A new video that focuses on the gender-transition madness sweeping America has resonated with the Twittersphere with more than half a million views as of Wednesday.

The video, posted to Twitter on Sunday on the Libs of TikTok account, shows an unidentified man sitting in the front passenger’s seat of a car as he recounts an experience he said he had with a doctor.

The date the video was made isn’t clear.

“So we just took my 3-year-old son to the doctor for a checkup — my 3-year-old son,” the man begins. “And there’s a reason why I’m emphasizing that, and you’re about to know why.

“So my wife and I are waiting in the room with our son, and the doctor comes in, and he sees my son sitting there at the table, and the first question that he asks him is, ‘Are you a boy or are you a girl?’”

The man said he and his wife exchanged “what the f***” looks of concern and bafflement.

This is really scary. Dad claims doctor asked his 3-year-old if he’s a boy or a girl at a routine check-up pic.twitter.com/rwOVNJeDHU

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 14, 2022

“So luckily my son understands obvious tenets of biology at 3 years old and says that he’s a boy, just like his chart says,” the man said.

“The rest of the appointment I couldn’t even focus because I’m wondering why in the world this guy is asking the question. And then I remembered, ‘Oh, yeah, I live in California.’”

The man noted that his concern is not just based on his experience, but what is taking place around him.

“Call me paranoid, but this is where I think we’re heading based on other things that have happened,” he said.

This is sick & evil.

Boston Children’s “gender clinic” sees toddlers as young as 2 & 3 years old.

Claims babies in the womb know they’re transgender.

Warns parents if they don’t “support” gender identity & trans, it will lead kids to suicide.

pic.twitter.com/r89VQC0sy4

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) August 14, 2022

Federal Appeals Court Rules Transgenderism Is Protected as a Disability

The man referenced a 2018 story from The Washington Times headlined “Religious parents lose custody of transgender teen for refusing hormone treatment.”

In the clip, the man also referenced a 2019 BBC story with the headline, “Texas parents battle in court for custody of transgender child.”

The man also cites a 2019 Heritage Foundation article that said the Equality Act “could lead to more parents losing custody of kids who want ‘gender transition.’”

Reminds me of this video where this mom explained how her toddler came out as trans after the doctor asked if he’s a boy or a girl. https://t.co/8oq461Ntlc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 14, 2022

“So again, call me paranoid, but I’m wondering if the doctor’s asking the question of my son to see if he can establish a pattern over time that shows that my son wants to be a girl,” the man said in the video.

“But here’s the thing: My son is 3. I’m not even going to let him choose what he wants for dinner. And some days, my son thinks he’s a dinosaur. But I’m not going to let him transition to a dinosaur. …

“I don’t think it’s going to be long before we start seeing parents lose custody of their young kids because they’re not letting them transition to the opposite gender. And I think pediatricians are going to be the ones who are going to start calling it out.”

CRT is treason, and teacher’s unions are enemies of the state because they are pushing it and should be tried for treason. It only serves to weaken our country. [US Patriot]

To allow schools to be free of Critical Race Theory (CRT) parents must break the unions, parental rights activists say.

This school year, Moms for Liberty leaders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich have mounted a nationwide campaign to end union control of schools.

“Let’s start the new school year right—by ending the reign of the powerful teachers’ unions who care more about pushing woke ideology and rewriting forms to say ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mom’ or ‘dad,’ than they do about improving reading scores or closing the growing learning gaps in our country,” the group’s press release reads.

Teachers have pushed CRT into the classroom at a time when many students are failing to learn how to read, said Justice.

According to nationwide surveys, only about a third of 4th Grade students read proficiently at a 4th Grade reading level in 2019.

At the same time, reports of teachers giving children political instruction in CRT, transgenderism, and other left-wing ideologies have increased greatly.

This push comes from teachers’ unions, said Descovich.

Teachers’ unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have long been bastions of Democratic political power, she said.

Rather than ensuring teachers get good pay while giving children a good education, they have focused on making education ideological, said Justice.

“What we’ve seen over the past 40 years in education in America is a real shift away from giving children practicable skills to making them into social justice warriors,” she said.

Moms for Liberty encourages teachers to leave these unions to stop their promotion of left-wing education, Descovich said.

“It’s vital that teachers understand there [are] options out there, they do not have to be a member of the union,” she said.

For many parents, COVID-19 led to new discoveries about schools, Descovich said. During the pandemic, parents got to see the lessons their kids received. Often, they didn’t like what they saw.

“I think they’ve been shocked to see gender ideology being pushed in the classrooms, the division between race, the Critical Race Theory,” she said.

While the pandemic was a time for parents to learn, now is a time for them to act, Moms for Liberty leaders said.

“The start of the 2022-2023 school year is a perfect time to end the woke union bosses’ death grip on innovation, excellence, and freedom in public education,” the Moms for Liberty press release reads.

Union Busting

Moms for Liberty has a two-part strategy to break union power, according to its press release.

It will encourage teachers to leave unions in states where they can do so, and it will inform parents about school performance.

As unions like the NEA have spread across America, they have allied with school system administrators to protect a bloated bureaucracy, said Justice.

“We see more and more money being spent on public schools,” she said. “And yet, the teachers aren’t being compensated better.”

