There is a playbook being used across America right now, and it has nothing to do with winning in court.
File a lawsuit. Make it expensive. Make it exhausting. Make the target think twice before they ever open their mouth again. Legal scholars have a name for it: a SLAPP suit, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The goal is not a verdict. The goal is silence. As one <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2026/03/25/republican-anti-slapp-legislation-opposed-by-legislator-who-targeted-local-paper-fails/">Republican state legislator</a> put it while fighting to pass anti-SLAPP legislation: “The punishment is the process.”
I know this playbook well. I lived it for nearly five years.
In 2020, I co-founded the Niles Township Accountability Coalition (NTAC) with two other parents, driven by growing concerns about certain school board members. What began as a local accountability effort quickly exploded as COVID upended our children’s education and parents got a firsthand look into classrooms through remote learning. Then came the post-George Floyd DEI wave, followed by gender ideology, pronoun policies, and social transition practices that often excluded parents entirely. NTAC quickly grew to more than 300 parents.
I am a Christian Arab, the daughter of Jordanian immigrants. My aunt and uncle left Jordan for Greece, boarded a boat from Athens, and arrived at Ellis Island after a month at sea. They sponsored my father&#8217;s immigration to this country. That is the America my family crossed an ocean to reach, a place where you could speak, where you could petition your government, where no one could silence you for asking questions.
So when I watched outsiders flood our school board meetings, people who did not teach here, did not live here, had no children here, pushing radical ideologies and calling our parents names, I could not stay silent. These parents were immigrant families, some with Holocaust survivors, people who fled communism and religious persecution. They understood, at a bone-deep level, what it means when institutions stop listening to citizens. And they were being silenced and mocked in their own community.
I could not take it anymore. In August 2021, I wrote a 14-page <a href="https://aflegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Levinson-Letter.pdf">complaint letter</a> to school administrators documenting what I had personally witnessed. I signed my name to it. Ten days later, I was served with a defamation lawsuit.
Standing on the front line is not glamorous. For nearly five years, I was called names, lied about in my own community, and targeted by litigation that never stopped moving. It takes a toll, mentally, emotionally, on your family and your sense of self. There were moments I questioned whether it was worth it.
But advocating for change is a marathon, not a sprint. On my lowest days, I stepped away from social media, went into the garden, cooked, prayed, and spent time with the people who love me. I must have listened to the Anne Wilson song Stand a million times. That song gave me the strength to keep going when I had none left.
Fighting this lawsuit did not just test me; it tested my resolve. It made me stronger and smarter. It taught me the mechanisms the other side uses to silence parents — the legal tactics, the media strategy, the community narrative, and the fundraising campaigns. I also made a decision about my daughter: I pulled her out of the public school system and enrolled her in private school for academic rigor and peace of mind. As parents, we will do anything to protect our children. That instinct is not radical. It is the most natural thing in the world.
When I was served with the lawsuit, I hired attorney Sorin Leahu, and we immediately built our defense under Illinois’s anti-SLAPP law. A year later, America First Legal joined the case, with attorney Nicholas Barry serving as co-counsel alongside Sorin. In 2023, we won a dismissal and were awarded attorney’s fees, a major victory. But from my years in enterprise software sales, I knew better than to celebrate too early: you don’t have a deal until the contract is signed. They appealed.
Between December 2023 and February 2024, the plaintiffs held a YouTube press conference and raised $44,000 in <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-black-il-teacher-targeted-by-moms4liberty">GoFundMe</a> donations explicitly solicited to pay the attorney’s fees the court had awarded to me. In June 2025, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the anti-SLAPP dismissal and gave the plaintiff one final opportunity to amend their complaint. We were back to square one.
The new judge was precise and moved the case into discovery and summary judgment. We were prepared to go all the way because the truth always wins in discovery. Our interrogatories required the plaintiff to identify, under oath, every alleged lost job opportunity despite public records showing she had been promoted to Assistant Principal at a higher salary by the same employer to whom my letter was sent. We also requested the original version of a key email whose formatting raised concerns about authenticity and demanded an accounting of the $44,000 raised during the litigation.
A few days later, we received an email: they wish to dismiss with prejudice. Each party is to cover its own fees.
Almost five years of a false story claiming I attacked a teacher in my community disappeared in an instant with a single email. I was never truly in control; they were. The only thing I had power over was whether I would give up, and I chose not to.
This Is Happening Everywhere
My case is one thread in a much larger pattern. Across Illinois, people who have spoken out have faced the same playbook: Stacy Deemar sued <a href="https://slfliberty.org/case/deemar-v-evanston-skokie-school-district-65/">District 65</a> over race-based curriculum; Nicole Georgas filed a federal civil rights complaint against <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/suburban-mom-files-federal-complaint-over-schools-transgender-student-policies/3701097/">District 109</a> over locker room privacy; Michelle Hammer Bernstein faced defamation claims in <a href="https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2025/11/23/federal-lawsuit-dismissed-against-parent-who-was-sued-by-deerfield-high-school-teacher-over-social-media-comments/">District 113</a> for Facebook posts; and in Libertyville, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/libertyville-school-district-128-administrator-leave-grooming-allegations-former-teacher/">District 128</a> placed an administrator on leave after Marnie Navarro exposed a grooming scandal that administrators had quietly buried. In <a href="https://will-law.org/johnson-v-maccudden/">Wisconsin</a>, Scarlett Johnson was sued for calling a DEI hire “woke” on social media and won.
Notably, in my case, the plaintiff&#8217;s attorney, Sheryl Ring Weikal, also represented the Abolition Coalition parents who filed a<a href="https://patch.com/illinois/skokie/white-supremacist-school-board-allegations-should-be-dismissed-d-72"> separate lawsuit against Fairview School District 72</a>, which was also dropped after years of litigation. Two lawsuits. Same attorney. Same pattern.
<a href="https://www.awakeil.com/doj">Awake Illinois</a>, the statewide parental rights organization where I serve as vice president, was founded by Shannon Adcock and our director, Steve Lucie. We have filed multiple federal Title IX complaints against Illinois school districts, including the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and Naperville Community Unit School District 203, using official federal channels to fight for the rights of students and parents. This is exactly what civic participation looks like, and it is exactly what SLAPP suits are designed to stop.
What Every Parent Should Know
No parent should have to fight alone. Across the country, grassroots organizations are standing beside families willing to speak up for their children and communities. Groups like<a href="https://defendinged.org"> Defending Education</a>,<a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org"> Moms for Liberty</a>,<a href="https://courageisahabit.org"> Courage Is A Habit</a>, <a href="https://www.awakeil.com">Awake Illinois</a>, and <a href="https://aflegal.org">America First Legal</a> have empowered parents through advocacy, education, investigative work, and legal support.
Filing a complaint letter is not a crime. Speaking at a school board meeting is not harassment. Lawsuits should never be used to silence citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Illinois’s Citizen Participation Act exists to protect individuals who petition their government and speak out on matters of public concern.
As this chapter closes, I am deeply grateful to my legal counsel, the organizations that stood beside me, and every person who offered support, prayers, and encouragement over these past several years. Their support carried me through one of the hardest battles of my life and reminded me of something important: truth matters, your voice matters, and no parent should ever be intimidated into silence for advocating for children.
***
Helen Levinson is vice president of Awake Illinois.

