Rebecca Bendheim, the author of a YA book for teen readers, posted on social media about deliberately designing the cover art to hide the book’s theme from parents while simultaneously advertising it to children.
“When Penguin [Random House] asked me what I wanted for my cover, I said I wanted it to be gay enough for queer kids and teens to clock it, but for homophobic parents to just think it’s a friendship story,” the author and middle school teacher bragged on Instagram.
The book in question is called “When You’re Brave Enough” and has a publication date of April 7, 2026. According to the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/774613/when-youre-brave-enough-by-rebecca-bendheim/">publisher</a>, it is recommended for children ages 10 &#8211; 14.
“So I said, no holding hands, make my character look gay…” She went on to point out the subtle details she and the cover artist agreed on, including flowers growing between the pair to represent a crush that’s “growing.”
“So what do you think? Would you guess this was a queer book?” Bendheim asked her followers.
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In a follow-up video, the author shows her book cover to random people on the street to see if they can guess what it’s about.
“Shoutout to the people who answered and to librarians who help kids and teens find subtle queer books if they need them,” she <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVuH_7CDZfj/">wrote</a> in the caption. “I’m a firm believer that positive representation saves lives!! Would you be able to tell?”
Her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/good-morning-america-book-pick-for-teens-features-rape-threesomes-necrophilia">comments</a> come just after another YA book, “Sibylline” by Melissa de la Cruz, made headlines for including graphic sex scenes of necrophilia, threesomes, and rape. “Sibylline” is being promoted as a &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; Book Club selection in their Young Adult category.
This has been a hot topic in the publishing community recently. There was a discussion about the importance of “representation” and a lot of hand-wringing over so-called book bans during a SXSW EDU panel on March 11. The panel was called, “Beyond Bans: Defending LGBTQ+ Stories and Literary Freedom.”
“The worst thing we could possibly do is let that fear stop us from continuing to make art,” author Casey McQuiston <a href="https://people.com/lgbtq-authors-targeted-by-book-bans-exclusive-11925852">said</a> at the time, per People. “And not only to make art, but to go out into public libraries to visit, to go out into schools.”
McQuiston’s author page describes her as a “bestselling author of queer romantic comedies.” The most famous of these, “Red, White, &amp; Royal Blue,” is for adults, but she also wrote the YA romantic mystery, “I Kissed Shara Wheeler.”

Book with bookmark and rainbow ribbon of LGBT pride.

Author Proudly Says She Made Book Cover Gay Enough For Kids But Invisible To Parents

Books

Children's Books

Entertainment

LGBTQ

Social Issues

U.S.

Just before Pixar celebrated their first big win of the year at the box office with “Hoppers,” Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter explained why the company decided to cut the gay storyline in the original film “Elio” last year.
“Hoppers” is being lauded because it doesn’t push any inkling of LGBT themes that have become quite common in animated films recently. “Elio,” meanwhile, flirted with the idea, and it was widely considered to be a box office flop.
The original narrative included tidbits about former director Adrian Molina’s experience growing up gay, as <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/pixar-disney-franchises-pete-docter-80c57f9d">reported by</a> The Wall Street Journal. But Docter said the studio opted to change it up because parents weren’t necessarily ready to have those discussions with their young children watching the film.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” the Pixar exec said. “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”
The film tells the tale of an 11-year-old boy, Elio, who bonds with aliens. The outlet noted that the original storyline showed Elio raising a child in the future with a same sex partner.
Upon its release, The Hollywood Reporter <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/elio-pixar-america-ferrera-director-queer-2-1236301860/">described</a> Elio as a “queer-coded character” whose “characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process.”
LGBT activists who worked on the film blamed these edits for its poor performance. “Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” one former Pixar artist told THR. “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.” Another said the final character version was “generic.”
Meanwhile, there was speculation that “Elio” never took off because those “queer coded” themes were leaked to the media and parents were avoiding it.
After being understood as a hitmaker for years with beloved projects such as the “Toy Story” franchise beginning in 1995, “Monsters Inc” (2001), “Finding Nemo” (2003), “The Incredibles” (2004), “Up” (2009), “Inside Out,” (2015), and a slew of others, Pixar, which was acquired by Disney in 2006, seemed to lose its way by going too niche. It produced sequels to some of its most popular titles, but also came up with out-of-the-box concepts like the controversial “Turning Red” (2022), a movie about puberty.
Then there was that whole “Lightyear” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gay-kiss-included-woke-toy-story-spinoff-lightyear-struggles-at-box-office">same sex kiss fiasco</a> in 2022, which proved that even Pixar films based on treasured IP weren’t guaranteed to hit, especially if they included topics parents didn’t want their kids to see.

Elio

Pixar Exec Explains Why Studio Killed Gay Storyline In Animated Children’s Film

Animation

Children

Disney

Movies

Pixar

An Atlanta-based progressive church is offering what it calls “glitter ashes” for Ash Wednesday this year, a ritual it says is meant to show remorse for “Christian cruelty to our LGBTQ siblings” and affirm LGBT identity, marking yet another instance of activist politics supplanting historic Christian belief in Protestant traditions.
According to The Church at Ponce and Highland’s <a href="https://www.churchatponceandhighland.org">website</a>, congregants attending its Ash Wednesday service will be offered a choice between traditional ashes and ashes mixed with purple glitter. The latter, the church explains, are intended to symbolize regret for the Church’s historic moral teaching and to encourage LGBT individuals.
“Glitter ashes show remorse at straight Christian cruelty to our LGBTQ siblings,” the church states. “For LGBT people, they are a reminder that we have but one life, and we should shine — not hide.”
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For Ash Wednesday, one progressive church is offering &#8220;glitter ashes,&#8221; which is ash mixed with purple glitter, and which &#8220;straight Christians&#8221; can don as a sign of &#8220;remorse&#8230;to our LGBTQ siblings.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/1qX7kgmB57">pic.twitter.com/1qX7kgmB57</a>
— Protestia (@Protestia) <a href="https://twitter.com/Protestia/status/2021562193964400931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 11, 2026</a></blockquote>
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In Christian tradition, however, ashes serve a very different purpose. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a penitential season ordered toward Good Friday and Easter. The ashes, applied in the shape of a cross, function as a memento mori, a reminder of human mortality, sin, and the need for repentance: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The Church at Ponce and Highland openly rejects that framework. “Christianity has gotten off track,” the website declares. “It’s time to get back to the life and teachings of Jesus.” The church describes itself as “diverse, pro-LGBTQ, member-led, inclusive,” and explicitly states that it requires no shared statement of faith. Instead, the church says it unites around “common practices,” which include encouraging doubt over defined doctrine, rejecting eternal punishment, and downplaying the salvific significance of Christ’s death.
“We emphasize Jesus’s love and how it can free us to love more (rather than only avoiding punishment),” the site reads. “Jesus’s life and teachings instead of focusing only on his death.”
The church further claims that historic Christianity was corrupted by “empires,” blaming traditional belief for colonialism, slavery, violence, and oppression. Traditional Christianity, it argues, emphasized “uniformity, power, violence, and eternal punishment,” while the church presents itself as part of an “alternate tradition” rooted in liberation, solidarity with the marginalized, and identity-based affirmation. While the church loosely associates itself with the Baptist denomination, it is ostensibly independent since it eschews any affiliation with the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the dominant governing body of the denomination. The church was a member of the Convention until 2010— it left over the SBC&#8217;s policy of denying female ordination.
Within that framework, it makes sense then that Ash Wednesday is no longer oriented toward repentance before God but toward moral apology directed to the world. The church makes that shift explicit in its description of the service. “We will have both traditional and glitter ashes available,” the site states. “Glitter ashes show remorse at Christian cruelty to our LGBTQ siblings as well as our love and affirmation for LGBTQ people.”
Conspicuously absent from the church’s description is any reference to sin, divine judgment, or the resurrection toward which Lent is traditionally ordered. Rather than calling believers to repentance, the ritual is reframed as a symbolic acknowledgment of harm and a declaration of ideological alignment.
The result is a service that retains Christian imagery while redefining its meaning. Ashes, long a sign of penitence and mortality, are repurposed as a political statement. The language of repentance is redirected away from God and toward contemporary social causes.
By offering glitter ashes alongside traditional ones, The Church at Ponce and Highland presents two competing visions of what Ash Wednesday is meant to signify. One points toward repentance and redemption. The other toward affirmation and apology. Only one has grounding in the traditional observance the ritual was designed to mark, and in the Christian theology it was meant to serve.