Although the Supreme Court has ruled that it’s illegal to force teachers to pay union dues if they don’t want to, sometimes unions do so anyway.

In many states, even non-union members have to pay unions for their role in collective bargaining. In other states, social pressure to remain in a union plays a major role, said Descovich.

“The unions will say, ‘If you get in trouble, if somebody accuses you of something, the only person that’s going to be there for you with us,” she said.

Money from union dues gives unions immense political power. The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers gave $29 million combined to Democrats and other liberal groups.

The unions also play a major role in encouraging a left-wing curriculum, Justice said.

“The unions have become the foot soldiers for the Left in America, the very most progressive fringe Left,” she said.

Justice said she strongly believes American teachers are already breaking from the unions.

“I think that the education curtain has been pulled back, and all of America now recognizes that the union bargains for the people at the table, not for the teachers on the ground,” she said.

Parents can also pressure schools to change their curriculum, said Descovich. But often, schools have pushed back against parents.

In union strongholds, some Moms for Liberty supporters have lost their jobs due to union member harassment of their employers, she said.

One mother got the FBI called on her. It has been a struggle to get school boards to listen to parents.

“It’s been about as nasty as you can imagine where there are union strongholds,” said Descovich.

Moms for Liberty has more than 200 nationwide chapters, Descovich said. Despite these setbacks, many chapters have met with success in placing parental rights advocates on school boards.

“The unions need to understand that teachers in schools, their primary duty is to educate children,” said Justice.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

House candidate scrubs radical views from campaign site after bitter primary fight

South Texas Democrat Michelle Vallejo won a bitter primary fight by embracing a slew of far-left policies. Now, the congressional hopeful is abandoning those progressive positions as she approaches a difficult general election campaign.

Vallejo emerged from a tight primary runoff in Texas’s 15th Congressional District in May, defeating fellow Democrat Ruben Ramirez by just 30 votes. At the time, the self-described “progressive small business owner” was openly touting her support for Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, and student debt cancellation—policy positions that landed her endorsements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.). Vallejo’s campaign site also expressed resentment for America’s “racist criminal legal system” and called to protect “trans and queer South Texans.”

But now, as Vallejo faces an uphill general election battle against Republican Monica De La Cruz, she’s running away from the same policies that helped her attract liberal primary voters just a few months ago. Between late July and mid August, internet archives show, the Democrat updated her campaign site to remove all mentions of “Medicare For All,” a “federal jobs guarantee program,” and the need to “forgive all student loan debt.” Vallejo’s “LGBTQ+ Justice” section, meanwhile, no longer includes the word “trans,” and the Democrat’s border policy blurb now calls to invest in the same immigration enforcement system she used to call “racist.”

Vallejo’s campaign site overhaul is an obvious attempt from the progressive Democrat to rebrand herself as a moderate as she runs in a newly drawn district that President Donald Trump won by nearly 3 points. It’s also an implicit admission that the Democratic Party’s liberal wing has become too “woke” for many South Texas Hispanics—a development that Republicans say has helped them make inroads in the Rio Grande Valley, a historic Democratic stronghold.

Still, Vallejo’s decision to abandon the progressive positions that defined her primary campaign could divide the district’s Democratic voters with November fast approaching. In addition to Warren and Jayapal, Vallejo earned a primary election endorsement from Lupe Votes, a liberal South Texas group that supports Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, student loan cancellation, and other progressive policies. Texas College Democrats also backed Vallejo ahead of the May primary, citing the Democrat’s “unapologetically progressive campaign.” Neither of those groups returned requests for comment. Vallejo’s campaign also did not return a request for comment.

As a whole, almost none of Vallejo’s pre-primary policy “priorities” made it to her general election campaign site.

The Democrat’s health care section used to be titled “Health Care for All” and included explicit support for a “single-payer universal healthcare system.” That section is now labeled “Affordable High Quality Health Care” and replaces the call for Medicare for All with a watered-down pledge to “expand Medicare.”

Similarly, Vallejo removed the word “climate” from her energy policy header. She also replaced her support for a Green New Deal-esque “federal jobs guarantee”—which would cost up to $44.6 trillion—with a line touting the “bipartisan infrastructure law that will bring billions of dollars to South Texas.”

Vallejo also touts her newfound bipartisan bonafides in her updated policy sections on the southern border and Second Amendment.

Her “Immigration” policy blurb—which used to be titled “Embracing the Border + Immigration Justice”—no longer attacks America’s “racist criminal legal system” and calls to “pass a pathway to Citizenship for all 11 million undocumented Americans.” Instead, it states the need to make “an investment in border infrastructure” and only naturalize illegal immigrants “who have worked hard, followed the law and contributed to their communities.” Vallejo added a line to her “End Gun Violence” section, meanwhile, that ensures voters that the Democrat “grew up shooting at gun ranges and hunting on family ranches” and “strongly supports the bipartisan gun safety bill written by Texas Sen. John Cornyn.”

Beyond the border and gun rights, Vallejo’s “LGBTQ+ Justice” policy portion once said “lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer South Texans deserve equal protection and justice.” It now reads, “Every South Texan deserves equal protection and justice.” Furthermore, Vallejo’s new segment on “Affordable Education” was once titled “Free Public College and Trade School + Eliminating Student Debt.” The Democrat’s updated version no longer calls to “forgive all student debt,” but it does note that Vallejo is “still paying off her student loans,” which she acquired as an Ivy League student at Columbia University in New York City.