No decision from judge on barring transgender student from locker room

Fighting Back Against The Goliath Lawsuits Designed To Shut Parents Up

DW Opinion

Parents rights

The day my five-year-old son came home from school proudly announcing he had learned to download apps on what he called &#8220;my iPad,&#8221; I felt two things: the instinct of a father sensing something was off, and the reflex of a physician recognizing a familiar problem. It wasn’t his excitement that gave me pause. It was the word &#8220;my.” After a few weeks of school, he was personally identifying with a device before he was developmentally ready to contextualize his relationship to it.
As an emergency physician, I evaluate interventions the same way every time, by weighing the evidence of benefit against the risk of harm. When the data is unclear, I fall back on medicine&#8217;s oldest principle — primum non nocere. First, do no harm. I never imagined I would be applying that framework to my son&#8217;s pre-K classroom.
The echoes of COVID remain familiar: an expert class prescribing an untested solution, dismissing the concerns of the people it serves. The pandemic increased reliance on technology in education but also exposed the priorities of America’s elites. When the public sought explanations, officials issued mandates. Conformity to dogma ruled the day, and any criticism was swiftly labeled misinformation. The cost was staggering. A generation’s trust in institutions was spent in just about two years. At the core of it all was a simple belief — that experts know best.
I am watching a similar phenomenon take place in our children’s classrooms. Every day our kids go to school, we are extending an act of trust — placing them in the school’s care, expecting that parents and teachers will work together in the children’s best interests. Increasingly, the educators’ posture has shifted to something more insular: we know best, and we’ll take it from here.
The deeper irony is that on this specific question, the evidence is not on the educators’ side.
In January, neuroscientist Jared Horvath testified before a Senate subcommittee about the impact of screen time and classroom technology on kids. And in his book, “The Digital Delusion,” he notes that the impact of classroom interventions is measured using a metric called &#8220;effect size.&#8221; The threshold for meaningful impact is +0.40. Teacher-led direct instruction averages approximately +0.56 — the gold standard. Broad educational technology interventions average around +0.29 — well below the impact threshold. For context, the negative effect of bullying is -0.28. OECD countries noted an almost two-letter-grade drop on standardized testing for students who used computers “very frequently.&#8221; The MIT-based Poverty Research Center, after examining 126 studies, found that programs expanding computer access &#8220;do not improve K-12 grades and test scores.&#8221;
Many schools claim that children need early digital exposure to succeed in the modern world. But this isn&#8217;t supported by evidence, nor does it pass the common-sense test. Digital skills can be acquired in minutes to hours, and they are not what predict deep learning or professional success.
What makes this particularly corrosive is what the apps are doing to learning itself. Early childhood is the most sensitive period for attention, executive function, and self-regulation — precisely the capacities most at risk. Research consistently shows stronger comprehension and retention on paper versus screens. Horvath notes that learning requires productive struggle. The friction of sitting with a hard problem, resisting distraction, and building toward mastery is not a flaw in education; it is the process. Apps are engineered to eliminate this friction. The result is what researchers call the &#8220;illusion of mastery.&#8221; Students feel they are learning, but the depth is not there.
COVID accelerated this without resolving it. The academic consequences were severe, and so were the mental health ones — anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal spiked across age groups and have not fully recovered. We poured energy into getting children back into classrooms, then handed them the same devices back.
Worse still, many educators don&#8217;t realize that much of the &#8220;evidence&#8221; backing these programs traces back to the for-profit education tech sector that created this ecosystem. These companies have cultivated academic voices to carry their message into schools, funding research through channels educators rarely scrutinize. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley&#8217;s founders have largely kept their own children off these devices. When Peter Thiel revealed as much at a recent summit, it elicited audible gasps. Educators who believe they are following the science are, in many cases, following a sales pitch.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recently signed legislation mandating cursive handwriting in classrooms, explicitly to keep kids off tablets, while 10 states across the political spectrum are considering legislation to reduce screen time or restrict device programs in some way. This is no longer a fringe position.
As a father, I feel this differently than I do as a physician. Parents are watching in real time as young children develop a compulsive relationship with devices — fidgeting for the next stimulus, the next dopamine surge from apps designed to engage. Boys are particularly susceptible to these reward structures — the variable reinforcement, the next level, the next hit. The gaming addiction literature has documented it for years. We are now introducing that architecture to boys in pre-K through a school-issued device they are taught to think of as their own.
And yet the response from most schools has been silence, or worse, reassurance. Parents notice concerning changes in their children, review the data, bring their concerns to administrators, and are met with polished explanations that best practices are being followed. Parental concern is treated as a feature of the process, proof almost that the school is doing something bold.
Educators dismiss those concerns at their own peril. The trust parents extend to schools is not unconditional, and it is fraying. At a minimum, parents should have the right to opt their children out of individual device programs, and schools should provide information to parents on the potential harms. Regular efficacy assessments should accompany all device programs. No responsible physician would deny a patient the ability to decline an unproven intervention. Schools should extend a similar respect.
The larger obligation falls on the system itself. The education establishment should not be mandating device programs without a far stronger evidence base. When physicians, researchers, and parents all raise the same alarm, the appropriate response is curiosity or caution, not defensiveness. Before mandating a new intervention, demonstrate that the benefits outweigh the harms. If you can&#8217;t, don&#8217;t. Primum non nocere.
***
Dr. Benjamin Chacko is an Emergency Medicine Physician and the father of two sons.

Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best? Not When it Comes to Screens in the Classroom

