A few years ago, the Walt Disney Company threw a tantrum over Florida&#8217;s inaccurately nicknamed &#8220;Don&#8217;t Say Gay&#8221; law that bolstered parental rights in education.
Now, the entertainment behemoth is building its first new theme park in 15 years in — wait for it — Abu Dhabi, a city where homosexuality is illegal.
Turns out the bottom line matters!
Disney&#8217;s theme parks are performing well — the company <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disneys-stock-jumps-after-big-earnings-beat-raised-outlook-3329fd61#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> they brought in $8.9 billion in the second quarter, but Disney shares have traded down 17.2% so far this year.
Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, where sexual activity between two men or two women is <a href="https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/united-arab-emirates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">punishable</a> by up to 14 years in prison.
Also, trans-identifying people or a &#8220;male disguising as a female&#8221; can be criminally prosecuted and face up to a year in prison and fines.
The country&#8217;s laws reportedly originate with Sharia law.
&#8220;The Walt Disney Company and Miral, Abu Dhabi’s leading creator of immersive destinations and experiences, announced an agreement to create a landmark Disney theme park resort in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates,&#8221; Disney <a href="https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-announces-abu-dhabi-theme-park/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in an announcement Wednesday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This new theme park resort in Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati &#8211; combing Disney’s iconic stories, characters and attractions with Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture, stunning shorelines, and breathtaking architecture. ✨ <a href="https://t.co/M1GHeYgr4H">https://t.co/M1GHeYgr4H</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YasIsland?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#YasIsland</a>… <a href="https://t.co/IyjODlj9ar">pic.twitter.com/IyjODlj9ar</a>
— Disney Parks (@DisneyParks) <a href="https://twitter.com/DisneyParks/status/1920094616356892673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;This seventh Disney theme park resort will combine Disney’s iconic stories, characters and attractions with Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture, stunning shorelines, and breathtaking architecture,&#8221; Disney said.
Disney CEO Robert Iger called it a &#8220;thrilling moment for our company.&#8221;
Abu Dhabi&#8217;s &#8220;culture is rich with an appreciation of the arts and creativity,&#8221; Iger said, and &#8220;Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati.&#8221;
Disney also included a statement from Abu Dhabi&#8217;s chairman of its Department of Culture and Tourism, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who said the city is a place &#8220;where we preserve our past while designing the future.&#8221;
Back in 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state&#8217;s parental rights bill prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
In response, Disney came out swinging against the law.
Disney&#8217;s CEO at the time, Bob Chapek, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/08/1085130633/disney-response-florida-bill-dont-say-gay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> DeSantis &#8220;to express our disappointment and concern that if the legislation becomes law, it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, non-binary and transgender kids and families.&#8221;
Disney&#8217;s unusual decision to publicly oppose the law kicked off a years-long fight with Florida officials.
DeSantis went after Disney&#8217;s special tax district in Florida, which had allowed Disney to govern semi-independently since 1967.
Meanwhile, Disney has come under fire from parents in recent years for inserting LGBT themes in children&#8217;s movies, such as a gay kiss in the 2022 “Lightyear” film, which flopped at the box office.

Walt Disney World

Disney Threw A Fit Over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ In Florida. It’s Building A Park Where Being Gay Is Illegal.

Disney Threw A Fit Over 'Don't Say Gay' In Florida. Now It's Building A Park In Abu Dhabi