Bible On Top Of Rainbow Flag

‘Glitter Ashes’ Offered At Progressive Church To ‘Show Remorse … To Our LGBTQ Siblings’

Politics

Religion

All the Hollywood celebrities are out and showing their absolute rage — but not at the Iranian government mowing people down in the streets.
As cataclysmic events take place in Iran, with apparently hundreds or thousands of protesters being shot to death, a number that has even been estimated to be 10,000, it’s good to know the folks in Hollywood have their priorities straight. 
The Golden Globes were held on Sunday night, providing an opportunity for members of the Hollywood contingent — who prize their pseudo-morality over everyone else&#8217;s — to make a stand.
After all, they&#8217;ve made stands on issues as far back as Tibet in the 1990s (which they conveniently have now forgotten all about).
Remember when last year, a bunch of Hollywood celebrities pranced around like fools, claiming that a genocide that was not happening was, in fact, happening, and criticized the State of Israel for defending its own existence. 
This year, they have a different cause because, hey, new day, new cause. Now, what could that cause be?
The cause of the Iranian people who are out in the streets risking their own deaths to defy the mullahs? The people of Iran, many of whom are secular and westernized in their attitudes toward the state? Are those the people toward whom Hollywood directs all of its sympathies? Are they sparing a moment for those people? 
Of course not. 
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Hollywood put on a show at the Golden Globes, and everything was about ICE and LGBTQ and Bari Weiss taking over CBS, because, you see, these are the real threats. 
According to people in Hollywood, you should have your eyes focused like a laser beam on the predations of ICEt enforcing the law with regard to illegal immigration and deporting people for welfare fraud.
You should have your eyes focused like a laser beam on Bari Weiss taking over CBS News and preventing it from its long history of inaccurately reporting the news. 
You should be focused like a laser beam on the terrible predations that affect LGBTQ+- people all over the United States.
It is an act of bravery to stand up at the Golden Globes and virtue signal on behalf of the LGBTQ+- community.
So last night, a bunch of celebs showed up and decided — as our Moral Guideposts, the lodestars of our civilization — that the chief things you need to worry about as an American are ICE, LGBTQ+-, and Bari Weiss.
Hostess Nikki Glaser began the evening by going after the most deserving target, who deserved her absolute rage: Bari Weiss and CBS News.
Mark Ruffalo showed up and said it was hard to pretend anymore that we don&#8217;t live in a “dictatorship.”
Thus saith the man who wears a tux at the Golden Globes and gets paid millions of dollars to play the same character that he has played in every other miniseries and movie for the last two decades.
“We have a woman, Renee Good, was murdered in our streets of America today, and we got literally stormtroopers running around terrorizing. And as much as I love all this, I can&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t know if I can pretend like this crazy stuff isn&#8217;t happening. It&#8217;s so hard to pretend anymore,” he complained.
It&#8217;s hard for him to pretend? He’s an actor.
This is a person who spent the last two years basically standing on behalf of terrorist groups in the Middle East. But it&#8217;s very hard for him to pretend that there aren&#8217;t “stormtroopers” wandering the streets.
You know what&#8217;s cool about being able to say that sort of thing? There aren&#8217;t stormtroopers wandering the streets — because throughout history, when there were stormtroopers wandering the streets, celebrities didn&#8217;t get to go on camera and talk about how there were stormtroopers wandering the streets.
In fact, there are many places on Earth where the stormtroopers do wander the streets. For example, Iran, where there are stormtroopers shooting people in the head for protesting.
Did Ruffalo have a word for them?
Nope. He had a little pin that read, “Be Good,” referencing Renee Good.
Hollywood always seems to pick the side that opposes law enforcement or opposes the West.
“The guy’s a convicted felon or convicted rapist. He&#8217;s a pedophile,” Ruffalo said of President Trump. “He&#8217;s the worst human being. If we&#8217;re relying on this guy&#8217;s morality for the most powerful country in the world, then we&#8217;re all in a lot of trouble. So this is for her. This is for the people in the United States who are terrorized and scared today. I know I&#8217;m one of them. I love this country. And what I&#8217;m seeing here happening is not America.”
He slandered the president of the United States as a pedophile, called him the worst person in the world, for, among other things, extraditing Nicolás Maduro — a Marxist dictator responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of people and the exile of literally millions of people. That, to Mark Ruffalo, is a big moral problem.
Not a word to spare for the millions marching in the streets in Iran right now, thousands of whom are getting mowed down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Ariana Grande also showed up wearing her ICE Out pin, the new hot thing in Hollywood.
Frankly, any amount of weight added to her garment puts her at risk of falling over.
Wanda Sykes showed up to talk about LGBTQ+-, saying, “You know, there&#8217;s some people pissed off that a queer black woman is up here doing the job of two mediocre white guys.”
This is where Hollywood puts its priorities. There are people on earth literally putting their lives at risk, their bodies on the line for their own freedom.
And Hollywood has nothing to say to them. Nothing.
Are you seeing protests on campuses in favor of the Iranian people right now? Have you seen a single protest?
You have not.
Have you seen a single mass protest by all of these international-law-loving, human rights-adoring left-wingers, the Zohran Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party, in favor of the protesters in Iran, who simply want their horrifying theocratic regime gone?
You have not.
Have you seen a single comment from Democrats, beyond a kind of “thoughts and prayers?”
You have not.
Have you seen protests in the streets?
You have not.
Have you seen calls for material aid?
You have not.
It’s sad-sack nonsense, because there are people in the world who are doing something courageous and incredible right now.
And Hollywood and the Left are gladly looking the other way.

