out complementarity, and in rejecting the nihilism that insists man can redefine what God has made.
If the Newsoms become our nation’s next parents, we can be sure that their form of “progress” will aggressively erode that very humanity they openly vow to deconstruct — in the form of gender clinics in schools, pronouns in kindergarten, and a generation that no longer knows what a mother is.

California Governor Gavin Newsom Meets With Campaign Staff And Volunteer On Day Of Recall Election Vote

The Newsoms Are Parenting From Another Planet And They Want To Be America’s Parents, Too

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The Supreme Court issued one of its most clarifying rulings in years on Tuesday, directly challenging the cancellation efforts of modern progressivism, and the reaction from the progressive Left revealed everything you need to know about who actually believes in freedom and who doesn’t.
In <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/supreme-court-sides-with-therapist-in-challenge-to-colorados-ban-on-conversion-therapy/">Chiles v. Salazar</a>, the Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy” — specifically, talk therapy that helps minors explore whether their gender dysphoria might resolve in alignment with their biological sex — violates the First Amendment rights of licensed counselor Kaley Chiles. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, put it <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf">poetically</a>: laws that “suppress speech based on viewpoint represent an egregious assault” on First Amendment commitments. The ruling wasn’t close. It was a near-unanimous recognition that the government cannot dictate which therapeutic conversations are permissible and which are forbidden based on the ideological conclusion it prefers. Tuesday’s ruling should send a chill down the spine of other states that have taken similar action.
Enter Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY).
<a href="https://x.com/AndyBeshearKY/status/2039018698451677322?s=20">Beshear</a> decried the ruling, saying that “conversion therapy is torture,” and invoked his progressive Christian faith to say that “my faith teaches me that all children are children of God and practices that endanger or harm them are wrong.”
Beshear is welcome to espouse his convictions of faith in public life, including as a sitting governor (even if they depart from biblical teaching). He is not welcome to abuse it in the service of a philosophical position that he and other progressives fail to reason through with consistency.
Here is the question he, along with all other leftists, cannot or refuse to answer: If you affirm a minor’s right to pursue medical intervention — puberty blockers, hormones, surgeries — to align their body with their perceived gender identity, on what principled basis do you deny another minor the right to pursue talk therapy exploring whether their dysphoria might resolve without drastic intervention? Both involve a young person, a clinical professional, and a question about identity. The only difference is the direction of the therapeutic goal. And those goals are set against what progressivism thinks sufficiently aligned with its own aims. Beshear supports state-sponsored medical intervention when the conclusion is sufficiently progressive and lines up with what he bills as compassionate; he abandons the language of compassion when it runs contrary to leftist goals for using the government to advance transgender ideology.
The compassionate appeal to “children of God” is theologically sound as far as it goes — every Christian affirms it. But it proves too much and too little simultaneously. It proves too much because it could be deployed to ban any therapy a state deems harmful. It proves too little because it says nothing about which therapeutic goals are legitimate, which is the actual question before us. That’s an anthropological question, one that liberals do not like to answer because modern progressive anthropology lies on flimsy, irrational grounds, unable to determine what a man or woman even is. What Beshear wants is for his theological sentiments to do the intellectual work that his empty platitudes cannot. But a magistrate charged with upholding the common good owes citizens more than sentiment (Rom. 13:1-7). He owes them a coherent account of what a man and woman are, and which identity claims warrant medical affirmation and which warrant further reflection — and why. He has not given one. He cannot give one, because the moment he tries, the internal contradictions of progressive gender ideology become impossible to ignore.
Consider the logical structure on display in the leftist outcries to Tuesday’s decision:
Progressives opposed the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-skrmetti/">Skrmetti</a> decision, the Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, on the grounds that the state should not prevent individuals from pursuing medical interventions aligned with their gender identity. The watchword was choice. Bodily autonomy. Access to care.
Now those same leftists cheer when states ban a licensed counselor from having a conversation with a minor who voluntarily seeks to explore whether their dysphoria might be addressed without medical transition. The watchword is now “protection.” Safety. Science.
The contradiction is absurd. When a teenager wants hormones, progressivism demands the state get out of the way. When a teenager wants to talk to a therapist about living in accordance with biological reality, progressivism demands the state intervene. This is the enforcement of ideological conformity through the selective and weaponized deployment of the language of compassion.
Progressivism is not, at root, about expanding choices. It is about ratifying the correct choices — the ones that affirm the progressive account of identity, selfhood, and liberation. Every other choice, including the choice to embrace one’s given sex, is categorized as harm, trauma, or abuse.
Kaley Chiles was not torturing anyone. She was a Christian counselor who believed — correctly, as it happens — that talk therapy aimed at helping a young person live at peace with biological reality is a legitimate therapeutic goal. Eight justices agreed that Colorado (which now has a long track record of punishing people of faith and losing, thanks to Alliance Defending Freedom) had no business shutting her up.
All children are indeed children of God. That is precisely why they deserve honest counsel and the opportunity to hear the truth about their design.
***
Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a Fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Someone Ask Andy Beshear A Hard Question