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Disney World

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President Donald Trump mounted an offensive against gender ideology as soon as he took office in January, and his administration shows no signs of letting up as it hits the 100-day mark.
Gender ideology became a hot-button issue in the years leading up to the November election. Parents across the country became outraged over transgender indoctrination by public school teachers, while female students protested being forced to let males use their bathrooms and play on their sports teams, and detransitioners raised the alarm about doctors pushing children toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.
During his campaign, Trump promised to take an axe to gender ideology, and he has followed through on multiple fronts.
In a day one executive <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">order</a>, Trump officially recognized “sex” as biological, either “male” or “female.” This initial order, &#8220;Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,&#8221; laid the groundwork for his administration&#8217;s other actions.
&#8220;Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,&#8221; the order stated.
Child Sex Change Drugs And Surgeries
In January, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-celebrates-trumps-move-to-ban-child-transgender-medical-transitions">signed</a> another executive <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">order</a>, &#8220;Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Mutilation,&#8221; committing that the United States will not fund or support the “so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another and that it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end,” the order stated.
This prompted a slew of hospitals to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hospitals-across-u-s-stop-transitioning-children-after-trump-signs-order-protecting-kids" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pump</a> the brakes on transgender medicalization for children, including hospitals in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Colorado, and Virginia.
On Monday, the White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/report-to-the-president-on-protecting-children-from-surgical-and-chemical-mutilation-executive-summary/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> a fact sheet that said during the first three years of the Biden administration, more than 7,000 children were put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and more than 4,000 children got transgender surgeries like double mastectomies.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department are leading the crackdown on transgender medical interventions for children.
The Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services also warned hospitals in March to comply with Trump’s executive orders on the “dangerous chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” or transgender surgeries and hormones.
The administration also <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/10/nx-s1-5355126/trump-nih-trans-regret-detransition-research" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ordered</a> the National Institutes of Health to research &#8220;regret&#8221; and &#8220;detransition&#8221; among children and adults who undergo transgender &#8220;social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s day one order also bans federal funds from promoting gender ideology, which includes paying for medical gender transitions for prison inmates, the subject of his most effective campaign ad last year.
The campaign ad highlighted Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded transgender medical services for prisoners.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the ad <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-exposed-kamalas-radical-stances-on-gender-americans-voted-against-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
The ad aired across the nation, including during football games. Trump advisors <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-exposed-kamalas-radical-stances-on-gender-americans-voted-against-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> the message reached suburban women, who were also being hammered with Democrats’ aggressive abortion ads.
Education
In his second week, Trump turned his attention to education, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-signs-order-defunding-schools-teaching-gender-ideology-crt">signing</a> an executive order titled &#8220;Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling&#8221; prohibiting federal funds from going to schools teaching “radical, anti-American ideologies,” including gender ideology.
Gender ideology includes the “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa,” his day one order previously clarified.
In response, the Education Department <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-enforce-2020-title-ix-rule-protecting-women" target="_blank" rel="noopener">scrapped</a> former President Joe Biden’s reinterpretation of Title IX to include trans-identifying men as women, calling it an “unlawful abuse of regulatory power and an egregious slight to women and girls.” Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in public schools.
Trump&#8217;s order also prohibits teachers or school counselors from encouraging the &#8220;social transition&#8221; of a trans-identifying child, which includes using a new name and pronouns or allowing them to use the bathrooms and play on the sports team of the opposite sex.
The administration is investigating multiple school districts, including five in Virginia that may be violating Trump&#8217;s orders on promoting gender ideology.
The Education Department also <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-ends-bidens-book-ban-hoax" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tossed</a> out a slew of complaints about “book bans,” or school districts removing sexually explicit materials.
The department has canceled <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-cancels-divisive-and-wasteful-grants-under-comprehensive-centers-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hundreds</a> of <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-cancels-additional-350-million-woke-spending" target="_blank" rel="noopener">millions</a> of dollars in grants to recipients who promote gender ideology, DEI, and Critical Race Theory.
Women&#8217;s Sports
Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">order</a>, &#8220;Keeping Men Out Of Women&#8217;s Sports,&#8221; banning trans-identifying males in girls’ sports by threatening to rescind funds from schools that allow this, saying it “results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
In response to Trump&#8217;s order, the NCAA <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ncaa-backs-down-changes-transgender-athlete-policy-after-trump-order" target="_blank" rel="noopener">changed</a> its policy to read that a “student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team.”
The Education Department also <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/02/07/ed-department-investigates-sjsu-upenn-over-trans-athletes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opened</a> investigations into several universities for allowing trans-identifying males in women’s sports, including San Jose State University and the University of Pennsylvania, where trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas won races on the women&#8217;s team.
On Monday, the administration <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/28/us-news/trump-admin-finds-upenn-violated-title-ix-by-letting-trans-athletes-compete-in-womens-sports/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> it had found that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX and gave the school 10 days to resolve the sports violations or face enforcement from the Justice Department. In March, the administration froze $175 million in taxpayer funding to the school.
In February, Trump stunned a room full of governors when he told Maine’s governor to her face that her state would not get any federal funding if it continued to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boy-wins-girls-pole-vault-championship-in-maine-days-after-state-pledged-to-defy-trump-order">buck</a> the president’s executive order on males in women’s sports.
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Stunning moment Trump goes back and forth with Maine governor on women&#8217;s sports
TRUMP: &#8220;You better do it because you&#8217;re not gonna get any federal funding &#8230; your population doesn&#8217;t want men playing in women&#8217;s sports.&#8221;<a href="https://t.co/UrqDl65nLx">pic.twitter.com/UrqDl65nLx</a>
— Mairead Elordi (@JohnsonHildy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnsonHildy/status/1893026795491864862?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
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“Your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. So you better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” Trump told Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat.
The administration ultimately moved to strip Maine of the $358.4 million it <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-23/trump-stops-maines-funding-over-transgender-athletes-could-california-follow" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gets</a> in federal education funding, although that action is blocked in federal court for now. The Agriculture Department also suspended some of Maine&#8217;s federal funds for school food programs. The Education Department has also referred Maine&#8217;s education department to the Justice Department for “further enforcement action.”
The Education Department is also eyeing California, which also allows trans-identifying males in girls&#8217; high school sports.
The department opened an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs sports at more than 1,500 high schools. The administration has threatened California&#8217;s federal funding, but has not yet moved to cut it.
California also prohibits schools from automatically notifying parents when a student announces a new gender identity, another threat to its federal funding.
Other Moves
Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prohibited</a> public schools from allowing a trans-identifying child to use the bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex.
Trump&#8217;s day-one order also protects women and girls from trans-identifying men in women’s prisons, rape shelters, and other “intimate spaces.”
Trump also issued an order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">banning</a> trans-identifying members from the military.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order read.
Federal employees were also instructed to remove pronouns from their email signatures, and, in a surprise move, Trump targeted the Kennedy Center over “Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth.” He <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113964959500715895" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fired</a> the center&#8217;s president and several board members, and the board voted to install Trump as president. He promised that “the best is yet to come” for the center.
Trump also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/eradicating-anti-christian-bias-trump-signs-executive-action-ending-targeting-of-christians" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> an order aimed at eradicating the “anti-Christian weaponization of government,” which cites the Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ attempts to shut out Christians from the foster care system if they did not affirm gender ideology for children.
Also on his first day, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/initial-rescissions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revoked</a> nearly 100 of Biden’s executive actions, including one preventing discrimination over “gender identity.”
His day one order also reverses a policy that allowed individuals to change the gender marker on their passports.
During his remarks to Congress, Trump highlighted some of the eye-popping waste the Department of Government Efficiency is targeting, including transgender <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/here-are-the-transgender-mice-experiments-trump-talked-about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">experiments</a> on mice.
Trump also <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/03/womens-history-month-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recognized</a> Women’s History Month, saying, “No longer will our Government promote radical ideologies that replace women with men &#8230;”
Federal judges have blocked many of Trump&#8217;s actions, including the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fed-judge-puts-hold-on-trumps-ban-on-child-sex-change-procedures-calls-it-horribly-dangerous" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bans</a> on child sex change procedures and trans-identifying <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-asks-scotus-to-uphold-his-ban-on-transgender-troops-in-the-military" target="_blank" rel="noopener">troops</a>, but the administration plans to continue fighting those decisions in court.

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Here’s How Trump Crippled Radical Gender Ideology In His First 100 Days

Here's Everything Trump Did On Gender Ideology In His First 100 Days

Donald Trump

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Trump Administration

A video of an influencer couple celebrating their twins’ first birthday has reignited the conversation about the morality of surrogacy.
The clip in question shows Joseph and Nathan Hughes, two gay hair stylists who live in Texas, throwing a lavish birthday party for the children. The Hughes men are popular on social media for showcasing their family.
The couple’s friend Kortney, who works at their salon, donated eggs while Joseph’s sister Breeanna acted as a gestational carrier for the couple, per The Mirror.
Joseph and Nathan have been sharing extensively online about their experience, but the video of the birthday party has gone viral as viewers question the overall idea of surrogacy, plus observe how the twins don’t seem excited or happy at the party, noting how neither one smiles during the video.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
NEW: TikTok influencers show off their surrogate children for the cameras during their 1-year-old birthday party.
Horrifying.
Joseph and Nathan Hughes had the children through Joseph&#8217;s sister, who was the &#8220;gestational carrier.&#8221;
Their friend &#8220;Kortney&#8221; was the one who donated… <a href="https://t.co/qPOU1SqRtR">pic.twitter.com/qPOU1SqRtR</a>
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1915526487379501546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
“This should be illegal,” one reply <a href="https://x.com/gentrywgevers/status/1915526597886562695">said</a>.
Another chimed in, <a href="https://x.com/ThnKMyMmsGnCrzy/status/1915539163018920052">writing</a>, “Why do those babies look like they don&#8217;t even know these people?”
“The fact that they used friends and family as their donor and surrogate is less disturbing than paying some random woman to completely abandon the child they carried for nine months,” another person <a href="https://x.com/crystalandqueue/status/1915543238200479827">wrote</a>. “My biggest concern with both of these babies is their lack of eye contact and facial expressions in every video I’ve ever seen of them. They’re completely disconnected which makes me wonder what happens off camera.”
“As a mom, I am so upset by the children&#8217;s reactions and body language,” another <a href="https://x.com/Aphrohditee/status/1915912434621055363">echoed</a>. “You can tell they are not only uncomfortable, they are not happy. And they can buy them all the things in the world and dress them up cute, but any sane person who has had a child can see there is NO connection between those babies and the people holding them.”
Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh, who has spoken about moral concerns regarding surrogacy in the past, also <a href="https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/1916589500739764357?s=43&amp;t=BDz6oekueqrSVJ50bM62xw">commented</a> on the clip.
“Somehow ‘social conservatives’ still get a bad rap, even on the Right. But we’ve been right about every issue and usually decades ahead,” he tweeted. “We’ve been saying for many years that gay adoption and surrogacy should be illegal. Now everyone else seems to be catching on. This is an abomination.”
“It is, in a sense, child trafficking. Selling a baby as a prop, a plaything is just wrong,” another wrote. “Let’s check in on these two and the kid in 10 years.”

birthday cake

Viral Clip Of Gay Couple’s Birthday Party For Twins Ignites Surrogacy Debate

Viral Clip Of Gay Couple's Birthday Party For Twins Ignites Surrogacy Debate

Children

Social Issues

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U.S.