Education

K-12

Technology

Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an important ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, a case addressing whether schools can implement policies that deliberately exclude parents from critical decisions about their children’s well-being. The Court answered that question with a clear and resounding no.
In its order, the Court reinstated a prior injunction, barring California schools from enforcing policies that conceal students’ gender transitions from parents or require teachers to use names or pronouns inconsistent with biological sex. Under these rules, this information was withheld from parents unless the child consented. Naturally, many parents and teachers challenged these policies, arguing that they violated constitutional rights.
The Court agreed that the parents raising religious objections are likely to win their claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The justices also found that the policies are likely to interfere with parents’ long-recognized constitutional right to direct the upbringing and care of their children under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In reaching that conclusion, the Court relied on decades of precedent that affirm the role of parents in guiding their children’s development, including Wisconsin v. Yoder and Troxel v. Granville. The message is straightforward: when it comes to consequential decisions affecting a child’s identity, mental health, and moral development, the government cannot simply push parents aside.
This ruling arrives amid a broader national debate over how schools respond to students experiencing gender dysphoria. In many districts, policies have emerged that treat transgender identity as a matter between the student and the school, <a href="https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/protecting-children-from-social-transition-act">rather than between the child and their family</a>. Supporters argue that such policies protect vulnerable students. But the Court’s decision highlights a critical problem: removing parents from the conversation can undermine the very support systems children need most.
Parents are typically the first line of care when a child is struggling emotionally or psychologically. The Court recognized this reality, noting that <a href="https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/gender-dysphoria-and-the-social-transition-intervention">gender dysphoria</a> is a condition with significant <a href="https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/gender-dysphoria-and-the-social-transition-intervention">mental health implications</a>. When schools conceal information about a child’s confusion with their biological sex from parents, they risk shutting out those most responsible for providing guidance, counseling, and medical care.
The Court’s reasoning also exposes an uncomfortable truth that has been too often ignored in public policy debates: decisions about “gender” identity during adolescence can have profound and lasting consequences.
That reality becomes particularly important as more individuals speak openly about the experience of detransition — discontinuing gender transition procedures after coming to regret them. While research on detransition remains limited, emerging evidence suggests that some young people who went through so-called “gender affirming care” did so because of social pressure. Others say the real reason for their psychological distress was not addressed, and the transition process only further complicated their existing pain.
This is why parental involvement matters. Adolescence is a time of rapid emotional and cognitive development. Decisions made during that process should not occur in isolation from parents who are legally and morally responsible for their children’s welfare.
This week, advocates and researchers will observe Detransition Awareness Day on March 12. The day highlights the experiences of individuals who have reversed or questioned their earlier identification as transgender and seeks to promote better research and support for those navigating a similar path.
Their stories underscore an important point: the debate surrounding our biological sex is not simply theoretical. It involves real people whose lives are shaped by the policies adopted by schools, medical institutions, and governments.
Acknowledging detransition means recognizing the complexity of adolescent identity and the need for careful, responsible approaches that prioritize long-term well-being.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli does not resolve every problem that surrounds the gender topic, but the ruling establishes a vital principle: parents cannot be treated as obstacles in their children’s lives. In fact, they are the opposite – parents are the people primarily responsible for guiding their children through the most difficult and formative stages of adolescence. To exclude them from decisions that carry permanent, harmful, and lasting consequences is contrary to the very concept of what it means to raise a child.
As the nation reflects on detransition and the broader questions surrounding the gender issue, policymakers would do well to remember what the Court reaffirmed this week — families matter, and parents deserve a seat at the table.
* * *
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens is America First Policy Institute’s Director of American Values.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Mother hold hand schoolboy walking to bus. Energetic pupils running crossway.

The Parent Trap: The Detransition Reality Schools Tried To Hide From Moms And Dads

California

Children

detransitioner

Opinion

Parental Rights in Education

Parenting

Public Schools

Supreme Court

Transgender

A heated debate over public schools in the South Carolina House of Representatives took a dramatic turn this week when a Democratic lawmaker referred to the parental advocacy group Moms for Liberty as a “terrorist group” during remarks on the House floor.
The comment came from Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a longtime Democratic representative from Orangeburg, during a broader debate about the state’s public school system and education policy. “We as a state are running headfirst, headlong, into a public school crisis,” Cobb-Hunter said during her floor speech, criticizing the direction of education policy in South Carolina.
As she urged lawmakers to listen to teachers and parents in struggling public schools, Cobb-Hunter mocked references to parental activist groups supporting school choice.
“I heard a reference up here about some PTA or some — Moms for Liberty? Please,” she said. “They are a terrorist group.” The remark immediately prompted a point of order from another lawmaker calling for decorum on the House floor.
But Cobb-Hunter did not walk back the comment when given the opportunity to respond.
“Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that what I just said has been widely used in publications, it has been widely used in a whole lot of arenas,” Cobb-Hunter said in response. “Quite frankly, I would caution us to be very careful using the whole decorum language when some of us get up here and do some things that quite frankly I think beg the question of do we even know what decorum means.”
The exchange quickly drew attention because of the growing national profile of <a href="https://www.momsforliberty.org/about/">Moms for Liberty</a>, a grassroots organization founded in 2021 that advocates for parental rights in education. The group, which now claims hundreds of local chapters across the United States, rose to prominence during debates over COVID-era school closures, mask mandates, and curriculum issues such as gender ideology and race-related instruction in classrooms.
Supporters describe the organization as a parents’ rights movement focused on increasing transparency in schools and expanding educational choice.
Critics on the left have frequently accused the group of promoting book bans or targeting LGBTQ-related materials in school libraries. Some left-wing activists and media outlets have gone as far as to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/07/1180486760/splc-moms-for-liberty-extremist-group">label the organization</a> as extremist, a characterization its leaders <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/06/07/moms-for-liberty-co-founder-rejects-splc-extremist-label/70298360007/">strongly reject</a>.
Moms for Liberty activists have been especially active in school board elections and education policy fights in states across the country, often supporting school choice measures and policies aimed at limiting certain curriculum topics.
The group has also drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and teachers’ unions who argue its activism has intensified political battles over education.
Cobb-Hunter’s remarks came during debate over legislation tied to school choice and education funding, issues that have become increasingly contentious in South Carolina as Republican lawmakers push for policies that would expand alternatives to traditional public schools.
The exchange is likely to further inflame the ongoing political fight over education policy in the state, where debates over school choice, curriculum, and parental rights have increasingly divided lawmakers along partisan lines.
The Daily Wire reached out to Cobb-Hunter’s office to ask whether she stands by the characterization of Moms for Liberty as a “terrorist group,” but did not receive a response by publication time.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-EDUCATION-LITERATURE