CBS’s Coverage of the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards – Arrivals

Hollywood Attacks ICE, Ignores Slaughter In Iran

Bari Weiss

Ben Shapiro

CBS News

Golden Globes

Hollywood

Iran

Leftists

Mark Ruffalo

Minneapolis

Minnesota

Opinion

Wanda Sykes

The Duffer brothers, creators of the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things,” have addressed the backlash to a main character’s coming out scene.
“The coming out scene is something we’ve been building to for nine years now. It was a really important scene for us, and a really important scene for [actor Noah Schnapp] — not just from a thematic point of view, but also a narrative point of view,” Ross Duffer <a href="https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/stranger-things-finale-is-eleven-alive-vecna-killed-rock-spinoff-1236621528/">told</a> Variety in an interview published Thursday.
He added, “This show has always been about our characters overcoming evil, and in order to overcome this evil, Vecna, in so many ways, represents all the dark thoughts and the evil of society. And for our characters to overcome that, it really becomes about embracing themselves, and then also embracing one another and coming together.”
Fans were disappointed by the penultimate episode of the series, giving it the lowest rating out of all episodes and trashing it on social media, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stranger-things-episode-gets-record-worst-rating-for-series-woke-ruins-everything">reported</a>.
“Woke ruins EVERYTHING,” one X reaction said. “Netflix decided to RUIN their most popular show of all-time, Stranger Things, by focusing their final season on Will coming out as a homosexual, promoting the propaganda that Will’s superpowers are because he’s &#8217;embraced his sexuality&#8217; &amp; the villain telling Will that his friends won’t like him if they find out he likes dudes.”
The Duffer brothers insist that Will’s coming out was an essential part of the show.
Matt Duffer called it “the final step in Will’s journey” and noted he was “surprised” by the backlash since he insists the show has been building up to this all along.
“Volume 1 is really about self-acceptance, right? I mean, that’s sort of step one,” he said. “And then step two is Will is talking to Robin — it’s something that he wants to do. He’s trying to figure out how to come out, and he knows that he needs to do that, and that that’s the final step for him. And he finds the courage to be able to do it. And it’s really the ultimate f*** you to Vecna. That was the intention.”
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“We’re proud of the episode, and we’re proud of the scene, and proud of Noah, who gave a really brave, very vulnerable performance,” Ross told the outlet.
Schnapp had an emotional reaction to the scene he revealed during an interview with Netflix&#8217;s Tudum.
“I was really nervous to see how [the Duffer Brothers] would write it, because it was obviously so important for me. And I remember when they sent out the script for Episode 7 for that scene. I read it alone in my room, and I was crying, and it really resonated with me,” the actor said of his character coming out.
“I hope it touches everyone — not just queer people — and makes them feel emboldened and empowered to be who they are and be proud of who they are,” he told Tudum. “That goes back to the heart of our show: What makes you unique is your superpower.”

Duffer Brothers

‘Stranger Things’ Creators Defend Controversial Coming Out Scene: ‘The Ultimate F*** You’ To Villain

Netflix

Stranger Things

Television

A survey distributed by the government of New Mexico asked high school students whether they identify as “two-spirit” or transgender, drawing concerns from parents. 
The 2025 New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey <a href="https://youthrisk.org/data-collection/questionnaires/">asked</a> middle and high school students deeply personal questions about their sexual preferences, drug use, and whether they had ever had suicidal thoughts. The survey is the result of a partnership between the state’s Public Education Department and the Department of Health, with the stated goal of assessing “risk behaviors” among students. 
Some of the questions on both the middle and high school surveys this year raised eyebrows. The survey was <a href="https://defendinged.org/incidents/new-mexico-state-survey-asks-students-about-sexual-orientation-transgender-status/">flagged</a> by Defending Education, an organization that works to get politics out of the classroom. Parents are allowed to opt their kids out of the survey, but advocates say the questions expose children to mature themes that would be better introduced at home. 
On the high school survey, students were asked if they described themselves as “heterosexual (straight),” “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual,” “I describe my sexual identity some other way,” “I am not sure about my sexual identity (questioning),” and “I do not know what this question is asking.” 
Another question said, “Some people describe themselves as transgender, two-spirit, or non-binary when their sex at birth does not match the way they think or feel about their gender. Do you consider yourself transgender, two-spirit, or non-binary?”
&#8220;Two-spirit&#8221; is a supposed term used by LGBT activists to describe American Indians who identify as both male and female. Though the term seems to imply ancient origins, it was <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/what-two-spirit-part-one-origins#:~:text=Against%20this%20backdrop%2C%20Myra%20Laramee,or%20%E2%80%9CTwo%E2%80%90Spirit.%E2%80%9D">coined</a> by Myra Laramee, an LGBT activist, in 1990.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1004243" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1440" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/MixCollage-21-Nov-2025-01-17-PM-2341-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Right now, DailyWire+ annual memberships are fifty percent off during our Black Friday sale. Join now at <a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible c-link--underline" href="http://dailywire.com/blackfriday" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="http://dailywire.com/blackfriday" data-sk="tooltip_parent">dailywire.com/blackfriday</a>.
Other questions on the topic of sexuality ask the students how old they were when first having sex (with the option starting at age 11 and younger), how many people they have had sex with, if condoms were used during sex, what kind of birth control they used when last having sex with an &#8220;opposite sex partner,” and if they have had sex with males or females or both. 
Middle schoolers were also asked if they had had sex before and what their sexual orientation was. They were given options of straight, gay, bisexual, or other. 
Other questions that raised concerns from parents focused on suicide. Questions on this included if they had ever considered committing suicide and if they had ever made a plan to commit suicide.
Erika Sanzi, Defending Education&#8217;s senior director of communications, said the questions were very troubling. 
“All 11-year-olds should not have to answer questions about their gender identity, sexuality, or suicidal ideation,” Sanzi told The Daily Wire. “As of now, parents can opt out. Perhaps it&#8217;s time to make these surveys opt-in instead. There really is no justification for asking asymptomatic children if they&#8217;ve ever made a suicide plan — that&#8217;s a scary question and it has no place in a school classroom.&#8221;
The New Mexico Youth Risk and Resilience Survey is linked to the CDC’s Youth Risk Surveillance System. The Trump administration made changes to that system, but a judge blocked those changes. As a result, the administration has a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/index.html">disclaimer</a> posted on the website. 
“Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website to its version as of 12:00 AM on January 29, 2025. Information on this page may be modified and/or removed in the future subject to the terms of the court’s order and implemented consistent with applicable law,” the web notice says. “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from truth.” 
“The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology due to the harms and divisiveness it causes. This page does not reflect reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it,” the notice adds. 
New Mexico&#8217;s survey is administered every other year, and parents are given an opportunity to opt their kids out. Answers to the questions are supposed to be anonymous, administrators say.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to <a href="http://speakingofsuicide.com/resources" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources</a> for a list of additional resources.