Russia <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/europe/russia-strikes-ukraine-trump-vladimir-intl-hnk/index.html">reportedly</a> continues to hit Ukraine with deadly strikes after President Donald Trump issues a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A group of religious parents sue their school district over their children&#8217;s forced exposure to LGBTQ content. And, the White House is warning parents and teens about the rise in child exploitation, enlisting the help of country music star John Rich.
It’s Friday, April 25, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/russian-derails-ceasefire-talks-combating-sexual-extortion/id1576594336?i=1000704872841" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2>Russia Bombs Ukraine, Frustrates Peace Efforts</h2>
<div id="attachment_912089" style="width: 848px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-912089" class="size-large wp-image-912089" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-838x576.jpg" alt="" width="838" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-838x576.jpg 838w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-300x206.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-768x528.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-1536x1056.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Miffed-Don-2048x1408.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px" />(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with a series of missiles and drones on Thursday, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/europe/russia-strikes-ukraine-trump-vladimir-intl-hnk/index.html">according</a> to CNN, inflicted another round of strikes on Friday. The surprise attacks have derailed United States-led ceasefire negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
Thursday’s attack on Kyiv left at least a dozen dead and dozens more wounded, and also killed what momentum there was toward a ceasefire. The following night, Moscow reportedly launched another round, killing at least eight more people. Before the attacks, the White House had sounded optimistic about a deal, but after Russia&#8217;s Thursday attacks, the President <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioT5YuxsrU8&amp;t=4m">appeared</a> much less sanguine.
<blockquote>TRUMP: We’re in the midst of talking peace and missiles were fired, and I was not happy with it…
REPORTER: …If the bombs keep falling, will you consider additional sanctions for Russia, or what will you do?
TRUMP: I’d rather answer that question in a week, I want to see if we can have a deal. No reason to answer it now, but I won’t be happy, let’s put it that way. Things will happen.</blockquote>
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been willing to work with the United States on peace terms – more willing since his disastrous White House meeting in February. Since then, Zelensky has agreed to sign a minerals deal with the United States, and last month, he said Ukraine would agree to a full ceasefire to set up peace negotiations. But Moscow never bought in – all they could agree to was a 30 day pause on attacks against energy infrastructure.
Over the weekend, diplomats released a proposed peace deal constructed by the United States and Europe that recognized Russian control of Crimea and accepted Russia’s control of land in Ukraine’s east. It would also ban Ukraine from NATO membership and start the United States and Russia on a path of economic normalization – with all sanctions lifted from Russia. The proposal didn’t set limits on Ukraine’s military – something Moscow had wanted – and it included the minerals deal with the United States. Notably, it did not include any security guarantees from either the United States or Europe for Ukraine. Vice President JD Vance called it a “very fair proposal.”
Zelensky has already said that giving any occupied territory over to the Russians would be a red line. Zelensky has also taken issue with how the Trump administration has approached the negotiating table. “We would like to have this common understanding that Russia is the aggressor, not [Ukraine],&#8221; Zelensky told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro in an interview this week.
<h2>SCOTUS Hears Case On Religious Opt-Outs From LGBTQ Curriculum</h2>
<div id="attachment_912091" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-912091" class="size-large wp-image-912091" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Let-Kids-Be-Kids-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: The Supreme Court looks poised to rule in favor of religious parents who want the right to opt their kids out of LGBTQ material at school.
In 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland’s largest school district, introduced a new gender and sexuality curriculum. At first, they allowed parents to opt their kids out, but then, the school district decided it was too difficult to allow opt outs and made attendance mandatory. In response, a group of parents that included Muslims, Catholics, and a Ukrainian Orthodox Christian brought a case against the school district.
One of the books in the new curriculum is called “Prince and Knight,” about a prince who rejects princesses and falls in love with a knight. Another book is called “Born Ready” about a boy named Penelope, and another book tells the story of a girl attending her uncle’s same-sex wedding, and yet another book is called “Pride Puppy” about a puppy who gets lost during a Pride parade.
“They can keep the books,” one plaintiff said on the steps of the Supreme Court. “They can read it to their children if there are parents who feel this is appropriate for their 3-year-old, 4-year-old and elementary kids, they can teach it to them, but we don’t think it’s right. We don’t want it read to our kids.”
The more conservative justices seemed highly skeptical of the school district’s arguments. Justice Brett Kavanaugh quizzed the lawyer for the school superintendent about why it’s supposedly too hard to let parents opt out their children from reading LGBTQ books in class. “The plaintiffs here are not asking the school to change its curriculum. They’re just saying look, we want out. Why isn’t that feasible?”
Even some of the usual critics seemed sympathetic to parents in this case. Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten of the ​​American Federation of Teachers admitted she would not actually recommend these books to elementary schoolers, although she still called for “inclusivity.”
<h2>John Rich Promotes Awareness Of Sextortion</h2>
<div id="attachment_912093" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-912093" class="size-large wp-image-912093" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Hidden-Hoodie-Guy-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by dashu83 via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Country music star and entrepreneur John Rich has teamed up with the Department of Homeland Security to warn Americans about the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dozens-of-teen-boys-take-their-own-lives-as-online-sextortion-cases-spike">dangers of child sexual extortion</a>.
The Department of Homeland Security has a campaign called “Know2Protect” – you can find that on the DHS website. Its goal is to raise national public awareness about a rapidly growing crime called sexual extortion – also known as sextortion. Sextortion is when a predator coerces or tricks a minor into sending them sexually explicit images or video footage, and then threatens to release that material unless the minor either produces additional explicit content or gives them money. A Daily Wire investigation covered this topic <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dozens-of-teen-boys-take-their-own-lives-as-online-sextortion-cases-spike">in-depth</a> earlier this month, but in summary, there were 36 million reports of suspected online child exploitation in 2023 alone.
John Rich is amplifying DHS’ awareness effort. The country star heard about sextortion a few months ago, after his wife and 15-year-old son attended a related talk from DHI Special Agent Dennis Fetting. Immediately, Rich reached out to DHS with ideas to get out something more accessible to the public. This week, Rich, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Agent Fetting hosted a livestream event on sextortion. It was <a href="https://x.com/johnrich/status/1915190100058923202">reposted</a> online by President Trump, and so far, it has racked up millions of views.
“I&#8217;m fully aware of the dangers that are out there for our kids right now,” Rich said. “They are being targeted on apps, video games, social media – places you would never dream of, like innocent sounding games like Roblox, Minecraft, things like that, where predators are acting like they&#8217;re another kid and they&#8217;re creating a relationship with your kid, and then they lower the boom, then they start to extort and extort. They do everything from force the kids to send nude pictures of themselves, to take pictures of their parents&#8217; credit cards front and back so they can extort money. They threaten them with killing their family, burning their house down, posting the pictures all online. It results in kids, some of them becoming suicidal – it’s a major, major problem. So to me, millions of parents needed to hear about this.”