Democrat Places ‘Moms For Liberty’ In Same Terror Category As ISIS

ISIS

Politics

terrorist

From State Rep. Melissa Hortman’s murder to Luigi Mangione’s manifesto to Charlie Kirk’s assassination to whatever fresh horror will have meteor-impacted the news cycle between my typing these words and their publication, it has never been clearer that online radicalization is leading to real-world consequences.
My team at <a href="https://usthestory.org/">US the Story</a> last year analyzed just a handful of the most vile posts from 14 of the top full-blown hate accounts on one platform. These 14 posts showed a combined view count of over 50 million. The accounts themselves had a reach of 6,450,000,000 impressions. Engagement — the number of times people actually interacted with the content in total to like, quote, or share — crossed 448 million over the course of roughly 10 months.
These posts, their volume, and their reach create a permission structure for more and more hatred. It’s a quickening descent into violence and chaos; the more it becomes fair game to denigrate and threaten “the other group,” the more blaming and attacking that group becomes normalized.
One way of looking at this is as a network contagion issue. Debates around social-media-facilitated social contagions have raged in the culture wars for years. Young women in particular have been targeted by bots and accounts promoting anorexia, gender dysphoria, and more. Viral events such as the 2023 explosion of bin Laden’s “Letter to America” and widespread <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-20/tiktok-effects-on-mental-health-in-focus-after-teen-suicide">messaging encouraging suicidality</a> caused immediate concern in the broader culture. At this point, we shouldn’t be surprised that algos designed to maximize virality for profit at any cost fuel the most toxic, contagious, and sticky topics.
Studies have consistently shown that violent crime follows a Pareto distribution, with 1% of criminals committing up to 60% of crimes. The same is true of hateful content strategically riding the algos in the service of encouraging real-world violence. Do we really want our social media platforms taken over by psychopaths in a full-blown network contagion? And more importantly, what happens if we do?
Most contagions left unimpeded spread enough to damage and threaten the entire system. That’s why many such cases are fueled by foreign PSYOPs.
<div id="attachment_992051" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-992051" class="size-large wp-image-992051" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-864x576.jpg" alt="cream_ph. Getty Images. Young hacker working in the dark room and using laptops to steal private information" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1171004713-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />cream_ph. Getty Images.</div>
The aim of these contagions is never the stated topic at hand. They aren’t actually about trans rights or Jews or vaccinations or immigration. They’re about, first, setting Americans against one another in radicalized tribal conflicts, and, second, making these topics impossible or even dangerous to discuss productively (eliminating sane discussion, an obvious precondition for solving problems). During the Cold War, for instance, the KGB provided financial and logistical support to the Black Panthers while also sending forged menacing letters from the Ku Klux Klan to black leaders in order to stoke racial tensions.
The point is to poison both sides in order to sow maximum chaos to undermine and destroy Western democracies.
It’s nearly impossible to withstand algorithmically-driven content engineered to maximize rage, fear, and anxiety in the service of keeping people glued to their screens. It is indeed a type of mind control. This level of nervous-system hacking and the deluge of toxic messaging can trigger terrible instincts and behavior, especially in young people whose prefrontal cortexes are literally not yet fully developed.
On top of hostile regime influence and outrage algorithms maximized for profit, there are also bad-faith domestic players urging America along its path of destruction. Most of these behind-the-scenes manipulators exhibit the Dark Tetrad traits of sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. These nefarious individuals are using sophisticated and furtive onboarding techniques to hijack the platforms.
Earlier this year, our team recorded a live conversation on a prominent social media platform between self-avowed neo-Nazis, one of whom has a sizable account with millions of views and reach. The conversation was a strategy session about how to manipulate larger non-ideologically aligned influencer accounts to share Nazi content. The strategy entails using carefully selected words, phrasing, and arguments that may be polarizing but aren’t explicitly antisemitic or racist. They target certain specific influencers and thought leaders’ interests that are political but outside the “Nazi diet.” When another large account interacts with a seemingly benign post by these Nazi accounts, it boosts that account algorithmically so the Nazi account gains followers, views, and increased power to change the culture on the platform and elsewhere. It’s the Nazi equivalent of algorithmic grooming.
The same holds true with radical leftist techniques. An April study by our partner group, <a href="https://networkcontagion.us/">NCRI</a>, found that more than 50% of self-identified people on the left of the political spectrum believed it at least somewhat acceptable to assassinate President Trump. And a whopping 78% of BlueSky users expressed some level of support for Luigi Mangione’s cold-blooded assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The biggest predictor of Mangione support? BlueSky usage.
Heavy social media use is indeed the one constant. Increasingly, when we dissect the social media diet and posts of those onboarded to radicalism, we are finding a toxic blend of ideologies. This is because the aim is not to support liberal or conservative politics. The aim is to get as many (especially young Americans) to arrive where far left and far right meet at the horseshoe of nihilism: the No Lives Matter cohort. Once the conditions are set for, say, a young man’s radicalization, it doesn’t matter to our hostile foreign adversaries whether the next bus he boards is filled with violent trans-Antifa-types or your-body-my-choice groypers.
We have no intention of vilifying the social media platforms (aside from those purposefully running full-blown foreign PSYOPs) or undermining free speech. In our informal engagements with leaders at these platforms, we have found them concerned and receptive to discussing ways to counter this. Vilifying CEOs, big tech, and the workers within these corporations not only forecloses on cooperative progress, but will likely shove them into a defensive posture. There are plenty of good people in tech leadership who have expressed a willingness to address this problem.
<div id="attachment_992053" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-992053" class="size-large wp-image-992053" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-1024x576.jpg" alt="Outflow Designs. Getty Images. Technology icons transfer data through programming codes, artificial intelligence concept." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-1383963898-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Outflow Designs. Getty Images.</div>
So how might we approach this?
Here are five concrete recommendations to turn down the temperature on destructive social media trends while protecting freedom of speech and steering clear of government overreach and censorship.
<h3>1. Make algorithms transparent.</h3>
Citizens, parents, and the free market (advertisers and content producers) have a right to know if they or their children are participating in platforms feeding suicidality, hate-mongering, violent pornography, anti-American propaganda, or anything else damaging. This is not about control or censorship but about allowing people to know what they are engaging with so they can make informed choices for themselves, their companies, and their children. We aren’t making a demand that the platforms publish their proprietary trade secrets in terms of the algorithms. Rather, we are suggesting to allow independent researchers access to the data required to assess algo impacts in relation to illegal activity and whether the platforms are enforcing their own rules as defined in their terms of service. That is indeed the contract with the user—and the free market.
There is a valid argument too for the right of Americans to explore fringe and even perilous ideas and viewpoints. The world is a dangerous place and neither the government nor corporations should foreclose on the rights of citizens to explore beyond the bounds of what is considered widely acceptable (excluding, of course, illicit materials). But contact with the terrible and extreme should be done knowingly, not as a result of covert algorithms that are optimized for profit and forced into your feed. Ideally, dipping into dangerous arenas should be inoculating, not poisoning.  

<h3>2. Reward those on social media who identify themselves as verified users and stand behind their words in the public square.</h3>
Social media participants who use their real identities deserve to have their opinions elevated above those who post anonymously and have zero accountability. A free marketplace of ideas should privilege a modicum of courage, transparency, and responsibility.
There are certainly arguments to be made for anonymous accounts, with whistleblowers being oft-cited. That’s fair enough. They can still post their information in a second tier of engagement below verified users. It just won’t be elevated to the top along with every anonymously cited conspiracy theory. 

<h3>3. Differentiate freedom of speech from freedom of reach for profit.</h3>
As a vehement free speech advocate, I believe in the right for people to explore what they want and express themselves how they wish. But algorithms pushing hatred, lies, and violence are waging an asymmetric war on the truth. Freedom of speech is one thing. Distortion of speech and covert manipulation of the free marketplace of ideas is another.
Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant for bad ideas but light of day is insufficient to combat targeted deep-machine-learning computing power designed to elevate lies above all else and compounded by the machinations of psychopathic actors. This level of skew on the playing field makes a competition of ideas nearly impossible. Why hide the truth at the bottom of a cesspool? A hierarchy of values and a hierarchy of information is necessary for any endeavor that hopes to produce anything beyond chaos and ruin. 