US-POLITICS-SOCIETY-HOLIDAY-LGBTQ+-DEMONSTRATION

New Mexico Government Survey Asks Middle And High School Students If They Are ‘Two-Spirit’

New Mexico Government Asks Students If They Are ‘Two-Spirit’

Education

New Mexico

Transgender

If you didn&#8217;t see Tucker Carlson&#8217;s recent segment on Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old man who nearly assassinated Donald Trump live on national television during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year, there are a few important revelations you should know about.
The first revelation — which isn&#8217;t remotely controversial — is that the FBI has clearly been hiding relevant information about Thomas Crooks from the general public. And by itself, that&#8217;s a national scandal that justifies completely gutting the FBI, from the highest levels on down. Even if you firmly believe that Thomas Crooks was a lone gunman, and even if you believe that the Secret Service was merely incompetent (as opposed to complicit) — the fact remains, our government has been withholding important details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump&#8217;s life, without any justification whatsoever.
We should not have to rely on Tucker Carlson, or any podcaster, to tell us that Thomas Crooks left a lengthy trail of comments on YouTube, in which he openly called for political violence for several years.
These calls were so overt, and so disturbing, that one user wrote in response to Crooks:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003085 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="158" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-1024x158.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-300x46.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1-768x119.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-1.jpg 1520w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
<blockquote>You&#8217;re on YouTube threatening to shoot government officials. I sure hope the FBI is monitoring social media for violent nutcases.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s almost too on-the-nose to be real. But that comment is still available on YouTube, to this day. Thomas Crooks&#8217; account has been suspended, and all of his comments have been hidden. They&#8217;re only accessible using the Internet archive website. But the replies are still there. And yet, more than a year after the assassination attempt in Butler, we have to rely on Tucker Carlson to tell us about any of this. That is completely, overwhelmingly, unequivocally unacceptable. It shouldn’t fall to anyone in the media to tell us what Thomas Crooks was saying online — and how people were reacting to his comments.
We also shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Thomas Crooks decided, sometime during the COVID lockdowns, to completely reverse his political views, and to begin openly attacking Donald Trump and his administration on social media. And we certainly shouldn&#8217;t have to rely on podcasters to tell us that Crooks was in contact with a mysterious person — who remains unidentified, beyond the online alias &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; — who openly encouraged Crooks to commit acts of violence.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1003091 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="204" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1024x204.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-300x60.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-768x153.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2-1536x305.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Crooks-2.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
At one point, Willy Tepes wrote to Crooks, 
<blockquote>&#8230;authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun. We have more guns than they do. There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.</blockquote>
In common parlance, this is known as &#8220;fed posting.&#8221; Willy Tepes is almost being too obvious about it. He understands that Thomas Crooks is a radical who&#8217;s prone to violence. He sees that Crooks is posting about acts of violence against political officials — and that Crooks wrote, at one point, that even the White House could be overwhelmed if enough Americans took up arms. Willy Tepes is aware of all this. And instead of expressing concern, he encourages Crooks to go to war.
Is it possible that this is just some random internet troll? Of course it is. It&#8217;s also possible that &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; was working with a government agency or a terror cell — either in this country or some other country — to groom potential assassins. In fact, given how weird &#8220;Willy&#8217;s&#8221; comments were — and to be clear, he replied to Crooks multiple times — it seems very likely that he was trying to groom Thomas Crooks. So what has the FBI done to investigate Willy Tepes? What have they done to figure out his identity? Why is Tucker’s show the first time — literally, the first time — that anyone in this country has heard the name &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221;?
That is inexcusable, for about a million different reasons. It&#8217;s not the FBI&#8217;s job to determine what information is worth sharing to the public, or what information they deem is &#8220;important.&#8221; When it comes to the near-assassination of the leading presidential candidate, no detail is irrelevant. If Thomas Crooks went bowling every week, we should know that. If Thomas Crooks loved the film &#8220;Good Will Hunting,&#8221; we should know that. And certainly, if he was in regular communication with an anonymous person who sounded a lot like a fed, we should know that, too. At the very least we should know something about this guy. But if the feds had their way, we would know nothing at all. And that’s what we knew — nothing — until this week.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1694-tucker-carlson-reveals-shocking-details-about-thomas-crooks?"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And on top of that, beyond the transparency issues, it would obviously help the government&#8217;s investigation to raise awareness about these posts. Maybe someone, somewhere, knows who &#8220;Willy Tepes&#8221; is. And as long as Willy Tepes isn&#8217;t the alias for a CIA agent or something like that, then you&#8217;d think your government would want someone to come forward and identify him immediately. But that&#8217;s not possible if they bury his identity, and all information about him.
And then there&#8217;s the fact that Crooks&#8217;s PayPal account, for one reason or another, uses the name of an ex-FBI agent who worked in Pennsylvania, and who investigated the Las Vegas mass shooting — the one where no motive has ever been established. What exactly is going on there? We have no idea, because again, this is the first time anyone&#8217;s hearing about any of this. Our government — under both the Biden administration and the Trump administration — made the conscious decision to hide all of this information from us. The only reason we&#8217;re hearing about it now is that a random source got in contact with Tucker Carlson&#8217;s team, and tipped him off to Crooks&#8217; online history. And because this information remains uncontested by the FBI, several days after Tucker Carlson&#8217;s broadcast, we can assume it&#8217;s all true.
So let&#8217;s pause for a minute here, and zoom out. Let&#8217;s really think about what&#8217;s happened here. This is the official narrative. Last summer, Thomas Crooks — supposedly an untrained 20-year-old with an angry, inconsistent social media history — managed to outwit the Secret Service and gain access to a roof 500 feet away from Donald Trump. 
And he wasn&#8217;t particularly subtle about it. As you can see here, he was clearly visible, running along the rooftop as Trump spoke.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