There is one policy position, however, that Vallejo is standing by after her primary win. Both her old and new issue pages stress the need to “end mandatory minimum sentencing, cash bail, solitary confinement, private prisons, qualified immunity, and prioritizing investing in mental health resources and services for our community.”

Vallejo’s decision to abandon her public support for various left-wing policies comes after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the South Texas congressional hopeful to its “Red to Blue” program, which “arms top-tier candidates with organizational and fundraising support to help them continue to develop strong campaigns and win in November.” It’s unclear if the group had a hand in Vallejo’s flip-flopping, as the DCCC did not return a request for comment.

Vallejo will face De La Cruz in November. The Republican in 2020 narrowly lost to incumbent Democrat Vicente Gonzalez in a closer-than-expected race—Gonzalez subsequently opted to run in a nearby district that is more solidly blue. De La Cruz, who describes herself as a “proud small business owner” and “woman of strong faith,” has raised $2.9 million to Vallejo’s $700,000.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The U.S. Army is expected to fall nearly 40,000 troops short of its recruiting goals over the next two years. Fiscal year 2022 is expected to miss the mark by 10,000 troops, while the number in fiscal year 2023 could reach 28,000. These figures mean that this year is on track to be the Army’s worst recruiting year in almost 50 years.

The Army plans to circumvent the problem by offering $1 billion for its recruiting program and placing more emphasis on the use of its reserve units.

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command for comment, and Maj. Charles Spears of the Combined Arms Center replied to various inquiries about the state of recruiting. Spears offered several reasons for the Army’s recruiting challenges in the years ahead.

First, he said, “only 23 percent of American youth are qualified to serve without a waiver, [noting that] obesity, addiction, medical, and behavioral health are the top disqualifiers for service.”

The Army is also competing with corporate America, he said, adding that “social media’s virtual public square shapes the values and perceptions of American youth, which is increasingly unfamiliar with the benefits of Army service.”

According to Spears, the American population is “increasingly disconnected” from serving in the Army and military service, Spears said. “Oftentimes, influencers [like parents, teachers, and coaches] do not recommend military service.” He also added that “the share of youth who have seriously considered military service is at a historic low of nine percent.”

Finally, Spears said, “the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited the ability of recruiters to interact with prospects in person, [and] also exacerbated academic and physical fitness challenges, limiting the pool of qualified applicants.” As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, there has been a nine percent decrease in Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores as well as increased applicate obesity.

In addition to these factors, servicemembers have expressed other concerns that they say have contributed to the recruitment crisis.

Army Boots on the Ground

The Epoch Times spoke to an active-duty Army soldier with over 15 years of service on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. He is gravely alarmed about the Army falling short on recruitment numbers.

“In the past,” he said, “the Army targeted a specific demographic of people based on their values, [and these recruits] were patriots and loved America.” In today’s general population, he doesn’t see the same interest in patriotism. “Much of the country doesn’t love America like it use to,” he said. “And with a military no longer upholding the values, the oaths, or the creeds it once did, what kind of new recruits should we expect [to join the Army]?” he asked.

“From a macro perspective, we had a significant breach of trust in the last election.” By oath, he said, the military swears to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But the U.S. military has said nothing about the previous election, according to the soldier. “I’m not saying there is a final answer, but as defenders of the Constitution, they owed open and transparent conversation to the force and to the American people,” he said.

Instead, he said, “they happily encourage mandated vaccines, back the transgender issue, and speak out in opposition to the Supreme Court of the United States in regard to Roe v. Wade—all of which are very political.”

In his opinion, “we now have a Department of Defense [DoD] that has taken various political positions that are very much opposed to the heart of America.”

All the while, he said, the size of battalions is shrinking. “Some are less than two-thirds of where they need to be,” he said. And many of those who remain are not “usable deployables.”

He said, “Much of America is missing the fact that the Army is intentionally kicking people out in a precarious way that it knows is unnecessary, because the data shows that it’s unnecessary.” He is under the impression that “our military is intentionally being weakened.”

Rather than watching the military “decay,” he said, “military leadership needs to take action for the good of the America people.” But he’s not convinced this will happen, because “for the most part, the higher-ups are cowards and they lack the personal courage to take the actions needed to put an end to this sad state of affairs.”

As recruiting woes mount and solutions appear scant for the U.S. Army, service members of the nation’s other military branches are equally concerned.

Mishap for the Marines

Maj. Paul Lewis (a pseudonym), a recognized subject matter expert on personnel retention matters within the Marine Corps who previously sounded the alarm on personnel end-strength issues within the DoD, spoke to The Epoch Times once again.

According to Lewis, military readiness has been impacted in the past few years by “a toxic combination of poor leadership and the politicization of the military.” He said there has been “a steady reduction in readiness due primarily to reckless policies that have eroded the trust of the rank and file service-members.

“It really came to light in the wake of COVID when service members began to see that senior leaders chose to put politics ahead of military readiness,” he said. “Senior officers and senior civilian executives have run the military into the ground in the name of career stability and progression instead of keeping faith with Marines and their families.”