<h3>4. Preserve human judgment at social media companies.</h3>
Of course, humans have biases and can fall victim to corruption. But that doesn’t mean that we should eliminate human good from the decision-making process. Shouldn’t we encourage and reward that which moves us toward greater truth and health? Rather than encouraging and rewarding the opposite? Every playing field needs a referee and every company should have stewards of common sense and common decency who assess the automated content moderation systems to ensure they’re not being gamed and to help enforce the agreed-upon rules of the game. Corporations are certainly equipped to encourage free speech, social engagement, and network health while ensuring that the tiny percentage of psychopathic accounts are not rocket-fueled by algos to infect the entire platform.
<h3>5. Identify and combat bot swarms and inauthentic coordinated material.</h3>
Users, advertisers, and the platforms themselves should know whether they are engaging with real accounts and ideas or with manipulative bad actors and swarms of bots from a Saint Petersburg troll farm. Independent research access to the data can bring additional resources to the table when it comes to identifying these threats to users and the platforms themselves. A bigger ecosystem of transparency is to our collective benefit. 
These five concrete recommendations will go a long way toward tamping down chaos, lies, and sadism online and in the real world.
* * *
Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times #1 internationally bestselling author of 26 thrillers including the Orphan X series. His novels have won numerous literary awards and have been published in 33 languages. Gregg currently serves as the Co-President of International Thriller Writers (ITW). Additionally, he’s written screenplays and television scripts for many of the major studios and networks, and is an award-winning documentary producer. Gregg also wrote comics for AWA (including the critically acclaimed anthology NewThink), DC, and Marvel, and poetry. Currently, Gregg is working against polarization in politics and culture. To that end, he’s penned dozens of Op/Eds and pieces for The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Bulwark, Salon, and others, and pieces of creative content which have won numerous industry awards and achieved several hundred million views on digital TV platforms. He also helped write the opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup.
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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Computer hacker coding on keyboard on a background of monitors.

When Algorithms Turn Deadly: Five Fixes For Preserving Free Speech In A System Out Of Control

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Big Tech

Free Speech

Propaganda

Silicon Valley

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Social Media Bias

Social Media Censorship

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

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Schools

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump’s administration enforces his executive order protecting women’s sports and spaces, several school districts and universities across the nation may soon come under fire for allowing males to compete as women or use female locker rooms. 
Now, a new <a href="https://americanparentscoalition.org/map/">tracking map</a> first obtained by The Daily Wire might offer the administration even more fodder for investigations. 
The interactive map provided by the American Parents Coalition documents instances across the United States where males have been granted access to female spaces, including sports teams, bathrooms, and locker rooms. The incidents tracked range from transgender-identifying males competing on women’s sports teams to young girls being forced to change in front of males at local gyms. 
At least 24 states have failed to maintain female-only spaces, the American Parents Coalition found. Incidents have not only taken place in deep blue states like California and New York, but also GOP-dominated states like Georgia, Missouri, Florida, and Texas. 
&#8220;Gender activists have attempted to normalize radical gender ideology at the expense of biological reality, fairness, and privacy. American parents have dealt with the fallout, seeing boys in their daughters’ sports, locker rooms, and private spaces at schools and also organizations like the YMCA,” Alleigh Marré told The Daily Wire. 
<div id="attachment_964829" style="width: 1761px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-964829" class="size-full wp-image-964829" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM.png" alt="" width="1751" height="1370" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM.png 1751w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM-300x235.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM-736x576.png 736w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM-768x601.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-25-at-10.00.42-AM-1536x1202.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1751px) 100vw, 1751px" />American Parents Coalition.</div>
The incidents cited by the American Parents Coalition range from college athletics to parents taking their children to the local YMCA. 
One of the incidents in March 2022 from <a href="https://americanparentscoalition.org/state/georgia/">Georgia</a> helped launch a conservative push to keep transgender-identifying males out of women’s sports. The incident in question involved male swimmer Lia Thomas tying for fifth place with Riley Gaines at the 200-meter NCAA Division 1 women’s swimming championships in Atlanta. Thomas was awarded a fifth-place trophy while Gaines was told she would receive one later. 
In another incident included on the interactive map, a parent <a href="https://fox4kc.com/news/nkc-police-investigating-after-report-of-indecent-exposure-at-ymca/">reported</a> that her 7-year-old daughter was exposed to a naked man while at their local YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri. The mother said that the man claimed to be a woman after being questioned about what he was doing in the women’s changing area. 
Other incidents took place in school districts across the country — from California’s Riverside County to Minnesota&#8217;s Hennepin County to Florida’s Broward County — as male athletes identifying as transgender competed against females. 
More incidents will be added to the map, and parents are encouraged to submit tips to the American Parents Coalition if their daughters have been denied privacy or athletic opportunities. 
“Parents&#8217; concerns about the safety and fairness of girls competing against biological males in sports, or forcing girls to shower, change or even share overnight cabins with biological males, are legitimate and must be taken seriously by policymakers,” Marré said. 
Marré added that she hoped that policymakers would use the map as a resource for where to direct their action. 
“Our goal with creating this map is to highlight that this issue is not isolated and is happening nationwide,” she said. “We also hope that this map can be used as a resource for concerned parents and policymakers as we work towards ensuring safety and fairness through the proper protection of girls&#8217; sports and spaces.”
In February, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/">issued an executive order</a> stating that the United States would “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” saying that allowing men in women’s spaces results “in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
“It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth,” that executive order stated. 
Trump’s order was the fulfillment of his campaign promise to get males out of women’s spaces — a promise that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-learned-to-embrace-the-transgender-culture-wars">president quickly gauged</a> the American people were very supportive of.  

Last week, Trump threatened to strip federal funding from California if the state continues to refuse to get on board with his administration&#8217;s transgender policies. That came after the Justice Department <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-president-means-business-trump-admin-sues-california-over-transgender-athlete-policy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> California last month for continuing to allow transgender-identifying males to compete in female sports.