RUSSIA-POLITICS-RELIGION

Morning Brief: Russia Bombards Ukraine Amid Peace Talks, SCOTUS School Case & Sextortion Awareness

California Supreme Court

Child Abuse

Crime

Russia

Sexual Abuse

Ukraine

Ukraine-Russia War

Volodymyr Zelensky

World

Facebook&#8217;s parent company Meta said that two posts that included &#8220;misgendering&#8221; were not a violation of its policies, in a case that appears to have involved content from The Daily Wire.
The social media giant&#8217;s Oversight Board ruled that two posts about trans-identifying males do not violate the company&#8217;s hate speech rules.
&#8220;Despite the intentionally provocative nature of the posts, which misgender identifiable trans people in ways many would find offensive, a majority of the Board found they related to matters of public concern and would not incite likely and imminent violence or discrimination,&#8221; the Oversight Board <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/news/wide-ranging-decisions-protect-speech-and-address-harms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement on the <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/bun-1ynnk264/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">decision</a>.
Back in September, Meta&#8217;s Oversight Board <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/news/new-cases-to-consider-debate-around-gender-identity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> it was looking into two posts from last year that involve videos of trans-identifying males.
One of the posts <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/04/23/meta-oversight-board-trans-content-moderation-hate-speech/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appears</a> to be a video <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Mk01jo1P8/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> by Libs of TikTok on Instagram that shows an Oregon high school boy getting booed by the crowd when he finished first place in the girls’ 200-meter race.
&#8220;He&#8217;s a boy who thinks he&#8217;s a girl,&#8221; Libs of TikTok <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/bun-1ynnk264/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">captioned</a> the post.
Around the same time, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7PjzzrOEkE/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> the same video on Instagram, using male pronouns for the trans-identifying high schooler.
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The other post was a video posted to Facebook showing a girl confronting a trans-identifying male in the women&#8217;s bathroom and expressing her discomfort. That video was likely <a href="https://www.iwf.org/2024/09/05/meta-considering-monumental-policy-change-to-ban-speech-promoting-womens-sports-and-spaces/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taken</a> by Payton McNabb, a female high school athlete who was seriously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/injured-high-school-volleyball-player-reacts-to-congresswoman-saying-trans-identifying-males-dont-hurt-anyone" target="_blank" rel="noopener">injured</a> in 2022 when a trans-identifying volleyball player spiked a ball at her head.
Both posts were reported for &#8220;Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment&#8221; multiple times, but Meta left both posts up, deciding that neither violated Meta&#8217;s Community Standards. Users who reported the posts then appealed to the Oversight Board.
However, on Wednesday, the board ruled in favor of Meta&#8217;s original decision to leave both posts up. Rulings by the Oversight Board on specific posts are considered binding for the company.
&#8220;The Hate Speech policy does not include misgendering as a form of prohibited &#8216;attack,'&#8221; the Oversight Board noted when it announced it was looking into the videos.
The move is the latest victory for conservative users as Meta says it is working to dial back censorship, including on gender identity.
Earlier this year, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-pro-life-accounts-demand-meta-lift-suspensions-after-free-speech-promises" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> sweeping changes to his company’s content moderation policies, promising “more speech and fewer mistakes.”
“In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far,” Meta said.
“We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression,” the company said.
The company also said it will be “getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate” and it will also recommend more political content if a user has indicated they are interested.
Meta has been fiercely criticized in recent years for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meta-doubles-down-after-zuckerberg-reveals-how-facebook-censored-hunter-biden-laptop-story" target="_blank" rel="noopener">censoring</a> political content such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, which broke just before the 2020 election.

Social Media And Company Logos

After Review, Facebook Says ‘Misgendering’ Doesn’t Violate Its Hate Speech Policy

Meta Rules Transgender Posts Do Not Violate Hate Speech Rules In Win For Conservatives, Daily Wire

Facebook

Social Media Censorship

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

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

The Lawyers Promoting Child Indoctrination To SCOTUS Were Absolutely Humiliated

Books

Brett Kavanaugh

Children's Books

Education

Elementary Schools

gender ideology

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Matt Walsh

Neil Gorsuch

Opinion

Parents rights

Samuel Alito

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Virginia

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court indicated that it would side with parents who want the option of keeping their children away from LGBTQ-themed books in schools.
The justices offered their comments during <a href="https://www.c-span.org/event/public-affairs-event/supreme-court-hears-case-on-lgbtq-books-in-public-schools/432473" target="_blank" rel="noopener">oral arguments</a> in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, which revolves around parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. In 2022, the county’s school board approved LGBTQ-themed books for its language arts curriculum. In 2023, the board refused parents the option of having their children excused from such instruction.
“One book describes the story of a girl attending her uncle’s same-sex wedding, for example, while another book, Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a Pride parade,” <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supreme-court-likely-to-rule-for-parental-opt-out-on-lgbtq-books-in-schools/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SCOTUSblog</a> noted.
A lower court ruled that the school board did not have to notify parents when the storybooks would be used, as such notification would have allowed parents to opt their children out of the curriculum. “A federal appeals court reasoned that on the ‘threadbare’ facts before it, the parents had not demonstrated that exposing their children to the storybooks compelled the parents to violate their religion,” SCOTUSBlog reported.
Eric Baxter, an attorney for the parents, told Justice Clarence Thomas that teachers were required to use the books and the school board suggested they do so five times in the school year. Justice Samuel Alito bluntly stated the county’s policy permitted schools to teach children moral principles that were “highly objectionable to parents and they can’t opt out,” and asked simply, “What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?” while pointing out that students could opt out of health classes.
Meanwhile, the defendants’ attorney argued there was a difference between “exposure” and “coercion.” Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch contended that the presentation of the curriculum was more than just exposing children to the ideas, making coercion a possibility. Gorsuch asked the attorney for the school board, “The exposure versus coercion line that you ask us to draw, how does that play out in the case of the Mohammed image for the Muslim student?”
“In those circumstances, the school is coercing the individual to act contrary to a religious belief,” the attorney replied.
“Just being exposed to the image? The exposure there is coercion, in your view?” Gorsuch asked.
“I think it’s the difference between exposure to ideas and activity that coerces you to engage in conduct that is in violation of your belief,” the attorney answered.
“So the idea is the image of the prophet?” Gorsuch asked. “So it’s the image that makes the difference, rather than an idea?”
“I think it’s conduct that makes the difference. &#8230; So if there were a book that described someone making an image of the prophet Mohammed, I don’t think the parent would have the ability to object, even given the religious prohibition at issue, on simply being exposed to the idea that people might depict the image of Mohammed. Being required to view the image of the prophet Mohammed in contravention of a religious objection, is being required to engage in conduct,” the attorney replied.
“The child is sitting passively and the teacher’s just reading a storybook,” Gorsuch pointed out, prompting the attorney to admit, “I think if the storybook features the depiction of the prophet Mohammed, that is a compulsion to engage in conduct that violates your religious belief.”
Gorsuch pointed out, “You say this is only about exposure, but we also have in the records some guidance materials for teachers, one of which is if a students says that a boy says a boy can’t be a girl because if he was born a boy, a teacher is to respond, ‘That comment is hurtful, and we shouldn’t use negative words to talk about people’s identities.’ Is that exposure, or is that something else for a 3 to 5-year-old?”
Chief Justice John Roberts declared that even if the school did not require students “to affirm what is being taught in books or lessons,” that may not be “a realistic concept for a five-year-old.”
Meanwhile, leftist Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “asked how far the parents’ rule would extend. For example, she inquired, could a parent ask to have her child not placed in a classroom with a gay teacher who has pictures of her same-sex wedding in the classroom?” SCOTUSblog reported.