Potential recruits are not signing up to serve in the Marine Corps as they have in previous years, and Lewis attributes this to “a rejection of the bureaucratic leadership.” For American citizens to choose to serve in the “all-volunteer force,” he states, “they want to be able to trust that their leadership has their best interest at heart, and that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.”

According to Lewis, this erosion of trust can be “manifested in the military loss in Afghanistan as well as how COVID vaccine mandates have been enforced in a draconian and illegal manner,” and this according to him has led to “a complete loss of trust and confidence in the leadership.”

In the years ahead, he said, these issues will have an impact on the national security of the United States. “Within the national security apparatus,” Lewis said, “we need a certain number of troops to man the line, this is known as statutory end-strength and is set by Congress, [because] we have defense obligations all over the world with partners and allies.”

“A small gap in readiness, losing 100 or 200 recruits or unplanned departures from the service might be acceptable,” Lewis admitted. “But when you get into the numbers of 40,000 or more in a single year, it’s no longer just a minor blip on how we deploy our military, but it is an unmitigated disaster,” he said. “It will affect every decision made on how we are going to meet our obligations and ultimately we will be increasingly relying on less troops to do the same job.”

In light of losses associated with the mandated vaccine, Lewis said it has become apparent to him that “our leadership is willing to sacrifice military service members, forcing them out the door in the name of financial reprioritization.” He said, “American people need to be aware that the military is using these personnel cost savings to commit additional resources to yet another round of equipment modernization that is lining the defense industries pocket.

“But all the while, they’re losing the individuals qualified to operate these systems,” he said. “For example, you cannot fly an F-35 with a student pilot; you need an experienced pilot with years of operational flight time.

“When the cards are down and we need to face our adversaries, we need experienced warfighters using this equipment,” said Lewis. “Unfortunately, the defense lobby has just about every congressional office enthralled with the idea of higher defense spending with their companies rather than investing in its people.”

According to Lewis, “the American soldier is the country’s most valuable resource, [but] our leadership and our decisionmakers have devalued their people” who serve in the military. “This is sadly exemplified in the dead Marines on the deck in Afghanistan because of poor politically driven leadership.”

If members of the nation’s military were valued, he said, “these same people should be raising legitimate concerns about vaccine efficacy, but they are failing the American people once again.”

Lewis contends that “generational damage” is being done and the core of rank-and-file service members whose families have traditionally served will no longer choose to do so in the future because of the utter betrayal they are facing from their own leaders.

“It’s reckless, like a child playing with fire,” said Lewis. “Do the math: it is impossible to have an all-volunteer force if you don’t have volunteers.” Moving forward, he questions whether the U.S. military will be able to continue to “meet the expectations of the American people and keep the homeland safe.”

Air Force Mission Ignored

A master sergeant currently serving in the Air Force has been a recruiter for nearly a decade. As the military vaccine mandate began to be enforced, he was “alienated from the service” for refusing to take the shot. “Many in the Air Force have stood up for freedoms our entire career, but when our freedom is on the line, who’s going to stand up for us?” he asked. He has witnessed junior airmen break down in tears over being coerced and threatened into taking the vaccine.

Air Force Recruiting Service is facing its lowest recruiting numbers since 1999 according to senior leadership’s public statements, he said. “While we lose decades of experience to mandates and poor leadership decisions,” he said, “we will be forced to ease standards just to continue the mission.” He further added, “I see firsthand in recruiting that the sentiment towards joining the military has been negatively impacted over the last year.”

What’s more, he said, “there is an imbalanced focus on diversity over performance when deciding the fate of an airman’s career. We’re focusing on the wrong things instead of the mission, which is protecting and serving the nation,” he said. “Wokeism combined with bad policies are destroying the military and if we don’t course correct soon, it could cause irreparable harm, in my opinion.”

Navy is Getting Weaker

A Navy lieutenant said, “the DoD has forgotten the first rule of holes—and that’s when you get into one, you stop digging.” According to the recruiter, “the Navy has probably alienated the majority of its recruiting base that you could have always counted on historically.”

Mandatory vaccines are an issue, he said. But “social experimentation” within the Department of Defense is also a problem. For example, in the digital signature of Rear Admiral Alexis T. Walker, he said, “he has his own little personal font with a rainbow hue for his pronouns.” Walker is the commander of Navy Recruiting Command.

The Clinton administration’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was once “a hot button for the military,” he said. “But fast forward nearly 30 years, and transgenders have been normalized.”

To that end, he said, “The fact that you would set a double standard in terms of military readiness where you would claim an unvaccinated service member isn’t ready, but somebody in the middle of a life-changing transition that’s on hormones is ready and is not a threat to readiness, bothers me.”

By his estimation, senior leadership of the military has “bought into a big lie that somehow the population at large wants a military which reflects the population diversity of the country.” He disagreed, stating that “the public simply wants to know that they have a military that’s capable and lethal, and could successfully defend this nation on a moment’s notice.”

Apart from “a few niche areas, like the special warfare communities, military readiness is questionable at best,” he said. “We’ve gone too far into the weeds politically, which has resulted in a weaker, political military force.”