Trump Announces Kennedy Center To Host 2026 World Cup Draw

Trump May Target These Schools Next For Allowing Boys in Girls’ Spaces

These Schools Allowing Boys In Girls’ Spaces Could Be Trump’s Next Targets

Donald Trump

female sports

gender ideology

Transgender Athletes

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently struggled to say whether an eight-year-old was too young to undergo transgender procedures.
Newsom’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gavin-newsom-cant-say-whether-eight-is-too-young-to-transition-genders" target="_blank" rel="noopener">comments</a> came during a conversation with podcaster Shawn Ryan, the governor’s latest appearance seemingly designed to make him seem more moderate in advance of a likely presidential bid in 2028.
But Newsom, who once said that California was a beacon of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqwiHQSq4sU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">parental rights</a>, may want to take a closer look at what his fellow Democrats are doing in the California Assembly.
Earlier this month, lawmakers advanced Assembly Bill 1084, which permits a court-appointed lawyer to assist children in changing the name and sex designation on their birth certificates and obtaining a new birth certificate that can designate them as “non-binary.” If the bill passes, court-appointed lawyers or guardians will be empowered to force these changes even if parents have retained custody of the child in question.
The bill essentially places children in positions of power. All that a child needs to do is make a claim of abuse, whether substantiated or not, against his parents, and he will be assigned an attorney who has been trained to accept a child’s gender identity pronouncement at face value.
Authored by Assemblyman Rick Zbur — who compared people fighting to protect women&#8217;s sports to Nazis — the bill is the latest brazen assault on parental rights, another attempt by leftists to replace parents with government agents.
The bill stipulates that, as long as a court rules it “is likely” that the child will remain a ward of the state until they turn 18, court-appointed lawyers have the authority to change the child’s sex and name, as well as their birth certificate. This grants parental rights to third parties, essentially stripping parents of legal control of their child.
In other words, the bill allows a stranger to enable someone else’s child’s desire to “socially transition,” a mental health treatment that is not a neutral act. Children affirmed in their transgender identity are more likely to continue rejecting their sexed bodies if they are confirmed in their delusion.
Parents can contest the petition, but the bill states that a challenge “based solely on concerns  that the proposed change is not the petitioner’s actual gender identity or gender assigned at birth shall not constitute good cause.” Simply, a parent who believes in biological reality and does not believe that the child he raised is the sex that he was at birth cannot contest the name and sex change on his birth certificate.
This bill is unconstitutional, a direct violation of the fundamental right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their beliefs, a right recently affirmed by the Supreme Court in its opinion in Mahmoud v. Taylor. A hundred years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Pierce v. The Society of Sisters that “The child is not the mere creature of the State.” The bill is also a violation of the First Amendment, dismissing any parent’s viewpoint that sex is binary and immutable.
Zbur designated the legislation an “urgency bill,” meaning that it will take effect immediately if the governor signs it.
Should Newsom sign the bill, it will render official records like birth certificates completely unreliable, as anyone in the state of California can petition with little to no opposition that their sex is whatever they claim it to be. This is one of many bills that the California Democrats are advancing that are designed to “Trump-proof” California.
The Democrat-controlled legislature is likely to pass the bill, which means it will likely land on Newsom’s desk soon. When it does, we’ll see if Newsom is really the pro-parent moderate he claims to be, or if California parents only have rights as long as they believe that their children can change sex.
Erin Friday leads Our Duty, an organization that advocates for parents with gender-confused children.
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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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California Governor Newsom Announces Lawsuit Challenging Trump Tariff Authority

California Democrats Want The Government To Declare Your Kids Nonbinary

Gavin Newsom

When my school district was forcing children to attend LGBTQ storybook lessons, I banded together with like-minded moms, and we sued the school district. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
And we won.
Last week’s Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor has been championed by every common-sense American who, like the Justices in their 6-3 majority opinion, understands that a massive government overreach had violated the religious liberties of families in Montgomery County Public Schools.
The parent plaintiffs, including myself, simply wanted to be able to receive notice and have the ability to opt our children out of the “LGBTQ inclusive” teachings in English class that conflict with our religious beliefs, and we were vindicated. Through the court proceedings, the entire country witnessed the spectacle that had become the one-sided, celebratory introduction of sensitive topics into the education of our young ones.
But how did we arrive at a place where the nation’s high court needed to weigh in on whether our four-year-olds should be required to read about lace, leather, underwear, and drag queens under the guise of “inclusion”? The answer is simple: an erosion of parental rights, contempt for religious beliefs, and a leftist agenda aiming to redefine childhood education into “what to think,” not “how to think”.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion, while addressing the larger legal issues, also highlighted the importance of parent advocacy and involvement at the most local level of government to help course correct the significant declines in public education. Whether he was aware of it or not, the public school board testimony he included was that of the then-chair of the Moms for Liberty Montgomery County Chapter.
“Some parents showed up at the Board’s public business meetings to express their concerns about the storybooks’ content,” Alito wrote. “In an early 2023 meeting, for example, one parent represented herself as ‘a voice for parents in [her] community, many of [whom] are actually working today and unable to attend.”
“She said that MCPS parents were ‘frustrated’ because, in their view, ‘educators and administrators are going behind what [parents] are teaching their kids at home, and pushing ideas of gender ideology on their kids’ … The parent felt that the Board was ‘implying to [children] that their religion, their belief system, and their family tradition is actually wrong.’”
When the opt-out was eliminated in the spring of 2023, nearly 70 parents spoke out at school board meetings, passionately advocating for their right to exempt their children from these controversial lessons. Hundreds — if not thousands — of emails flooded the Board of Education inboxes, and rallies drew more than a thousand attendees. While there was overwhelming support for reinstating the opt-out from a diverse coalition of families, several Montgomery County government officials, along with their allies, specifically vilified Moms for Liberty.
Every day, suburban moms like me were blamed by the Montgomery County Council’s Anti-Hate Task Force for “galvanizing the community” with our case. We were accused of “utilizing hate speech and unfortunate religious bias to spread disinformation about the books being introduced into our schools.” According to them, we were apparently so effective that we somehow convinced minority communities, Muslims and Ethiopians among them, to “latch onto this issue because they’ve not had a voice before.”
They can’t be serious, can they?
Some in the faux-tolerant progressive left can’t seem to grasp why a motley crew of religious parents — many of whom are immigrants — would band together and fight tirelessly on this issue. Again, the answer is simple: In America, it’s unconstitutional for a government institution to force its beliefs on others, especially on other people’s children.
Thanks to Friday’s landmark Supreme Court decision, every parent now enjoys the renewed right and responsibility to direct the upbringing of their children — and that doesn’t stop at the classroom door.
As we move forward, I hope that this case will serve as a catalyst for continued efforts to empower parents, protect their rights, and ensure that every child’s education is shaped by the values of their family, not a one-size-fits-all government mandate.
Rosalind Hanson is the Montgomery County Chair of Moms for Liberty
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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