Preschool children playing with colorful shapes

SCOTUS Hints It Will Side With Parents Who Want Opt-Out For Kids Exposed To LGBT Materials

Courts

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

Mixed race teacher reading to class

Will SCOTUS Back Parents When It Comes To LGBTQ Storybooks?

Parental Rights in Education

Parenting

Public Schools

Schools

Before it&#8217;s possible to discuss any policy position that&#8217;s supposedly &#8220;progressive,&#8221; the first step is always to escape the world of euphemisms and start talking, in explicit detail, about what&#8217;s actually happening. This might sound straightforward, but every single organ of the Left is committed to making sure you don&#8217;t do this. They would much rather you debate the abstract concept of &#8220;a woman&#8217;s right to choose,&#8221; for example, than discuss how children are dismembered and discarded like trash. They would also prefer that you use terms like &#8220;gender-affirming care,&#8221; instead of discussing chemical castration. And on and on. Euphemisms are one of the most potent tools these people have. They are everywhere, in every single debate on every issue. And in every case, they&#8217;re a gross misrepresentation of reality. They need to be neutralized immediately before any actual discussion can begin.
To that end, take <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/14/hungary-poised-to-adopt-constitutional-amendment-to-ban-lgbtq-gatherings">this headline</a> from the other day. It ran in The Guardian: 
<blockquote>Hungary passes constitutional amendment to ban LGBTQ+ gatherings.</blockquote>
The Associated Press ran a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hungary-pride-ban-amendment-orban-gay-rights-lgbtq-155ec12cbbde7cc6be0f96adb323de77">similar story</a>:
<blockquote>Hungary passes constitutional amendment to ban LGBTQ+ public events, seen as a major blow to rights.</blockquote>
The article explains that Hungary&#8217;s parliament just overwhelmingly passed an amendment that will outlaw, &#8220;public events by LGBTQ+ communities.&#8221;
If you&#8217;re just skimming these headlines, this might seem like a surprising development. You might wonder: What are &#8220;public events by LGBTQ+ communities,&#8221; exactly? And what precisely is an &#8220;LGBTQ+ gathering?&#8221; If you take these headlines literally, then it sounds like the government of Hungary has just made it illegal for gay people to appear in public, for any reason. It&#8217;s a total crackdown on figure skating, musical theater and art exhibitions. Gay people can&#8217;t even get together and watch “Glee” reruns on the couch without getting hauled to prison. This is the current state of Hungary, if you believe The Guardian and the Associated Press.
In reality, of course, Hungary has not banned gay people from assembling in public. What they&#8217;ve banned are disturbing and morally objectionable public displays of sexual hedonism that can easily be observed by children. That includes Hungary&#8217;s annual pride parade. Pull up any footage of this parade that&#8217;s posted online, and you&#8217;ll quickly see exactly what I&#8217;m talking about. Here&#8217;s some of it, or at least the parts we can play. This is from Budapest several years back:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Budapest gay pride" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hMLRsBLKnEU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
And again, this is the most sanitized footage I could play. This is what the corporate press means when they say Hungary has banned &#8220;LGBTQ events&#8221; and &#8220;LBGTQ gatherings.&#8221; This is the truth behind the euphemism. They mean that Hungary has banned public indecency that everyone — including children — can see. In fact, in many cases, these public displays are explicitly directed at children. This is what &#8220;pride parades&#8221; always entail, as we&#8217;ve discussed dozens of times on this show.
If you actually look at the text of the amendment that just passed in Hungary — and again, it was an overwhelming vote in Hungary&#8217;s parliament, passing by a margin of 140 to 21 — then you&#8217;ll immediately understand why it passed. This is not simply an amendment about &#8220;pride parades&#8221; or &#8220;gay gatherings&#8221; or anything like that. It&#8217;s not, as the Associated Press claims, an amendment that constitutes a &#8220;major blow to rights.&#8221; In reality, it&#8217;s the exact opposite.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1577-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
This amendment, with very forceful and unapologetic language, affirms the right of everyone — and in particular children — to enjoy public spaces without being confronted by someone else’s sexual obsessions. As far as I know, this is the first major piece of legislation, and certainly the first constitutional amendment, to explicitly state that gay and trans activists are not, in fact, the only people on the planet with rights that deserve protection. Until relatively recently, that didn&#8217;t need to be spelled out.
Here&#8217;s the National Review&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hungary-approves-constitutional-amendment-banning-public-lgbt-events/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">summary</a> of the amendment:
<blockquote>The amendment forbids LGBT pride parades that conservative lawmakers argued threatened the well-being of children. One of its provisions specifically declares that children’s rights to moral, physical, and intellectual development supersede the right to peaceful assembly and almost every other right, except the right to life. Hungarian authorities are also allowed to use facial recognition software to identify and potentially fine demonstrators at the newly prohibited pride parades if they are held in defiance of the law.</blockquote>
Yes, this amendment — which codifies a law passed by the parliament a few weeks ago — states that a child has a right to be protected physically, morally, and spiritually, and that this right supersedes the right of gay people to celebrate their sexuality in the town square. That&#8217;s exactly the right way to frame this situation. It&#8217;s certainly the honest way to frame it.
Virtually all of our cultural and political debates, regardless of the particular topic, ultimately come down to a battle of competing rights and interests. That&#8217;s not how you normally see policy debates framed, but it&#8217;s the truth. Even something as simple as a speed limit involves weighing various rights and interests. On the one hand, you have people&#8217;s reasonable interest in traveling to their destination quickly. On the other hand, you have people&#8217;s reasonable interest in not being killed in a high-speed car accident. These two interests are obviously in tension. If we wanted absolute safety on the highway, we&#8217;d set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. But we don&#8217;t do that, because we&#8217;ve decided that other interests are more important. Every functioning society has to weigh competing interests like this, in every single area of policy.
The only way to sort through this mess is to come to some kind of understanding about which rights are most fundamental. With this amendment, Hungary has decided that, apart from the right to life, the most fundamental right is a child&#8217;s &#8220;right to protection and care for their adequate physical, mental and moral development.&#8221; You can agree or disagree with this philosophical claim — and of course I strongly agree with it. But regardless of your particular stance on the issue, you can&#8217;t deny that, at the very least, they are dealing with these questions in a clear and coherent way.
The opponents of the amendment, on the other hand, are not responding coherently. Instead, they&#8217;re reacting in exactly the kind of hysterical manner you would expect. They&#8217;re lying about the content of the amendment, as we just discussed. They&#8217;re also setting off smoke bombs in Hungary&#8217;s parliament and blocking the entrance to government buildings. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 smoke bombs protests" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSWKwOCVHOc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This is the response you expect from people who know they have no actual argument. They&#8217;ll blockade buildings. They&#8217;ll spread propaganda that has no basis in reality. They&#8217;ll detonate smoke bombs in parliament. But the one thing they won&#8217;t do — because they can&#8217;t do it — is rationally explain why you&#8217;re wrong, and they&#8217;re right. In this case, these LGBT activists simply cannot articulate any reason to oppose this amendment. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One of the reasons, of course, is that these so-called &#8220;pride parades&#8221; are indefensible, morally and practically. Every sane person knows that they should be banned from public streets. Anyone who&#8217;s ever seen footage of one of these parades understands this.
But the more fundamental issue is that, even if the pride parades weren&#8217;t bizarre, explicit, and objectionable, these activists would still have a problem. Put simply, the Leftist conception of human rights gives no real basis for objecting to this constitutional amendment. These people believe that rights are social constructs, codified by the government. They generally reject the idea that rights come from God. After all, it&#8217;s hard to make the case that the right to abort a baby created by God somehow comes from God. But if rights are social constructs, then society can abolish a right just as easily as it creates it. And that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happened here. Hungary, through its democratically elected government, has decided that the absolute right to gay pride displays no longer exists in their culture. As a result, it makes no sense for the Leftist to object.
They can&#8217;t say that the rights of LGBT people are being infringed in Hungary. How could they? The right doesn&#8217;t exist anymore. There is no authority higher than society and government (according to them), and those authorities have spoken on the matter. That&#8217;s all there is to it.
In other words, gay activists are melting down in Hungary right now because they&#8217;re realizing, if only subconsciously, that their ideology can be erased just as quickly as it took hold. As it turns out, a fiction that&#8217;s maintained by a patchwork of laws and government policy can also be eliminated by law and government policy. And it&#8217;s not just the so-called LGBT community in Hungary that&#8217;s coming to this realization. In this country, as we&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtFCCDy__os" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a>, &#8220;pride parades&#8221; are also facing serious problems, mainly because the major sponsors are pulling out and people are losing interest. They&#8217;re going door-to-door in San Francisco right now to cover a multimillion-dollar funding shortfall for their pride events this summer. In every respect, these people are now weak and desperate.
If there were ever a moment to implement a Hungary-style ban on &#8220;pride parades&#8221; in this country, now is that time. Yes, activists in this country would inevitably act out, just like they&#8217;re doing in Hungary. But there are some things that are a lot more important than the feelings of screeching Left-wing protesters. One of them is the right of children to grow and develop and have their innocence protected. Hungary is now finally enforcing that right. For the benefit of every child in this country, we should do the same.