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America&#8217;s most influential psychological association told The Daily Wire it still recommends children receive so-called gender affirming medical interventions, despite downplaying its support of child transgenderism in a letter to government <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/commissioners-staff/commissioners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">officials</a><a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/chairman-ferguson-gender-affirming-care-workshop-speech.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> investigating</a> fraud in pediatric gender medicine.
The American Psychological Association (APA) confirmed in a written statement that it continues to &#8220;support treatments for minors seeking gender affirming care&#8221; in alignment with its 2024 <a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/transgender-nonbinary-inclusive-care.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policy statement,</a> which endorses minors receiving harmful gender medical interventions, condemns state laws banning child sex-changes, and says &#8220;non-affirmation&#8221; of a child&#8217;s transgender identity can cause &#8220;significant harm.&#8221;
In a September 2025 <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/American-Psychological-Assocation-Response-to-FTC-RFI_Gender-Affirming-Care-9-26-2025_Signature.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to the Federal Trade Commission — which is actively investigating <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/06/ftc-announces-workshop-exploring-unfair-or-deceptive-trade-practices-gender-affirming-care-minors#:~:text=Home-,FTC%20Announces%20Workshop%20on%20Exploring%20Unfair%20or%20Deceptive%20Trade%20Practices,whistleblowers%2C%20detransitioners%2C%20and%20parents.&amp;text=Tags:,Health%20Care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unfair and deceptive</a> practices within the field of pediatric &#8220;gender affirming care&#8221; — the APA downplayed its support of &#8220;gender affirming care,&#8221; stating the primary role of a therapist treating children with gender dysphoria is assessment, not affirmation.
&#8220;It is important to stress that during the assessment and evaluation process, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or the identification of a youth as gender-questioning is not an automatic or singular pathway to medical intervention or even social transitioning,&#8221; the letter reads.
This statement contradicts the idea that &#8220;non-affirmation&#8221; poses a direct harm to children, as included in the 2024 policy.
Kurt Miceli, the chief medical officer at Do No Harm, says the APA wants to &#8220;have it both ways.&#8221;
&#8220;The American Psychological Association continues its attempt at having it both ways,&#8221; Miceli told The Daily Wire. &#8220;In its 2024 Policy Statement, the APA explicitly endorses &#8216;medical gender‑affirming care,&#8217; even urging insurers to cover these interventions for minors.&#8221;
The APA told The Daily Wire the &#8220;2024 policy statement and the FTC letter are consistent&#8221; and that &#8220;both documents reflect APA&#8217;s consistent commitment to evidence-based psychological care.&#8221;
The APA is the latest medical group to try to shed its reputation for radical transgender ideology. When President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration purged gender ideology from the government and launched investigations into practices within pediatric gender medicine. Since then, gender clinics <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hospitals-across-u-s-stop-transitioning-children-after-trump-signs-order-protecting-kids">across the country</a> have closed their doors, while the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-fight-is-not-over-major-medical-org-rejects-transgender-surgeries-for-kids">American Society of Plastic Surgery</a> has backed away from supporting sex-rejecting procedures for minors.
&#8220;The APA’s 2024 and 2025 statements cannot be reconciled,&#8221; Miceli told The Daily Wire. &#8220;It is an audacious contradiction for the APA to try to claim that their definition of ‘affirming care’ means anything other than sex-rejecting interventions.&#8221;
The Daily Wire asked the APA how it simultaneously viewed the &#8220;non-affirmation&#8221; of a child&#8217;s gender identity as causing &#8220;significant harm&#8221; while recommending a psychologist&#8217;s role is to assess, rather than affirm, a child&#8217;s gender confusion. The Daily Wire also asked for clarity on what clinical standards the APA recommends to help therapists determine when non-affirmation of gender identity is harmful versus when it&#8217;s an appropriate part of a clinical assessment.
The APA did not provide a straightforward answer to these questions, but said, &#8220;In APA’s professional framework, affirming care does not mean a predetermined outcome, automatic validation of any particular intervention, or bypassing clinical judgment.&#8221;
The Daily Wire asked the APA if a therapist should withhold using a child&#8217;s preferred pronouns — a form of &#8220;social transition&#8221; — until the child undergoes an extensive assessment.
&#8220;Affirmation and assessment work together,&#8221; the APA told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Supporting a child does not mean steering them toward any particular outcome, and neither a diagnosis nor a youth’s questions about gender automatically lead to social or medical transition.&#8221;
The APA also said it &#8220;cautions that equating gender‑affirming care solely with medical transition can stigmatize and limit access to essential mental health services.&#8221;
With more than<a href="https://www.apa.org/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 190,000 members</a> nationwide, the APA has a far-reaching impact on the psychological field and the practice of therapy throughout the United States. The APA has received more than 20 million dollars in federal funding since 2020, according to a government transparency <a href="https://taggs.hhs.gov/Detail/RecipDetail?arg_EntityId=EiNnLpTBhhCS2ZCRaSuz3Q%3D%3D">website</a>.