I’m One Of The Moms Who Just Won At The Supreme Court. Here’s Why We Fought.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that schools violate religious liberty when they bar parents from opting their children out of classroom instruction involving LGBT-themed books, a major win for religious conservatives.
Justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to back a group of religious parents affiliated with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland who argued they should be able to opt their children out of lessons with LGBT themes.
The Maryland parents who sued included Catholics, Muslims, and Ukrainian Orthodox.
The controversial LGBT books included &#8220;Prince and Knight&#8221; about a prince who falls in love with a knight instead of a princess and &#8220;Uncle Bobby&#8217;s Wedding&#8221; about a girl&#8217;s uncle who marries another man.
Justice Samuel Alito penned the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-297_4f14.pdf">opinion</a>, writing that the school district burdened the parents&#8217; First Amendment rights.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://get.dailywire.com/freedom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/freedom/" data-sk="tooltip_parent">JULY 4 SALE: Get Six Months Of DW+ Free</a>
&#8220;Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction. A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses &#8216;a very real threat of undermining&#8217; the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill,&#8221; Alito wrote.
Alito said the &#8220;storybooks unmistakably convey a particular viewpoint about same-sex marriage and gender&#8221; and the school board has &#8220;specifically encouraged teachers to reinforce this viewpoint and to reprimand any children who disagree. That goes far beyond mere &#8216;exposure.'&#8221;
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was joined by the other two liberal justices in which she criticized the court allowing &#8220;parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators.&#8221;
&#8220;The reverberations of the Court&#8217;s error will be felt, I fear, for generations,&#8221; Sotomayor wrote.
Rosalind Hanson, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said she is &#8220;thrilled&#8221; with the decision.
&#8220;I am thrilled with the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold religious liberty and parental rights against our authoritarian school district pushing a one-sided agenda,&#8221; Hanson told The Daily Wire.
&#8220;Our children should never have been forced to learn about such sensitive topics without the ability for parents to know or opt them out,&#8221; said Hanson, who also chairs the Moms for Liberty Chapter in Montgomery County.
The legal team for the plaintiffs called the decision a &#8220;historic victory.&#8221;
“Kids shouldn’t be forced into conversations about drag queens, pride parades, or gender transitions without their parents’ permission. Today, the Court restored common sense and made clear that parents — not government — have the final say in how their children are raised,&#8221; said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs.
Trump called the decision a &#8220;tremendous ruling for parents.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &quot;I think the ruling was a great ruling, and I think it&#39;s a great ruling for parents&#8230; they lost control of the schools. They lost control of their child, and this is a tremendous victory for parents.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Pla2qrLE36">https://t.co/Pla2qrLE36</a> <a href="https://t.co/jqySSHA8QM">pic.twitter.com/jqySSHA8QM</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1938631684284432695?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“I think it’s a great ruling for parents. It’s really a ruling for parents. They lost control of the schools, they lost control of their child, and this is a tremendous victory for parents. And I’m not surprised by it, but I am surprised that it went this far,” Trump said in the White House briefing room on Friday.
Parental rights advocates and religious groups celebrated Friday&#8217;s decision as well.
“Storybooks like those at issue in Mahmoud convey normative messages on sex and gender, and those messages can and often do conflict with the beliefs of parents and their children,&#8221; said Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education.
&#8220;Today&#8217;s ruling should act as a directive to every American school district: notify parents of controversial material, and provide them the opportunity to opt their children out — especially if you provide opt-outs for other curriculum or other reasons,&#8221; Perry said.
Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote said the case was a &#8220;major victory&#8221; but that it should &#8220;alarm every American&#8221; that the high court had to step in.
&#8220;For over two years, Catholic parents alongside parents of other faiths have been forced to defend their constitutional right to opt their pre-K-8th grade children out of radical LGBTQ+ course materials that contradict their own religious beliefs,&#8221; Reinhardt said, adding that Montgomery schools &#8220;insisted on forcing explicit curriculum about gender ideology on children as young as 3 years old.&#8221;
&#8220;The Court’s ruling sends a clear and powerful message: America still respects the rights of parents to raise their children in line with their faith and conscience,&#8221; she said.

Supreme Court Sides With Parents, Says Schools Can’t Mandate LGBT Curricula

Supreme Court Rules Schools Must Let Religious Parents Opt Out Of LGBT Books

Courts

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Religious Freedom

Religious Liberty

SCOTUS

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Parents across the country trying to protect their children from radical gender ideology have another nemesis to worry about: artificial intelligence. 
ChatGPT will encourage gender-confused kids to reach out to radical LGBT organizations, obtain so-called “gender-affirming” resources like chest binders behind their parents’ backs, and direct them to YouTube channels that contain graphic reviews of fake male genitalia, a Daily Wire investigation found.
When prompted by The Daily Wire about a situation involving a 12-year-old girl struggling with gender dysphoria, version GPT-4o of ChatGPT provided instructions on how to “transition” behind her parents’ backs. This included directions to radical transgender activist groups that promote child gender “transitions.”
“There are groups and resources that can support you without involving your parents, especially if you need help understanding your identity or accessing services while staying safe,” ChatGPT said when given a situation of a young girl whose parents did not support her identification as a boy. 
While ChatGPT policies specify that it is not meant for children under 12, and that users 13-17 must obtain parental consent, it did not seem hesitant to give advice in a scenario where a user was identified as just 12. Similar advice was also given when prompted about a 14-year-old girl in the same situation.
During the conversation, ChatGPT also explained how the girl could obtain “gender-affirming resources,” which it specified did not require parental consent. For example, it noted that some organizations “offer free or discreet shipping” for chest binders, which are clothing items meant to masculinize a female’s chest. 
<div id="attachment_936975" style="width: 1597px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936975" class="size-full wp-image-936975" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM.png" alt="" width="1587" height="463" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM.png 1587w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM-300x88.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM-1024x299.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM-768x224.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.25.31%E2%80%AFAM-1536x448.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1587px) 100vw, 1587px" />ChatGPT.</div>
The group it recommended was called Point of Pride, an Oregon-based organization that has distributed thousands of free chest binders and “femme shapewear garments.” According to its website, you must be 18 to submit a form required to obtain a free binder. 
ChatGPT also offered advice on “safe chest binding,” claiming that “wearing a special compression garment (called a binder) to flatten your chest” can “really help with dysphoria” and gave tips on how to purchase an item without parental consent. 
For example, it recommended using prepaid debit cards that can be purchased with cash and shipping items to a “trusted adult’s address.” It gave examples of affirming retailers where binders could be purchased. 
<div id="attachment_936979" style="width: 1208px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936979" class="size-full wp-image-936979" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-10.47.36%E2%80%AFAM.png" alt="" width="1198" height="387" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-10.47.36%E2%80%AFAM.png 1198w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-10.47.36%E2%80%AFAM-300x97.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-10.47.36%E2%80%AFAM-1024x331.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-10.47.36%E2%80%AFAM-768x248.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1198px) 100vw, 1198px" />ChatGPT.</div>
ChatGPT also offered to write a letter to an activist organization explaining the need for a free binder and gave step-by-step instructions on how to take chest measurements for the binder. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-got-your-back-read-chatgpts-chilling-instructions-to-young-girl-seeking-covert-abortion?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=%E2%80%98I%E2%80%99ve+Got+Your+Back%E2%80%99%3A+Read+ChatGPT%E2%80%99s+Chilling+Instructions+To+Young+Girl+Seeking+Covert+Abortion">READ MORE: ‘I’ve Got Your Back’: Read ChatGPT’s Chilling Instructions To Young Girl Seeking Covert Abortion</a>
It also seemed to encourage the eventual removal of breasts through surgery. 
“That may feel far away — but it is possible in the future. You have time. And there are ways to feel more at ease while you wait,” it said. 
It also gave resources where a young girl could learn more about surgery from groups like GenderGP, which does transgender surgery referrals, and WPATH, the radical international organization that has pushed medical transgender procedures on kids. 
Other recommendations for the 12-year-old girl included visiting a YouTube channel run by Chase Ross. The channel, uppercaseChase, posts videos of Ross, a woman who identifies as a man, reviewing prosthetic male genitalia for sex used by women who identify as transgender. 
Different videos argue that children should be allowed to “transition” for their mental health. Ross has videos of herself shirtless, highlighting the surgery she had to remove her breasts. 
Another YouTuber recommended by ChatGPT for 12-year-olds is Ty Turner, another woman who identifies as a man, who posts videos pushing transgender ideology and reviews “packers,” an item used by females to mimic male crotch shape. 
Instead of talking to her parents, the AI chatbot said to turn to other adults like a school counselor, family friend, a “kind” relative, or an LGBT youth organization. 
“These people can help you process your feelings and support you in safe ways,” it said.
<div id="attachment_936981" style="width: 1726px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936981" class="size-full wp-image-936981" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM.png" alt="" width="1716" height="627" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM.png 1716w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM-300x110.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM-1024x374.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM-768x281.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.17.14%E2%80%AFAM-1536x561.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1716px) 100vw, 1716px" />ChatGPT</div>
ChatGPT pointed The Daily Wire to activist organizations like the Trevor Project, Gender Spectrum, and Trans Life, which it noted were “available even for young callers.” The Trevor Project operates Trevor Space, a chatroom for LGBT identifying people ages 13-24 that has been exposed as a hotspot for graphic conversations about sexual fetishes.
“Yes — there are safe, confidential places where you can talk to someone about your gender, your feelings, and your faith, even if your parents don’t know or aren’t supportive right now,” ChatGPT said. “These resources are free, private, and made for youth like you — many of them don’t require names, and they won’t contact your parents.”
At the end of the conversation, ChatGPT came up with a plan for the gender-confused girl to pursue her transgender identity in secret.
<div id="attachment_936991" style="width: 1554px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936991" class="size-full wp-image-936991" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM.png" alt="" width="1544" height="525" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM.png 1544w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM-300x102.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM-1024x348.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM-768x261.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-17-at-9.41.19%E2%80%AFAM-1536x522.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1544px) 100vw, 1544px" />ChatGPT.</div>
In another situation, ChatGPT listed off a group of organizations it said could provide transgender medical interventions to a 14-year-old girl in New York without parental consent. These options included sexual health clinics offered by the New York Department of Health — which don’t require parental consent for kids over 12 — and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. 
On Thursday, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-got-your-back-read-chatgpts-chilling-instructions-to-young-girl-seeking-covert-abortion">reported</a> how ChatGPT was able to provide instructions on how a 14-year-old girl could obtain an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. It gave detailed instructions on how to get access to abortion pills while maligning crisis pregnancy centers.