Protest Against Amendment Banning Pride In Budapest, Hungary

LGBT Activists Panic After This Huge Move In The Fight To Protect Children

Europe

Hungary

Parade

Parliament

Pride

When Oregon&#8217;s Democrat governor announced her state would defy President Donald Trump&#8217;s ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion, she said she was doing it for a good reason: the kids.
“Since the start of the new federal administration, I promised Oregonians that I would not back down from a fight when it comes to safeguarding Oregon values,&#8221; Tina Kotek <a href="https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/GOV/Posts/Post/governor-kotek-issues-statement-in-response-to-trump-administration’s-threat-to-take-away-funds-from-oregon-students" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Thursday. &#8220;Making sure every child has the opportunity to meet their future promise with a strong public education is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of government and one of my top priorities as Governor.&#8221;
That&#8217;s ironic. Because, under Kotek&#8217;s leadership, Oregon&#8217;s students are struggling to get by.
Nearly half of Oregon fourth graders scored below &#8220;basic&#8221; levels in reading, meaning they <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/reading-scores-fall-to-new-low-on-naep-fueled-by-declines-for-struggling-students/2025/01#:~:text=Studies%20have%20shown%20that%20scoring,purpose%20of%20an%20informational%20text." target="_blank" rel="noopener">lack</a> important reading comprehension skills like being able to determine the main idea of a text. In math, about a third of fourth graders scored below basic, <a href="https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nations-report-card-decline-in-reading-progress-in-math.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">meaning</a> they likely struggle with simple concepts like odd numbers.
Eighth graders&#8217; scores were just as concerning, with nearly half (45%) <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024219OR8.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">scoring</a> below basic in math, and over a third (35%) <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024220OR8.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">scoring</a> below basic in reading.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a bold strategy, Cotton,&#8221; school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Let&#8217;s see if it works out for them.&#8221;
&#8220;Oregon should lose all federal funding if they want to indoctrinate kids with DEI Marxism. Tax dollars shouldn&#8217;t prop up divisive ideologies that pit students against each other and their country,&#8221; DeAngelis told The Daily Wire.
That&#8217;s exactly what the Trump administration says it will do if Oregon doesn&#8217;t comply with its DEI ban. The Department of Education <a href="https://www.ed.gov/media/document/reminder-of-legal-obligations-undertaken-exchange-receiving-federal-financial-assistance-and-request-certification-under-title-vi-and-sffa-v-harvard-april-3">informed</a> states earlier this month that &#8220;The continued use of illegal DEI practices may subject the individual or entity using such practices to serious consequences,&#8221; including &#8220;eliminating federal funding.&#8221;
But despite that threat, Oregon Democrats are, in DeAngelis&#8217;s words, &#8220;doubling down on failure.&#8221; To him, it&#8217;s because they &#8220;see the school system as a tool to control the minds of other people&#8217;s children as opposed to an education initiative.&#8221;
&#8220;Oregon Democrats are all-in on indoctrinating kids with their socialist worldview,&#8221; DeAngelis said. &#8220;Telling kids that they&#8217;re going to be failures based on their immutable characteristics holds them down.&#8221;
&#8220;This latest stunt proves their anti-parent agenda is even more about control than money,&#8221; he added. &#8220;These control freaks need to do their job, stay in their lane, and stick to the basics so kids can get an education.&#8221;
The governor&#8217;s office did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress — called &#8220;the Nation&#8217;s Report Card&#8221; — Oregon fourth graders <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024219OR4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ranked</a> second-worst in the country in math, tying with five other states, and third-worst in <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024220OR4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reading</a>, along with 11 other states.
But as scores plummeted over the last decade, Oregon schools did not drill down on phonics or multiplication tables. Instead, they focused on flashy, progressive wish-list items.
After the coronavirus pandemic, Portland-area parents <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/parents-apoplectic-after-oregon-school-board-goes-virtual-amid-gender-ideology-concerns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">erupted</a> at school board meetings over schools&#8217; embrace of gender ideology, including the availability of alleged “pornographic” books in school libraries, and subpar academic performance.
In Portland, the teachers&#8217; union decided in 2023 that they would take gender identity and race into account before disciplining students, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/portland-teachers-will-take-gender-identity-race-into-account-before-disciplining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the union&#8217;s collective bargaining agreement. After the pandemic, Portland teachers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/portland-teachers-will-take-gender-identity-race-into-account-before-disciplining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> they were seeing “more students in crisis” with mental health issues, which can lead to fights.
In 2022, Oregon <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/standards/science/Documents/K-12%20%20Oregon%20Science%20Standards%20with%20Guidance.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">updated</a> its science standards to teach that humans cause climate change.
Defending Education, a group that fights indoctrination in public schools, said Oregon should be focused on improving its dismal test scores.
&#8220;Oregon&#8217;s education leaders should be hanging their heads in shame,&#8221; Sarah Parshall Perry, the group&#8217;s vice president, told The Daily Wire.
&#8220;Instead, they&#8217;ve doubled down on divisive and racially discriminatory DEI programs that have done nothing to boost educational outcomes,&#8221; she said. &#8220;That&#8217;s not only a violation of federal law, it&#8217;s foolhardy and misguided. And the students of Oregon deserve better. They deserve an education focused on the academic fundamentals the state has so clearly failed to deliver.”
Jeanette Schade, a former Oregon teacher who ran for school board in the Portland area in 2021, blamed the state&#8217;s failing school system on a laundry list of problems, including &#8220;dumbed-down&#8221; teacher education programs.
&#8220;Teachers are being indoctrinated in their teacher education programs,&#8221; Schade told The Daily Wire, saying those teachers go on to expose children to DEI, Critical Race Theory, and sex education that includes gender ideology.
Schade also noted that Oregon scrapped its graduation requirements during the pandemic and never went back.
In 2021, Oregon <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/oregon-extends-pandemic-pause-on-reading-writing-math-proficiency-high-school-graduation-requirement" target="_blank" rel="noopener">made</a> the controversial move to stop requiring high schoolers to pass an &#8220;essential skills&#8221; standardized test <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/essentialskills/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showing</a> basic proficiency in reading, writing, and math in order to receive their diploma.
Advocates for pausing the graduation requirement argued that the test put minority students at a disadvantage. Now, critics simply point to the sinking test scores.
<div dir="auto">
&#8220;DEI is the exact opposite of what the words mean,&#8221; Schade said. &#8220;Diversity means uniformity. Equity means not equal or helpful. And inclusive means exclude.&#8221;
</div>