Coast Guard Gone Woke, Too

Continuing to actively serve in the Coast Guard, a “Coastie” with recent experience as a recruiter is very disturbed that he could be “throwing years of dedicated service down the drain” for refusing to take the vaccine. It’s clear that he’s not the only one impacted, as he said, the Coast Guard will fall far short of making recruiting mission this year. While he said it is hard to pinpoint exactly why, the vaccine mandate is a large part of the issue. “There’s definitely been some young folk who said they’re not going to join because they don’t want to get the COVID vaccine,” he explained.

In addition, he said, “The woke culture has bugged some people.” In one example of wokeness infiltrating the Coast Guard, he said, “When writing awards or performance reviews, I can’t even identify myself as a he, [adding that] I can only identify myself by my name, rank, or by they.” He finds it strange that he cannot assume his own gender. Taking diversity and inclusion to this extreme, alongside the vaccine mandate, has hurt retention in his opinion.

The Coast Guardsman strongly believes that “medical and fitness standards that were once non-negotiable are all on the table right now.” When asked about the reason, he goes on to say, “It seems like the average teenager these days has a much higher likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants, asthma inhalers, or attention deficit medications, all of which used to be a hard stop for someone trying to join.”

“But if recruiters can’t make mission and mission execution suffers, eventually something has to give,” he said. “The question that bothers me is how much does race and gender now play into the likelihood of those medical waivers being granted?”

Each anonymous interviewee emphasized that their views do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, or Coast Guard. The Epoch Times also reached out to the recruiting headquarters for the Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and Navy for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman’s (D.) campaign for Senate is tapping a far-left activist who has called allowing children to undergo surgical gender transitions a matter of “human rights.”

The Fetterman campaign launched Real Doctors Against Oz Wednesday, an initiative meant to discredit Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate. Val Arkoosh is among the activists taking shots at Oz. Arkoosh, a failed Senate candidate, has a history of pushing gender theory. When she was still a candidate for Senate, Arkoosh sent out an email calling a parent’s right to refuse “gender affirming care” for their children a “gross violation of both human rights and the relationship between a patient and their doctor.” She also falsely claims that it’s legal to discriminate against transgender individuals in employment.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that a person cannot change their gender and a plurality of Americans oppose giving hormone blockers to children. Democratic opposition to parental rights has not worked out well for the party in past elections. Many pundits attribute Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s (R.) upset victory in November 2021 to his focus on expanding parental rights.

Real Doctors Against Oz are criticizing Oz for having ties to the pharmaceutical industry, being pro-life, and promoting supplements during his time as a television host. Oz, meanwhile, is attacking Fetterman for avoiding Pennsylvania voters by running a “John Fetterman Basement Tracker” cataloging the amount of time since his last public event.

Despite the implication of the name of Fetterman’s group, Oz is a real doctor. He graduated from an Ivy League medical school and was later a professor of surgery at Columbia University, where he won a research award.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Less than 4 percent of Illinois public schools agreed to teach the National Sex Education Standards promoted by Democrats across the United States.

More than 500 of Illinois school districts opted out of the standards, with only 20 districts adopting them, The Center Square reported. The Illinois standards teach elementary students, including kindergartners, about consent, gender identity, hormone blockers, and healthy relationships. Middle schoolers learn about dating violence prevention, different types of sex, and sexual harassment.

The National Sex Education standards have raised parental concerns throughout the nation. Thousands of Massachusetts parents opted their children out of a federally funded sex education curriculum that teaches kindergartners about gay and transgender sex, the Washington Free Beacon reported last November. The Nebraska Department of Education shut out religious groups from the sex ed curriculum development process in October 2021, which included plans to teach elementary school students about gender identity and transgender hormone therapy.

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) signed a bill aligning the national sex ed standards with those of the state, making Illinois the first state to adopt the standards last August. Pritzker said the law “will help keep our children safe.”

State representative Adam Niemerg, R-Dietrich, however, said the standards are not age appropriate.

“This is well beyond what the conversations that should be happening with our children in schools on this particular issue, when they should be focusing on reading, studying, and enjoying sports,” Niemerg told The Center Square.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Students can assume different pronouns, have access to other bathrooms, and change their name without parental involvement

Public schools nationwide are telling students they can assume different pronouns, have access to another sex’s bathroom, and change their name without letting their parents know, a violation of federal law legal experts tell the Washington Free Beacon.

Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia bar teachers from “outing” transgender students to parents, as do Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. These increasingly common policies are meant to guard students against parents who, according to Fairfax County schools, “may not yet be supportive of their child’s transition.” But according to Vernadette Broyles, they also violate parents’ right to privacy as codified in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.

“Privacy rights are held by the parents for the child, not by the child against their parents,” Broyles, president and founder of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, told the Free Beacon. Broyles says Fairfax and Montgomery school officials are “attempting to usurp parental authority,” which is protected by the 14th Amendment. She called the schools’ policies “intentional obfuscation, driving a wedge between children and parents at a time when children need their parents most.” Three other attorneys involved in similar cases cited the same violations of the Constitution and federal law in support of parents’ rights.