CRAZY. This video is from James Copenhaver &#8211; one of the bystanders who was shot twice and critically wounded during the assassination attempt against Trump. It CLEARLY shows Crooks&#8217; head scurrying on the rooftop moments before the shooting.
Takeaway: Secret Service BLEW IT and… <a href="https://t.co/1rP6083ZFH">pic.twitter.com/1rP6083ZFH</a>
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) <a href="https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1818701467190165566?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @justin_hart/X.com
But the Secret Service didn&#8217;t notice him — even though random attendees in the crowd were suspicious, and notified law enforcement. Somehow the Secret Service didn&#8217;t have anyone on the roof — because it was too &#8220;sloped&#8221; — and somehow the Secret Service counter-snipers couldn&#8217;t see any of this. They only shot Thomas Crooks after he unloaded several shots at Donald Trump, including a shot that hit Trump in the head. And coincidentally enough, the rally in Butler was the first time that the Secret Service had deployed counter-snipers to a Trump rally during the 2024 campaign season. Yes, the Secret Service snipers made their debut at the Butler rally — just in time to neutralize Thomas Crooks after he got his shots off. 
So in a very tidy fashion, Thomas Crooks was quickly erased from the picture. No one could question him. No one could put him on trial. And then a funny thing happened. No one really investigated Thomas Crooks. No one told us anything about his social media posts, or his political views — beyond the claim that he was a Trump supporter, which was false. It took more than a year for us to learn that, in fact, Thomas Crooks was openly promising to commit violence on social media — and that someone was encouraging him to do so.
But the story gets even stranger from there. 
Less than 48 hours after Tucker&#8217;s reporting, out of nowhere, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/us-news/thomas-crooks-used-they-them-pronouns-had-obsession-with-violence-and-muscle-mommies-sources/">published</a> this exclusive information.
<blockquote>Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns and posted threats of political violence and violent art on his secret social media accounts before he attempted to assassinate President Trump, according to sources who shared the suspected messages with The Post. &#8230; .Crooks had two possible accounts on DeviantArt, a site that hosts fan art and has become notorious for its community of furries — people who identify as anthropomorphized animal characters and/or are sexually attracted to them. One of the DeviantArt accounts linked to Crooks shared just one post, a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder and a slight man in his underwear.</blockquote>
Separately, the Post&#8217;s Miranda Devine reported that Crooks, &#8220;had an obsession with scantily clad cartoon characters sporting muscle-bound male bodies and female heads.&#8221;
This seems to be a clear case of yet another psychologically disturbed mass shooter — someone who had been indoctrinated into the LGBT cult — turning to violence. Which is not a particularly surprising development. As I&#8217;ve said repeatedly, the LGBT cult is the single greatest domestic terror threat this country faces. In just the past few years, trans-identifying terrorists have shot up multiple Christian churches and schools. &#8220;Non-binary&#8221; mass shooters have targeted high schools and bars. A Leftist living with a &#8220;furry&#8221; assassinated Charlie Kirk in front of thousands of people.
Put simply, trans extremism is an epidemic. And the pattern of trans and “non-binary” violence is not at all surprising, even though the media tries to cover it up. Any man who identifies as a woman or a “they/them” is mentally unstable by definition. It seems nearly certain that all of these people were on psychiatric meds and in some cases hormones. And there&#8217;s another common theme here as well, which is that all of these violent LGBT shooters all probably developed their “gender identity” from consuming hundreds of hours of porn. The gender stuff is the product of extreme nihilism and extreme perversion. A steady long term diet of pornography turns anyone into a nihilist pervert. It’s not a far leap to get from that to murderer.
That&#8217;s why it’s not exactly shocking to hear that Thomas Crooks was also a member of the &#8220;they/them&#8221; cult, who regularly consumed various degenerate forms of media. At this point, you almost expect the investigation to uncover something like this. Thomas Crooks is yet another violent LGBT-linked killer, to add to a very disturbing, and fast growing, list.
There were some concerns expressed by some commentators that perhaps this revelation was an intentional diversion. A targeted leak, intended to distract us from the investigation that Tucker Carlson just published. That does seem like something the FBI might try to do, but that’s not what happened in this case. Miranda Devine has made it clear that her source is the same as Tucker’s — the information didn&#8217;t come from the FBI. Devine also provided more information on the Willy Tepes character, who was first identified by Tucker Carlson. 
Here&#8217;s what Devine <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/11/17/opinion/fbi-secret-service-butchered-the-thomas-crooks-case-and-invited-conspiracies-we-deserve-the-truth/">wrote</a>.
<blockquote>One of the people Crooks interacted with online was &#8216;Willy Tepes,&#8217; a member of Norwegian neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement, which has since been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. In one comment on Oct. 5, 2025, more than a year after Butler, Tepes commented to another user that he had been contacted by both Russian and American intelligence. &#8216;People who ask you to contact them when they just as easily could contact you, are Feds. This is how they avoid entrapment. Both American and Russian intelligence does this. I have chatted to both.&#8217; Tepes said.</blockquote>
There are only two possibilities here. The first possibility is that we&#8217;re seeing a monumental, unforgivable failure by the FBI — a degree of incompetence that&#8217;s simply staggering. Maybe they missed all of these chats. Or maybe they didn&#8217;t think they were relevant, and just never got around to releasing them. So they&#8217;re left to respond with pathetic &#8220;rapid response&#8221; press releases when Tucker Carlson and Miranda Devine publish investigative reports a year later. That&#8217;s the best-case scenario. That is the absolute, best-case scenario we&#8217;re dealing with.
The worst-case scenario is almost too dark to say out loud. But I&#8217;ll try my best. The worst-case scenario is that the FBI has been hiding all of this information about Thomas Crooks for the same reason that the Secret Service — supposedly the most elite protective force in the entire world — failed to secure that slightly-sloped roof 400 feet away from Donald Trump, with a direct line-of-sight to his head. The worst-case scenario is that the leadership of our intelligence agencies want Donald Trump dead. And if that&#8217;s the case, then there&#8217;s no reason to think they&#8217;re going to stop trying to kill him.
It&#8217;s not my job, or your job, to decide between these scenarios. It&#8217;s the job of our government, out of an abundance of transparency, to absolve itself completely of any responsibility in the attempt to murder Donald Trump. They should be telling us everything they know, even if they don&#8217;t think the information is relevant. But our government has not done so. And for that reason, it&#8217;s not insane or paranoid to assume the worst, or at least to consider it a very real possibility. For one reason or another, we aren’t being told the whole story, or even an incomplete story. And it’s way past time for us to ask one question: why?