Pride Flags Above Regent Street In London

Your Therapist Is Being Told To ‘Affirm’ Child Transgenderism

American Psychological Association

When the European Union adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), officials insisted that the sweeping regulation was necessary to tackle “illegal content,” “disinformation,” and other harmful online activity. The message was that responsible regulation would make the internet a safer place. The reality, however, is that the DSA grants the EU enormous <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-europe-plans-to-strangle-american-free-speech?author=Lorcan+Price&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Europe+Plans+To+Strangle+American+Free+Speech">censorship powers</a> that endanger free speech in the digital public square, in Europe and across the world.
Now, for anyone wondering what kind of speech these powers might ultimately be used to suppress, the answer is becoming clearer. On March 5, the European Commission adopted its new <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-equality-strategy_en">Gender Equality Strategy</a>. The document leaves no doubt about the EU’s highly ideological direction, which has positioned it to become the world’s online censor through the DSA.
In the strategy, the European Commission states plainly that the DSA “recognises gender-based violence as a systemic risk, which providers of very large online platforms… have to assess and mitigate”. But what exactly is “gender-based violence”? 
According to the Commission, “online violence” includes acts that cause “psychological” harm or “suffering to women”. What this means is that if the ideological NGOs tasked with patrolling online content under the DSA object to a social media post on the grounds that it is “likely” to cause “harm” to women, major online platforms like X and Meta would be pressured to remove it as “violence”.
The nebulous definition of “online violence” put forward by the new Gender Equality Strategy makes it little more than a vehicle for digital censorship. The strategy presents itself as a roadmap for advancing equality across Europe. Yet what it reveals is a metastatic, habitual tendency on the part of EU institutions to embed contested ideological positions into policy and then frame any dissent as a threat. 
One notable passage in the strategy frames opposition to gender ideology as dangerous, warning that “anti-gender narratives … threaten the EU’s democratic space”. The strategy explicitly identifies “<a href="https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/1f5fa936-9fba-4435-93f5-32fa220bac82_en?filename=gender-equality-strategy-2026-2030.pdf">LBTIQ+</a> women” as a protected group and links gender equality efforts with other EU initiatives focused on sexual orientation. It also adopts an “intersectional approach,” asserting that sex and gender intersect with multiple forms of discrimination and should therefore be addressed through overlapping identity-based policies.
The strategy explicitly supports so-called “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” referencing a recent pro-abortion European Citizens Initiative. This signals continued normalization and support for abortion access on the part of the EU, which it has no authority to promote.