The news comes as parents nationwide are filing lawsuits against school districts over the issue. Parents Defending Education, a conservative grassroots group, announced last week it was suing an Iowa school district for refusing to disclose a child’s transgender status without their permission. The district keeps “temporary” files for students’ gender support plans, allowing them to skirt official records requests from parents. Similarly, the Maryland and Virginia school districts instruct their employees to refrain from mentioning a child’s chosen gender identity on school forms or in emails where it could become public.

These policies are designed to conceal when a student begins to identify as a different gender without necessarily changing their physical appearance. To support “social transitions,” teachers are instructed to use a student’s chosen gender pronouns and treat them like their assumed gender, and in some cases giving students access to bathrooms “that correspond with their gender identity.”

Parents Defending Education president Nicole Neily told the Free Beacon the Iowa policy “intentionally evades federal law by placing students’ gender information in a temporary file—information that, if it were included in a child’s permanent file, would be accessible to parents through FERPA.”

The Montgomery County Board of Education is already embroiled in a lawsuit filed in 2019 over the policy. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued in federal court last year that the policy is unconstitutional and violates FERPA, as well as state law. But the policy’s defenders claim that the same federal law protects a student’s right to privacy, even if the student is a minor.

LeRoy Rooker, a former director for the Education Department’s Family Policy Compliance Office, told Bethesda Magazine in 2021 that claim is false.

“There’s absolutely nothing in FERPA that would say they would violate FERPA by disclosing that to parents,” Rooker said. “The violation would be in not disclosing it if the parents request it.”

Some states have laws that ostensibly guard against such policies. A Virginia bill passed in 2013 protects parents’ rights to raise and educate their children. Fourteen other states have passed legislation along the same lines. In April, two Massachusetts parents sued their school district for violating federal and state law by hiding their children’s gender identity at school.

Parents say those laws haven’t been enough to protect children. Jeff Hoffman, a father of three Fairfax students and chairman of the Fairfax Parents First Coalition, wants the Virginia law to be written into school board policies statewide. Barring that, he called for parents to “put the entire transgender policy” on a ballot referendum for November.

“Fairfax County in Virginia is an example and proof of politically driven transgender policy that is systemically indoctrinated across our American schools,” Hoffman said.

The Free Beacon first reported in July that a Fairfax County faculty training module had directed teachers to forgo parental consent when students as young as kindergarten-age adopt a different gender at school.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Hiring practices driven by diversity are ‘a recipe for disaster’

Southwest Airlines Co. (AKA SouthWoke Air [US Patriot]) is basking in accolades for its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) efforts, award-winning customer service, and record-breaking quarterly revenues.

Behind the scenes of that rosy picture, heartaches are afflicting Southwest, called “the airline with Heart” because of its heart-shaped logo and a corporate culture steeped in “The Golden Rule,” treating others the same way they’d like to be treated.

But eight current Southwest employees, including three minorities, told The Epoch Times that “woke, leftist” DEI policies, as implemented, have tarnished the cherished Golden Rule principle, fractured a once-cohesive workforce, and, ultimately, may put safety at risk.

Faced with pandemic-related staffing shortages and pressure to add minorities, the company has changed the way it hires, trains, and disciplines workers—mostly to benefit less-qualified new hires representing the diversity rainbow, the employees say.

One Southwest flight attendant, a Hispanic female, said: “They are compromising safety for the sake of race, gender identity, and sexual preference … They’re risking people’s lives because of agendas.”

Southwest, one of America’s largest air carriers, didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Similar issues have spread industry-wide, according to 10 airline employees who agreed to be interviewed. Four are pilots and six are flight attendants; most have 20 or more years of experience. All of them, including two American Airlines pilots, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

While no one thinks the policies are causing an imminent threat of a plane falling out of the sky tomorrow, all of the interviewees agreed that each time a standard is lowered, or a less-qualified employee is hired, the risk that something can go horribly wrong inches forward a notch or two. In an industry that depends on a near-miracle integration of people, machinery, and computers, even a few deviations can culminate in catastrophe.

Still, some employees worry about what could happen if current trends continue to stress out and distract safety professionals. Said one flight attendant: “It’s a recipe for disaster. I just hope I’m not at work when it happens.”

Us-Versus-Them Mentality

While promoting diversity sounds like a great idea, the inclusionary policies have actually become exclusionary at Southwest, employees say. Disparate treatment has divided their ranks into two distinct camps: those with “desirable” or “approved” personal, social, or political characteristics—and those without.

Minorities or people with leftist political views, varying gender identities, and alternative sexual orientations appear to be given wide latitude. This “protected class” is allowed to bend or break rules, and new hires in these classifications may be given extra chances to pass required skills tests, the employees said.

At the same time, veteran workers—especially those who are white, heterosexual, and conservative—find themselves in the crosshairs for almost anything, including making a personal statement of religious or political beliefs, the Southwest workers said. Even minorities can be shifted into this targeted group if they espouse personal beliefs running counter to causes that the company supports.

“There are two sets of standards: One for us and one for them,” said an experienced flight attendant.

One of her colleagues said: “The company is trying to eliminate anybody who does not agree with their agenda. The last few years, anybody who speaks up against them, they want gone.” That flight attendant said she had no problems at work until she posted her Christian religious beliefs on her personal Facebook page, along with her support of President Donald Trump. A coworker reported the posts to Southwest, and the flight attendant said she has faced repercussions ever since.