Secret Service Says Trump Is ‘Safe’ After ‘Incident’ At Rally

Tucker Carlson Reveals Shocking Details About Thomas Crooks

assassination attempt

Butler

Donald Trump

Mass Shooting

Matt Walsh

Pennsylvania

Shooting

Social Media

Thomas Matthew Crooks

Tucker Carlson

Democrat gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill said she would push for New Jersey classrooms to mandate LGBTQ curriculum with no parental opt-out if she were to become governor.
Sherrill made the comments during a primary debate in May, but the controversial remarks have resurfaced in the days leading up to the New Jersey gubernatorial election between Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli on November 4.
“I believe that parents have the right to oversee their children’s education,” Sherrill said. “I would push an LGBTQ education into our schools. Parents have a right to opt out of a lot of things, but this is not an area where they should be opting out, because this is an area of understanding the background of people throughout our nation.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill says children should have to learn LGBT curriculum and parents should not be able to opt-out their children.
This is deranged. Sherrill wants to push gender ideology onto your kids.
Vote Jack Ciattarelli.<a href="https://t.co/pUdvIRzOpe">pic.twitter.com/pUdvIRzOpe</a>
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) <a href="https://twitter.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1983398182341226801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
Notably, Sherrill has also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-nj-political-arm-backing-dem-gov-candidate-hosts-woke-drag-event-for-teachers">refused to condemn</a> the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) for its promotion of woke drag culture inside the classroom for state public school educators. The story was first covered by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-nj-political-arm-backing-dem-gov-candidate-hosts-woke-drag-event-for-teachers">The Daily Wire</a> on Monday.
The NJEA is behind one of the <a href="https://elec.nj.gov/pdffiles/elec_tronic/elec_tronic_2025/elec_tronic_issue183_042025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">top-spending</a> political groups in the state and strongly endorsed Sherrill last month. In the days following the election, the NJEA is set to host an event to celebrate “the vibrant world of drag” for public school teachers.
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.
The event, called “<a href="https://njeaconvention.njea.org/njea-consortium/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drag is not a Crime: The Past, Present, and Future of Drag</a>,” is part of the NJEA Consortium <a href="https://learning.njea.org/consortium/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">program</a>, an initiative to boost diversity, equity, and inclusion, with a focus on minority communities in K-12 classrooms across New Jersey.
The Ciattarelli campaign, however, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-nj-political-arm-backing-dem-gov-candidate-hosts-woke-drag-event-for-teachers">told</a> The Daily Wire that the NJEA and Sherrill don’t care about education and teachers. “Drag might not be a crime, but looking the other way while 80% of third graders in some of New Jersey’s schools can’t read at grade level should be,” a campaign strategist for Ciattarelli said.
“The NJEA and far-left politicians like Mikie Sherrill could care less about education or teachers,” the statement continued. “The NJEA’s core mission is preserving political power, pushing an extreme ‘woke’ agenda on young children, and propping up out-of-touch politicians like Mikie Sherrill who vote against parental rights.”
“When Jack Ciattarelli is Governor, parents are back in charge and the NJEA is in timeout,” the strategist added.
Ciattarelli responded to the report on X, too, posting, &#8220;I’m all about live and let live, but why are drag queens a featured event at a public school teacher’s conference and what does it have to do with educating our children?! This is Mikie Sherrill’s NJ, not mine.&#8221;
&#8220;When I’m Governor, we’re getting back to the basics in our public school curriculum, leaving all this other subject matter to the kitchen table where it belongs &#8211; where parents can decide if and when to discuss with their children,&#8221; he added. &#8220;It’s time!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
New Jersey’s <a href="https://twitter.com/Jack4NJ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jack4NJ</a> reacts to our <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDailyWire</a> story from Monday, on <a href="https://twitter.com/MikieSherrill?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MikieSherrill</a>’s largest donor the NJEA hosting a DRAG event for teachers two days after the election.
The election is in less than a week.
Read it here: <a href="https://t.co/NtZOxgDigX">https://t.co/NtZOxgDigX</a> <a href="https://t.co/2p0oYbbEVW">pic.twitter.com/2p0oYbbEVW</a>
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrentScher/status/1983724711021551989?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
The race between Sherrill and Ciattarelli has only tightened in the days leading up the election, with some polls showing a statistical tie.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-nj-political-arm-backing-dem-gov-candidate-hosts-woke-drag-event-for-teachers">NJ’s Top Teacher Union, A Massive Donor To Mikie Sherrill, Set To Host Woke Drag Event For Teachers</a>

Screenshot 2025-10-30 at 2.59.44 PM

Dem Gov Candidate Mikie Sherrill Says She’d Mandate LGBTQ Content In NJ Classrooms