Oregon Gubernatorial Candidate Tina Kotek Cast Her Ballot In Portland

As Oregon Defies Trump On DEI In Schools, Its Students Are Falling Through The Cracks

Oregon Is Doubling Down On DEI In The Classroom. It Has Some Of The Country's Worst Schools.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Oregon

A Florida teacher has been fired for using a student&#8217;s preferred name without the consent of the student&#8217;s parents.
Melissa Calhoun, a teacher at Satellite High School near Cape Canaveral, will not have her contract renewed for next school year after she called a student by a preferred name without getting a form signed by the parents, the district said.
Calhoun is thought to be the first teacher fired over Florida&#8217;s new law requiring teachers to obtain parental consent before referring to students by a different name than their legal one. This is the second school year the law has been in effect.
The student&#8217;s parent reportedly alerted Brevard Public Schools that Calhoun was calling the student by a different name.
Members of the community said this case was related to the student&#8217;s transgender-identifying identity.
&#8220;BPS supports parents’ rights to be the primary decision-makers in their children’s lives, and Florida law affirms their right to be informed,&#8221; Brevard Public Schools Spokesperson Janet Murnaghan <a href="https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/10/florida-high-school-teacher-calls-student-by-preferred-name-loses-job/83008163007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement.
&#8220;At BPS our focus is on education — teachers are here to teach and support students academically,&#8221; Murnaghan said. &#8220;Our job is to work in partnership with parents and guardians to ensure student success.&#8221;
Calhoun allegedly said she &#8220;knowingly did not comply with state statute.&#8221;
The district issued her a letter of reprimand and ultimately decided not to renew her contract for the fall because the state would be reviewing her teaching credentials since she had violated state law. Calhoun will finish out the school year, and then her contract expires in May.
The situation has sparked a strong response in the community, with some community members protesting the teacher&#8217;s firing at a school board meeting on Tuesday.
Calhoun has worked for the district for over a decade, since 2013, and she taught AP Literature, her LinkedIn <a href="https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/10/florida-high-school-teacher-calls-student-by-preferred-name-loses-job/83008163007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">indicated</a>.
The federal government has taken a similar stand to Florida on gender ideology in public schools.
Shortly after he took office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to pull federal funding from public school districts that promote gender ideology.
Gender ideology became a hot button issue during the presidential election last year. Parents across the country sounded the alarm on children going by different names and pronouns in school behind families&#8217; backs, supported by teachers and school staff.
A 2023 poll <a href="https://defendinged.org/press-releases/parents-defending-education-poll-71-of-voters-support-legislation-requiring-schools-to-inform-parents-if-their-child-wants-to-change-their-gender-identity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showed</a> that 71% of voters supported schools being legally required to inform parents when a student wants to change their gender identity.