She and others say the targeting of conservatives is common—and they point to the recently publicized case of fired Southwest flight attendant Charlene Carter as a prime example.

‘Targeted Assassinations’ of Conservatives

Last month, a federal jury in Texas awarded Carter more than $5 million after finding that Southwest wrongfully terminated her and that her union didn’t live up to its duty to represent her. The company fired Carter after she expressed her pro-life views to a union leader via social media and opposed the union’s pro-abortion activism.

The company supported the union’s political activism, Carter’s suit says, by accommodating work-shift changes for union members so they could participate in the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., in January 2017. Marchers were protesting Trump’s inauguration; one of the primary sponsors of the event was Planned Parenthood. Southwest also showed “solidarity” with the protesters by bathing its airplane cabins in pink lights on some D.C.-bound flights, Carter’s lawsuit says.

Documents in the case revealed that some union officials and political activists were singling out dissenting Southwest employees for “targeted assassinations,” meaning that they would try to get the company to fire them, using the company’s social media policy as a bludgeon.

In an interview with The Epoch Times on Aug. 8, Carter, who lives near Denver, Colorado, said she can’t believe that some leaders of Transport Workers Union of America Local 556, who helped set her up to be fired, are still working for Southwest.

Carter also validated her coworkers’ concerns about the disparate treatment of employees who dare to oppose leftist agendas. “I think there are a ton of cases out there just like mine,” she said. Terminated employees from Southwest and other airlines have been continuously contacting Carter for help after learning about the July 14 verdict in her case.

Carter spent five years fighting in court; she thinks she was one of the first casualties of the erosion of Southwest’s unique corporate culture, which she witnessed during the latter part of her 20-plus years at the airline.

“We all loved our jobs; we all loved each other—our CoHearts, that’s what we called each other,” Carter said, pointing out that the airline’s stock ticker is LUV, a nod to its birthplace at Love Field, Texas.

Corporate Culture Shift

But corporate leadership and philosophy shifted. Carter said, her former coworkers tell her the culture is now one where people are fired on a whim, and they’re encouraged to file complaints against each other over perceived insults, such as failure to use the “preferred pronoun” of a person asserting an alternative gender identity.

Employees who face such accusations are presumed guilty, a current flight attendant said, and they risk suspension or termination. “That is how we are treated now,” she said.

“It’s gotten ridiculous,” Carter said. She was astounded to learn that lapel pins, designating preferred pronouns, are being offered to staff.

A fellow flight attendant says the company’s priorities are misplaced.

“We used to be focused on hiring ‘the best of the best,’” she said. “So why is it now that we feel at Southwest Airlines that we have to use the right pronouns and we have to acquiesce to someone’s gender-fluid mentality?”

The DEI Effect

The interviewed employees blame DEI policies for sowing the seeds of division. Ironically, before DEI was implemented, “people were never labeled,” a flight attendant said. “I find it very divisive,” she said, “because now everyone is labeled, divided by race, gender sexual orientation … whatever.”

“This is wrong—all the way wrong,” she said.

The company’s annual report, in its DEI section, says, “Southwest Airlines recognizes, respects, and values differences. … At Southwest, DEI is and always has been a part of our DNA.”

All four major airlines—and many other American companies—publicly disclose DEI-related information, such as data on minority recruitment and the racial makeup of their workforce.

“Every airline is trying to push forward with minority hiring because they want to ‘show that they care,’” aviation analyst Jay Ratliff said. “They’re being asked, ‘How many women are within your pilot ranks? … How many pilots of color?’”

If an airline’s diversity metrics seem low in comparison to their competitors’ numbers, the company’s reputation and bottom line can suffer, Ratliff said.

That’s not necessarily fair, he said, because few people have the ability, interest, and financial means to qualify as a commercial airline pilot. Amassing the FAA-required 1,500 hours of flight time with an instructor can cost $75,000 or more, pilots said.

Last year, United Airlines announced its goals: to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 at its new flight school, with “at least half of those students to be women or people of color.” The first class of new recruits “exceeded that goal,” with 80 percent of the 30 students fitting that category, the airline said in a report.

Considering that white males make up about one-third of the American population, a Southwest pilot said that composing a class with 80 percent minorities and women looks like “DEI special-status hiring on steroids.”

Scoring Systems Push Diversity

DEI data play a significant role in corporate ESG scores—ratings of a company’s “environmental, social, and governance” performance. It’s a complex—and controversial—way to assess which companies are considered “good corporate citizens.”

Most of the interviewed airline employees believe that the pursuit of ESG scores is driving corporate personnel practices, including ignoring well-qualified male applicants while eagerly hiring less-experienced female and minority candidates.

Increasingly, ESG scores can help determine whether a company sinks or swims. A good ESG score can attract investors, government contracts, and favorable loan-interest rates—benefits that are especially important for the airline industry, in which lucrative U.S. Department of Defense contracts are at stake and profit margins are razor-thin because of astronomical costs for equipment and personnel.

ESG ratings have existed in some form for decades, yet they barely registered a blip on internet searches until a few months ago, amid the Biden administration’s continued push for businesses to address environmental concerns and to institute “green” policies, which weigh heavily in ESG scores and DEI metrics.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced his intent to push back against ESG, calling it “leveraging corporate power to impose an ideological agenda on society.”