In the strategy, the European Commission refers to the Neil Datta report <a href="https://www.epfweb.org/node/1144">&#8220;The Next Wave&#8221;</a> as a trustworthy study identifying “well-resourced global movements, and increasingly exploited through foreign information manipulation and interference”. But what this “report” does is identify <a href="https://www.epfweb.org/node/1152">pro-life NGOs</a> and research centers promoting biological reality as radical, anti-gender, conservative, and religious extremists.
It does not take much imagination to see how this framework could be deployed in the world of online censorship.
In place since February 2024, the DSA gives the European Commission unprecedented power over the world’s largest online platforms, requiring them to remove certain content and manage “systemic risks” on their services. When authorities view legitimate criticism of gender ideology as part of “anti-gender narratives” threatening democracy, the next evident step is censorship in the name of “content moderation”.
Consider the prosecution of Finnish Member of Parliament <a href="https://adfinternational.org/campaign/free-speech-on-trial">Päivi Räsänen</a> under Finland’s national “hate speech” law. With the legal support of ADF International, Räsänen, a medical doctor, grandmother, and parliamentarian since 1995, has spent more than six years defending herself against criminal charges for posting a Bible verse on Twitter in 2019. She posted the verse to support her Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Despite being acquitted twice by Finnish courts, the state prosecution has relentlessly pursued the case, which now awaits a decision from Finland’s Supreme Court. Under the DSA, we should expect to see more aggressive censorship for the simple expression of traditional Christian views like Räsänen&#8217;s.
Of course, the EU can, and should, advance authentic policies to promote equality between the sexes. But this is not that. There is no doubt that the Gender Equality Strategy strengthens the censorship regime created by the DSA. Democratic societies depend on open debate to promote true equality, not the suppression of views that challenge elite orthodoxy.
Platforms that fail to comply with DSA censorship directives face enormous fines, as evidenced by the €120 million fine levied against X, an American platform, last December. Although the penalty was formally tied to procedural violations, the platform was targeted for its pro-free speech stance, which it is now <a href="https://adfinternational.org/news/x-challenges-e120m-fine-under-eu-censorship-law">appealing</a> before the Court of Justice of the EU.
Both in Europe and across the world, including in the United States, the DSA creates powerful incentives for platforms to remove lawful content subjectively deemed problematic or suffer the consequences, which can range from crippling fines to suspension of services.
Europe has long presented itself as a defender of fundamental rights and democratic values. Yet the trajectory of its speech policies increasingly points in the opposite direction. Make no mistake about it: the EU is coming for your free speech, regardless of where you live, and it’s taking no pains to hide the kind of speech it’s after.
* * *
Dr. Adina Portaru is senior counsel, Europe, for legal advocacy organization ADF International, which is supporting X’s legal challenge before the General Court of the EU.
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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The EU’s Censorship Regime Has A New Gender Strategy And It Threatens Free Speech Everywhere

The EU's Censorship Regime Has A New Gender Strategy And It Threatens Free Speech Everywhere

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