Democratic Party

Elections

New Jersey

Under War Secretary Pete Hegseth, America’s military is rediscovering its true mission of forging warriors, not social justice activists. He’s already purged divisive DEI and race-based admissions policies from our elite service academies, but one seemingly benign obstacle remains: academic accreditation. And like the wall on the training course, it must be overcome.
From West Point to the Air Force Academy, all five military service academies are accredited by a handful of private, unaccountable agencies with enormous influence over higher education. Unless the academies adopt these gatekeepers’ standards, their degrees may not be recognized when graduates pursue advanced degrees at civilian universities. That gives a handful of unelected, pro-DEI activists control over curriculum at schools founded to produce warfighters, including my alma mater, West Point.
That’s a serious problem.
West Point, established by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, along with the Naval Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy, are all accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which <a href="https://www.msche.org/standards/fourteenth-edition/">lists</a> “reflection on diversity, equity, and inclusion” among its “guiding principles.” That includes applying DEI to admissions targets, student assessments, and curriculum design. 
Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled race-based admissions unconstitutional in 2023, the commission insists that DEI reflection should “address disparate impacts on an increasingly diverse student population if discovered.” Its leadership reflects this far-left agenda, including commission president Heather Perfetti, a <a href="https://www.msche.org/president/">DEI champion</a>, and board members like Valerie Lehr, a professor of “LGBTQ politics” and author of Queer Family Values.
The Coast Guard Academy is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, whose standards also reference DEI <a href="https://www.neche.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Standards-for-Accreditation-2021.pdf">at least five times</a>. While the commission is reportedly considering ditching DEI in October, it remains under the control of a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/10/169037364/300-college-presidents-call-for-guns-to-be-banned-on-campuses-other-steps">gun control extremist</a> who urged the Obama administration to ban “military-style assault weapons” and has praised the children of illegal aliens as embodiments of “<a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/opinion/opinion-dreamer-collegians-embody-america-promise/2PfaNiACsrc1EKNVTsWCNL/">America’s promise</a>.”
The same holds true for many of the military’s <a href="https://www.restorethemilitary.com/professional-military-education/">Professional Military Education institutions</a>, full of leftist ideologues and subject to the same diversity accreditation mandates.
It’s bad enough that these commissions push radical ideologies on civilian universities. But America cannot afford to waste resources indoctrinating the next generation of military officers, especially as <a href="https://restoration-news.com/is-america-prepared-for-a-war-with-china">China poses a rising threat</a>.
The military’s biggest problem isn’t meeting diversity quotas; it’s restoring a warrior ethos to military culture. For decades, political mandates imposed by Democratic presidents undermined unit cohesion and combat readiness, while leaving the U.S. military dependent on foreign manufacturing to supply critical equipment. 
The organization I lead, Restoration of America, has laid out a blueprint for reenvisioning the military at <a href="https://www.restorethemilitary.com/">RestoretheMilitary.com</a>. It includes legislative solutions for reforming our service academies.
Fortunately, President Trump is turning things around. Under his direction, the War Department is reinstating physical fitness standards. He’s also removing woke senior officers, such as Merchant Marine Academy Superintendent Joanne Nunan, an <a href="https://restoration-news.com/exclusive-service-academy-s-woke-leadership-removed">anti-Christian bigot</a> he fired in June. In July, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll <a href="https://restoration-news.com/west-point-leadership-thumbs-its-nose-at-the-trump-administration">blocked</a> the West Point superintendent from hiring Biden’s “disinformation” czar to head the Social Studies Department.
These are major victories that should be celebrated, but we cannot rest on our laurels.
The next logical step is removing all outside influence over academy curricula by withdrawing the academies from these accreditors. The service academies should either be accredited by a new War Department accrediting body or accreditation should be eliminated altogether. Accreditation exists to prevent fraudsters from issuing worthless degrees from a phony “college,” and to ensure that students know the basics.
West Point, Annapolis, and the others have nothing to prove. They’ve demonstrated their excellence on the battlefield, time and again. It’s time to let them make warriors, not quotas.
* * *
Doug Truax is a West Point graduate, former 4th Infantry Division Army Captain, Ranger, and successful entrepreneur. He is the volunteer, unpaid founder, and CEO of <a href="http://www.restorationofamerica.com">Restoration of America</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Washington DC Celebrates Army’s 250th Anniversary With Parade And Festivities

Social Justice Warriors Shouldn’t Control West Point

Social Justice Warriors Shouldn't Control West Point

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Social Justice

U.S. Military

West Point

Woke Culture

Today, the Supreme Court will hear <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/chiles-v-salazar/">Chiles v. Salazar</a>, a case about censorship in private counseling conversations regarding gender identity not sanctioned by Colorado state law. The results will have a lasting influence not only counselors, parents, and children in Colorado, but throughout the United States.
I know, because our family learned the hard way when our 11-year-old daughter went to her school counselors in Wisconsin for advice. 
So many times, just being able to talk about things with someone who knows how to listen can make a life-changing difference. What our family learned, however, was that these people did not know how to listen. They were interested in making a life-changing difference, yes, but mostly in changing my daughter’s life to suit their social sensibilities, not to do what was best for her.
COVID hit at just about the same time my daughter entered into a very real personal crisis. She was 11 years old and decided she hated herself. She hated her looks, hated her personality — everything. The isolation of the epidemic left her with too much time to think about all of that and too few people to talk to about what she was feeling.
Sometimes, as a kid, it can help to know that other kids around the same age are struggling with the same issues. But our daughter was mostly alone with all her growing worries, fears, and frustrations. She didn’t know how to talk to me about what she was feeling, and she started reading about kids who were &#8220;changing&#8221; themselves. That sounded like the answer to everything: changing herself.
Looking back, she says, she doesn’t think she was really feeling that much gender dysphoria. She wasn’t especially wanting to be a boy — she just didn’t want to be herself.
That turned out to be very easy to arrange. In fact, a teacher’s aide approached my daughter and said that, if she wanted to give the people in the front office a new name and new pronouns, they’d happily take care of the paperwork.
They might have suggested that she first talk a little more with her parents about what she was feeling and give us a chance to listen and help her work through these things. But no one — not the school officials, not the doctors she eventually talked to — ever suggested anything like that.
To them, what we as her parents thought and felt was irrelevant. Our love for our child and our authority to influence her life choices didn’t matter at all. All of these strangers just assumed they knew best and had the right to keep her parents out of the conversation.
For that matter, they didn’t include our daughter much, either.
At no time did anyone at school or in the medical facilities our daughter visited ever suggest that there might be a healthy alternative to her social transitioning. They never suggested that she might just be struggling with the kinds of things lots of boys and girls have trouble with — dealing with the pains and awkward changes of puberty and the problems of fitting into a sometimes-crazy teenage culture.
That’s why my husband and I <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/tf-and-bf-v-kettle-moraine-school-district/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">sued</a> our Wisconsin school district with the help of our attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom. As parents, we have had to really fight for what should be a given — our basic legal right to be involved in our child’s life. And — with our love and support — she had to find her own way out of the confusing jungle of emotions she was dealing with.
We’re glad she was able to do that, but we still wonder how much easier it might have been if someone with the right skills had just been there to help her find the trail — and if her school officials hadn’t tried so hard to block her from finding it.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="How Tammy&#039;s Bold Stand Saved Her Daughter from &quot;Social Transitioning&quot;" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z5le_6Qwe8o?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>
That’s also why we’re so interested in another ADF client, Kaley Chiles, and <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/chiles-v-salazar/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">her case</a> being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court today. Ms. Chiles is a counselor who wants to offer help to young people like our daughter, who are going through the kinds of things she’s been going through.
We’ve read a lot about her. She does what it seems like a counselor ought to do. She listens. She asks thoughtful questions. She helps young people figure out where they want to go and how to get there. She’s there to walk with them — not push them through a pre-chosen door or force her own ideas on their disturbed minds and hurting hearts.
To me, that’s what every young person going through what my daughter went through needs. But in Ms. Chiles’ home state of Colorado, it’s actually against the law for a counselor to help a minor that way.
My own state has a similar law. And these laws allow counselors to point the way to transitioning and encourage it, but they can’t offer an alternative or do anything to support a young person who leans toward another conclusion.
That reminds me so much of what my daughter has experienced these last few years. People — professionals — with no interest in helping her, just in changing her.
Ms. Chiles’ attorneys will be making good arguments for why that’s a terrible approach … one that can be life-changing for children and teens in all the wrong ways.
I just hope the justices know how to listen.
* * *
Tammy Fournier and her daughter reside in Wisconsin.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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SCOTUS I

When My 11-Year-Old Daughter Began Hating Herself, The School Told Her To Change Her Pronouns