US-POLITICS-WYOMING-LGBTQ-DISCRIMINATION

Florida Teacher Fired For Using Student’s Preferred Name Behind Parents’ Backs

Amid all the talk about tariffs with China, and how they steal America&#8217;s intellectual property and establish all kinds of trade barriers with this country, you might have missed this story. It&#8217;s not about economics, but at the same time, it tells you a lot about what authoritarian countries like China fear the most.
Beginning on May 1, China will accelerate its crackdown on religion, and Christianity in particular. Foreign missionaries will be banned from preaching unless they obtain formal approval from the government.
According to Chinese <a href="https://www.persecution.org/2025/04/04/china-moves-to-formally-ban-missionary-activity/">state media</a>, the goal of the new regulation is to protect &#8220;national security&#8221; and &#8220;political stability&#8221; by forcing people to attend official, state-run religious services with pre-approved messaging. Additionally, Chinese state media has recently boasted about the fact that religious groups — which the government calls &#8220;cult organizations&#8221; — have been increasingly shut down in China. At this point, one of the fastest ways to disappear in China is to deliver a sermon that upsets the ruling party.
Of course, this is the exact opposite of the result we were promised when the United States normalized free trade with China several decades ago. As Bill Clinton put it, “Membership in the W.T.O. will not create a free society in China overnight or guarantee that China will play by global rules. &#8230; But over time, I believe it will move China faster and further in the right direction.”
That hasn&#8217;t happened. Instead, China is now aggressively moving to crush Christians, for the simple reason that Christians believe in a higher power than their government. We have not introduced Western norms to China. We have not exported our values to them. Instead, despite the promises of free trade, China has successfully exported its totalitarian impulses to the West. One by one, Western countries are adopting anti-Christian crackdowns, to the point that they&#8217;re making it illegal for Christians to practice their faith.
What&#8217;s happening right now in New South Wales, which is a state on the east coast of Australia, makes this very clear. Earlier this month, something called the &#8220;Conversion Practices Ban Act of 2024&#8221; became law in New South Wales. This law, by its own terms, allows the authorities to arrest Christians for praying. That is not an exaggeration or an overstatement. It&#8217;s actually <a href="https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-2024-019">written</a> into the legislation. From <a href="https://antidiscrimination.nsw.gov.au/discrimination/conversion-practices/frequently-asked-questions.html#What4">the government</a> of New South Wales: &#8220;Praying with or over a person with the intent to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity is unlawful. It is unlawful even if that person has asked you to pray for them to be able to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity.&#8221;
This again is in Australia, a western nation. Not China. Praying with someone who wants you to pray with them could land you in jail. That&#8217;s happening right now, in a supposed western democracy.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1573-member-exclusive?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
In other words, if someone wants to pray to God so that he can overcome his gender dysphoria — a condition that, by definition, causes significant mental distress — then his pastor cannot pray with him. In fact, his own family members cannot pray with him. If the police discover that any unapproved prayers have been occurring, they can kick down the doors of the church, or the family home, and haul away the violators. And then they&#8217;ll spend up to five years in prison for their crimes against the state: The crime of praying.
Just to emphasize this point, the government of New South Wales published the single most Orwellian video you&#8217;ll ever see. No matter how many times you&#8217;ve heard the word &#8220;Orwellian,&#8221; believe me, this qualifies. This is the government&#8217;s attempt to intimidate the millions of people who live in New South Wales, with their new law that bans prayer. 
Here&#8217;s how the video begins:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 prayer can be deeply harmful" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L09nr4CszAY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
First of all, by the terms of this legislation, every single gender activist in Australia is a criminal. They all believe, without exception, that you can choose to be &#8220;LGBTQA&#8221; (which is apparently the acronym now). There&#8217;s no other way to explain people who ping-pong between genders at will, or people who de-transition. In fact the concept of “fluidity” is now dogma in the LGBT religion. Fluidity — sexual fluidity, gender fluidity — means that you can change at will from one sexuality or gender to another. If someone identifies as a Bi-gender Toasterkin, and then a few weeks later decides he&#8217;s really a Demi-gender, half-humanoid alpaca, or whatever, then at some point, we can conclude that this person made a choice to identify in some arbitrary way. And every step of the way, gender activists — according to the tenets of their ideology — have no choice but to affirm everything. This is one of the reasons trans activists keep losing in court, by the way. They have to admit that, under their logic, so-called &#8220;Trans people&#8221; can choose, at any time, to be trans or not trans. And therefore, because &#8220;trans status&#8221; is malleable — again, malleable by definition, by THEIR definition —  they&#8217;re not entitled to civil rights protections, which only apply to immutable, unchanging traits.
As the video continues, things become even more dystopian.
There&#8217;s this line for example: &#8220;All people should feel welcome and valued and be able to live authentically and with PRIDE.&#8221; 
Yes, all people — every single one of them — should feel welcome and valued. They should all be able to &#8220;live authentically.&#8221; But this promise apparently does not apply to Christians who believe (as all of humanity did until 15 minutes ago) that men are men and women are women. Those Christians do not have the right to live authentically or &#8220;feel welcomed.&#8221; Instead, they can go straight to prison. Here&#8217;s more of the video, because again, as it goes along, things get worse and worse:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 introducing law" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/INw4m7qR-CI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This is where they casually establish that &#8220;family members&#8221; — including a mother and father — can be incarcerated if they don&#8217;t affirm their child&#8217;s imagined gender identity. And of course they do it with a sing-songy, HR lady reading the voiceover. Scratch an HR lady and you will find a power-mad despot, every single time.
We&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conversion-therapy-bans-are-an-outrageous-attack-on-free-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked</a> about so-called &#8220;conversion therapy&#8221; before, and how efforts to ban the practice are both unconstitutional and incoherent. In this country, the Supreme Court is about to hear a case concerning whether Colorado&#8217;s ban on conversion therapy violates the First Amendment. The problem is that bans on &#8220;conversion therapy,&#8221; in every case, are premised on the idea that sexual orientation cannot be changed. But in the same breath, the government of New South Wales will tell you that sex is extremely changeable. In fact, you can go to the doctor and change it tomorrow. See the problem? If you&#8217;re changing your sex, then you&#8217;re also changing your sexual orientation, under their logic. A man who supposedly &#8220;becomes&#8221; a woman, but retains his attraction to men, would become a lesbian, in their view. This is the logical problem with these conversion therapy bans that they simply have no answer for. It&#8217;s like dividing by zero. 
But now they&#8217;re using this phony logic to justify throwing parents and priests in prison. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 report , can lead to prison" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cq0cqMeI-IY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The scope of this law is so broad that you could probably claim I&#8217;m violating it, if my show is broadcast in New South Wales. They want Australians to snitch on each other if they get a whiff of anyone who dares to suggest that gender ideology isn&#8217;t real. In a lot of ways, it&#8217;s like the COVID lockdowns all over again. You might remember that, at the height of the &#8220;pandemic,&#8221; there was a nationwide manhunt in Australia when some guy sneezed in an empty elevator without a mask on. Now they&#8217;re going to have manhunts over unauthorized prayers.
If you don&#8217;t believe that, consider what just happened a few weeks ago to Billboard Chris. He was peacefully standing in a market in Brisbane, wearing a sign that expressed his opposition to the castration of children in the name of gender ideology. He only spoke to people who spoke to him first. He didn&#8217;t obstruct anyone&#8217;s movement or anything like that. People were walking around him the whole time. There&#8217;s no dispute about any of this; it&#8217;s all on video. Nevertheless, Brisbane police arrested Billboard Chris, on camera. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 billboard chris" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MUv1IlzyT-M?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
They arrested him for standing in a public place with a sign. There&#8217;s no doubt that, if the sign had been pro-gay marriage or whatever, then none of this would have happened. If you watch the full video, the police can&#8217;t name a single other instance where they&#8217;ve jailed someone for peacefully protesting at that location. But Billboard Chris blasphemed Australia&#8217;s state religion, so they took him away in handcuffs. And now they&#8217;re planning to do the same thing to the clergy.
The other day, an Australian commentator named Evelyn Rae outlined exactly what&#8217;s happening here. Here was her assessment, which is worth playing — not only because she&#8217;s right, but also because it&#8217;s good to know that Australia hasn&#8217;t been completely captured yet. Here it is:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 Evelyn Rae On China" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2--leJmbBx4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Everything Evelyn Rae just said also applies to many other countries. This is not a problem that&#8217;s limited to Australia. 
Here&#8217;s a <a href="https://reason.com/2024/10/17/british-man-convicted-of-criminal-charges-for-praying-silently-near-abortion-clinic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report from Reason</a> late last year, for example. This is the kind of story that JD Vance mentioned in his recent address to European leaders.
<blockquote>A British man was convicted of criminal charges for praying silently near an abortion clinic. The man, Adam Smith-Connor, did not attempt to harass, intimidate, or interact in any way with those entering the clinic. Instead, he wordlessly prayed with his head bowed slightly. He wasn&#8217;t even on clinic property—he was outside the sightline of the clinic itself. &#8230; As a result, Smith-Connor was questioned by police and later charged with violating a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO), a broad censorship order enabled by the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. Under this law, local authorities can obtain special status for some public places, allowing them to ban a huge range of conduct. In the name of limiting &#8216;anti-social behavior.&#8217;</blockquote>
Yes, prayer is considered &#8220;anti-social behavior&#8221; in England. These kinds of arrests are happening because — from Britain to Colorado to Canada to Australia to China — authoritarians in government detest any challenge to their authority. These government officials know that they&#8217;re not impressive people. Australia&#8217;s prime minister has barely held a real job in his life. Most of the country is represented by people like this. They&#8217;re petrified that their subjects might worship someone other than themselves. As a result, they&#8217;re now throwing Christians in prison for practicing their faith. This trend has accelerated in China, and it&#8217;s now spreading throughout the West. Christians are being forcibly silenced, at scale. They are being vilified and incarcerated for what they believe.
I began by saying this isn&#8217;t a monologue about economics or trade wars. That&#8217;s true. But as we consider how we&#8217;ll work with these countries in the future — as we negotiate trade deals and so on — the assaults on Christians simply cannot be ignored. These attacks are as unlawful and immoral as they are systematic. They are becoming a fundamental part of the culture of both our allies and our adversaries. For the benefit of billions of Christians, and to preserve basic constitutional rights like the freedom of speech, this coordinated assault on religion must end before it progresses any further.

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