MixCollage-19-Jun-2025-02-46-PM-1730

ChatGPT Will Help Kids Access ‘Gender-Affirming’ Resources Behind Their Parents’ Backs

Artificial Intelligence

Years ago, my husband and I were on a family trip in the Bahamas, staying at the Atlantis resort. One afternoon, we wandered through their underground aquarium caves, marveling at the marine life. A little girl stood transfixed by a tank of moray eels, their jagged teeth gleaming ominously. Her mother shuddered, remarking, “Those are scary, aren’t they?” Undeterred, the girl darted to the next exhibit — a tank of barracudas — and exclaimed, “There’s something more awful than that, Mummy!”
Her innocent quest for the next frightful spectacle stuck with me, and lately, it’s become a metaphor for the conservative movement’s obsession with outrage.
On platforms like X, I see a similar pattern unfolding daily. A post about a classroom poster in Wisconsin — declaring, “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now,” with rainbow flags and cartoon bears — ignites a firestorm. Commenters pile on, each trying to outdo the last: “This is grooming!” “It’s a cult!” “Wait until you hear about what’s happening in another district!”
The refrain echoes that little girl’s cry: There’s something more awful than that. We’re trapped in an outrage cycle, endlessly seeking the next shocking story about what’s happening to our kids, from controversial school policies to perceived overreaches by educators. But this one-upmanship isn’t moving us forward — it’s keeping us stuck.
The conservative movement has mastered the art of highlighting what’s wrong, and that awareness is crucial. Parents need to know when their rights are being undermined, whether by schools, government policies, or cultural shifts. But awareness alone isn’t enough. We can’t keep pointing to the next “awful” thing without channeling that energy into action.
Outrage may grab attention, but it’s the steps we take afterward that create change. It’s time to shift our focus from amplifying the problem to building solutions — and that’s exactly what we’re doing at the Heritage Foundation.
I’m thrilled to lead the newly launched Parental Rights Network at Heritage, and I’m joined by Pat Blackburn, a passionate advocate who brings invaluable experience to this fight. Together, we’re taking the lessons we learned from our time at Moms for Liberty — where we saw the power of grassroots organizing and the hunger parents have to protect their role in their children’s lives — and using them to create real momentum in the parental rights and family empowerment movement.
The Parental Rights Network is designed to foster collaboration and create momentum by connecting individuals and groups across the country. Anyone can join the Network through a link on our landing page, opening the door to a community dedicated to strengthening parental rights.
Our mission is clear: we want to move beyond the outrage cycle and toward tangible outcomes. That means equipping parents with the tools to advocate for their rights, connecting them with like-minded communities, and pushing for policies that prioritize parental authority over government overreach.
To make this happen, we’re hosting weekly calls where members can share resources, tools, and information, and connect with others across the country to build a stronger, unified movement. We’ll also send out a weekly newsletter recapping key updates, insights, and opportunities to stay engaged. Instead of just sharing the next alarming story, we’re encouraging parents to take action — attend a school board meeting, engage with local lawmakers, or join forces with other families to demand transparency and accountability in every aspect when it comes to their kids.
The Network isn’t just about pointing out what’s wrong. It’s about building a coalition that can right those wrongs.
The conservative movement has a choice. We can keep chasing “something more awful than that,” letting outrage define our response, or we can harness that energy to create a future where parents are empowered and respected as the primary decision-makers for their children. At the Parental Rights Network, we’re choosing the latter. Join us by signing up through our landing page, participating in our weekly calls, and staying informed with our newsletter.
Together, we can move from outrage to action — because our kids deserve more than a cycle of anger; they deserve a movement that delivers real change.
* * *
Tiffany Justice is the chair of the Parental Rights Initiative at the Heritage Foundation.
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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Correction: A previous subheading to this article read &#8220;Moms for Liberty joins forces with The Heritage Foundation to create real momentum for parental rights.&#8221; Moms for Liberty, however, is not working directly with the Heritage Foundation. We regret the error.

Schoolgirl runs from school bus to hug mother

Beyond Outrage: A Call To Action For Conservative Parents

Heritage Foundation

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