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Gender Identity

Parents rights

Pronouns

Schools

Supreme Court

In a recent episode of the Holy Post podcast, co-host and pastor Skye Jethani criticized the conservative conviction that “policies should favor Christian ideas.” Instead, he proposed that Christians in government should pursue policies that promote “flourishing and goodness for everyone.”
To be a Christian and simultaneously claim that Christian ideas are incapable of producing a flourishing, free, and good society — how small a faith must that require?
What ideas does Jethani prefer to Christian ideas? Secular ideas? Satanic ideas?
Jethani is not the only one with this view. He is among a chorus of evangelical pastors, pundits, and academics who seem more concerned with policing conservative Christians than with confronting the godless, suicidal death cult that is assailing our nation from the Left.
The Left embraces the mockery of God’s created order for marriage between one man and one woman. The Left celebrates aborting unborn babies in the name of “reproductive freedom.” Since 1973, 65 million boys and girls have died by the violence of abortion to the applause of Democrats.
The Left also champions mutilating, sterilizing, and castrating children. Mentally ill, confused, and vulnerable girls and boys are being irreversibly damaged in the name of “gender-affirming care” to the cheers of LGBTQ ideologues.
And on the heels of Leftist rhetoric, mainstream politicians call women “birthing persons” and “chest feeders,” radicalized schoolteachers and administrators force girls into locker rooms with boys, and drag queen strippers throw cash at toddlers.
Faced with all this, some Christians urge silence — worried their churches or platforms might be labeled “too political,” “offensive,” or “unempathetic.”
When I was preparing to be a lifeguard, my training went a little something like this: if someone is drowning, do not jump in the water and drown with them. Throw a life preserver, extend a shepherd’s crook, or make a skilled save while ensuring your own safety. Pull the swimmer out of the water to save their life.
Like the sinking swimmer, the Left does not need affirmation as it drags our country down its suicidal path — it needs firm rejection from the Church and its shepherds. Sinners cannot be saved in their sin, but must be called out of it.
The Church must offend flesh, confront darkness, and model a holier way as a city on a hill and a light in the darkness. The “love of neighbor” is the whole truth spoken in love, an invitation to repentance, and the promise of newness of life in Christ.
The Holy Post and others’ avoidant, “empathetic” approach to political engagement does not offer a broken culture a solid refuge or a light in the darkness. It does not throw a life preserver, but jumps in to drown with the sinner. Willful silence from platforms and pulpits in the face of cultural evil condemns Christian audiences to ignorance, and the fear of man makes a fickle, fruitless flock.
That’s not compassion: it’s apathy cloaked as empathy.
The same fruitless result is reached when evangelical thought leaders obscure simple Biblical truths in mind-numbing “nuances” and an overly “winsome” delivery — believers are left clueless, unequipped, and vulnerable, and cultural evils go unchecked and unchallenged.
A Christian government and a Christian cultural consensus cannot save every soul in our country — only the Holy Spirit’s work of regeneration and faith in Jesus Christ can do that in a person. But together, both can create a nation where objective truth, moral order, and God’s good design provide “flourishing and goodness to everyone.”
America needs Christian ideas. Unborn babies, children, marriages, and families need Christian ideas, and unbelievers need the truth, love, joy, compassion, goodness, dignity, charity, freedom, moral order, and righteousness inherent in Christian ideas.
If the belief that Christian ideas should govern society makes us too extreme for the cool kids’ table at the Holy Post, so be it. If proclaiming Biblical truth about the sanctity of life, children’s innocence, godly marriage, and the created dignity of the sexes is deemed “too political,” then again, so be it. The Church is not called to cultural appeasement — it is called to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
The answer to our nation’s cultural schism is not a thoughtless kumbaya with the Left. It is revival — revival in our Churches, revival of a Christian cultural consensus, and revival of governance rooted in Christian ideas.
Hannah Lape is Legislative Assistant for the <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee</a>, dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles in public policy.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Crucifix and American flag at garage

One Nation Under God: America Needs Christian Ideas

Christianity

Evangelicals

Leftism

Netflix stock went down 2.4% following Elon Musk announcing earlier this week that he was canceling his subscription.
The billionaire Tesla founder made the proclamation on X Tuesday after clips of multiple children’s shows available on the platform started going viral. These animated shows, which were targeted at kids ages 7 and up, included explicitly LGBT storylines. One of the most egregious examples, “Dead End Paranormal Park,” included a cartoon character who identified as transgender.
&#8220;Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids,&#8221; Musk instructed his X followers.
Besides saying he was canceling Netflix, the SpaceX CEO reposted a meme of Netflix smuggling in a “transgender woke agenda” via a Trojan horse.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids <a href="https://t.co/uPcGiURaCp">https://t.co/uPcGiURaCp</a>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1973292474375479556?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Following the clips going viral, Netflix stock dropped, and was down 2.4% as of Friday, per <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/10/02/netflix-stock-drops-again-now-down-24-since-musks-call-for-cancellations/">Forbes</a>. Many X users flooded the platform with screenshots of proof that they had canceled their subscriptions. Netflix shares are down 4.4% in the last five days of trading, the outlet noted.
Shares for the streaming platform have recently been on an upward trend, rising 30% since the beginning of last year. But Musk’s calls for a boycott did seem to make an impact, and social media users are celebrating.
The offending television show wasn’t just one isolated incident. Clips have been circulating all over X highlighting LGBT themes in Netflix content aimed at young children. Another clip going viral is part of the animated show “Ridley Jones,” which includes Fred, the non-binary cow, fretting over using a “different name and pronouns” for the first time since last seeing his grandmother.
In the animated show “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous,” two women share a passionate kiss.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Unbelievable.
Netflix is using a children’s cartoon, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, to push same-sex sexual relationships and the LGBTQ agenda.
This is the blatant sexual indoctrination of innocent children.
Boycott Netflix. <a href="https://t.co/pe30azv6Qm">pic.twitter.com/pe30azv6Qm</a>
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) <a href="https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1973834468168245532?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“CoComelon Lane” is also listed as one of the shows inspiring the boycott as it features a little boy wearing a princess dress for his two gay “dads.”
The animated show &#8220;Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City&#8221; promotes transgender drag queens to kids.
Chaya Raichik, who runs the popular account Libs of TikTok, has been leading the charge to expose the content of these shows and has been reposting screenshots of users proving they canceled their Netflix subscriptions, too.
She also noted that Hamish Steele, the trans-identified creator of the show “Dead End Paranormal Park,” made vulgar comments on Bluesky following the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month.

Netflix Stock Drops Following Boycott Over Trans Content For Kids

boycott

Elon Musk

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