Refinitiv, a company that produces ESG scores, says its process for calculating the ratings starts with collecting more than 630 ESG measures from each company’s public disclosures. Other ESG assessors have their own rating systems, which means results can vary depending on which assessment method is being used. ESG advocates are now working on standardizing how these scores are calculated.

Several airline employees said it would benefit their company, their industry, and society in general if ESG scores and DEI programs were abolished.

One Southwest pilot with decades of experience said such measures create unnecessary complications with no positive effect on the airline’s core mission.

“Why do we need DEI programs? Why do we need ESG? A lot of the public isn’t even aware these things exist,” he said. “The passengers just want people like me to get them, and their bags, to the same place at the same time, safely … DEI and ESG do nothing to support that—zero.”

“I need these DEI programs and ESG scores to go out the back of the airplane like the jet fuel that we burn.”

Non-Pilots Hiring Pilots

Southwest’s annual report says it has been “evolving hiring and development practices to support diversity goals.”

Those changes are troubling to the interviewed employees and to the pilots’ union. In a letter to members last month, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association pointed out that, for the first time in the company’s 51-year history, a non-pilot is in charge of hiring pilots. The “system chief pilot” used to have that responsibility. “We are just a single step away” from hiring pilots based upon mere reviews of their resumes, association president Casey Murray wrote to union members. Southwest has about 9,600 pilots, the letter said.

Putting a non-pilot in charge of hiring pilots most likely will affect the quality of the pilots who are being hired, Southwest interviewees said. People who lack specific knowledge of this specialized job would have a hard time telling the difference between a good hire and a bad one, pilots said. One of the interviewed pilots said that the chief pilot told him: “The diversity department has a very strong voice in who gets hired.”

Southwest wants to hire more than 2,000 pilots in the next year, the union’s letter said, questioning whether those new hires will be required to meet Southwest’s traditionally high standards. “Across the entire commercial aviation industry, employers are fighting for an ever-shrinking pool of qualified pilots,” yet Southwest may be at a disadvantage to compete for those pilots. Contract negotiations with Southwest’s pilots are lagging, compared to progress with other airlines’ pilot unions, Murray said.

“Pilots are the fuel that powers Southwest Airlines, and right now Southwest’s supply of fuel is running low. Time is growing critical, and options are becoming limited,” Murray wrote.

Seeking the Best (Non-White) Pilots?

Current pilots also say they have learned that hiring decisions are being driven by a job candidate scoring system; they’re unsure how long it has been in place, how it works, or whether it unfairly elevates minorities. The company controls all of that information.

Still, the employees feel confident in anecdotal evidence suggesting that the scoring system, coupled with other hiring practices, could be producing a pattern of discrimination against men, especially white men who come from military backgrounds—previously highly sought-after job candidates. “We could be wrong, but I don’t think we are,” said one pilot who has military experience.

That pilot said he thinks the vast majority of his colleagues have heard accounts of possible discrimination similar to the following:

When a well-qualified former military pilot applied for a job, Southwest never contacted him for an interview. But the applicant learned that a woman was hired as a pilot, despite having half as much experience in the airline industry.

Further, the man had experience as a captain while the woman had only been a first officer, who sits next to the captain in the cockpit. “It’s a completely different world” when a person shifts into the captain’s chair, said the pilot.

“We’re leaving a lot of people behind who are better-qualified, just because they’re the wrong color, or they’re identified the wrong way. That’s concerning. We’re not putting the best up-front,” he said. “We have people’s lives in our hands. It’s just like with doctors. If you go to a doctor, you want to go to the best doctor you can.”

An American Airlines pilot with decades of experience said he was less troubled than some of the Southwest interviewees who worried about the effects of reduced standards as a result of the increased emphasis on diversity hiring. However, that pilot said he would become very concerned if standards are lowered “to the point where people aren’t flying as confidently.”

A second American Airlines pilot said he has observed that “training is not nearly as comprehensive as it used to be,” he said. “But these people who are starting out are flying with people who are supremely qualified to be flying airplanes—so mistakes can be covered.”

He thinks the reduced standards could eventually cause problems if the hyperfocus on diversity continues: “If you’re looking for a diverse workforce and not a qualified workforce, you’ve got issues. … You haven’t seen any accidents because of ‘diversity,’ but the potential is there.”

All 11 people who were interviewed for this story, including Carter, the ex-flight attendant, said personal traits such as gender and race shouldn’t be part of the equation at all.

“From the cockpit door forward, guys and gals of all ethnicities are after the same thing—and that’s a safe flight,” said one of the American Airlines pilots. “They don’t care who sits next to them as long as they can do the job.”

More Than Snack Servers

Most air passengers think of flight attendants as hospitality ambassadors who make them comfortable with beverages, snacks, blankets, and pillows. But their main purpose is to assist in the rare event of an in-flight emergency.

Six Southwest flight attendants, along with Carter, say they feel less able to perform crucial duties because of the climate in which they’re now operating—and new hires appear to be less equipped to shoulder those responsibilities.

“They have just made it such a hostile work environment. Southwest has made it that way, and flight attendants are afraid to do their jobs,” a flight attendant said. “But you’re supposed to put a smile on your face and pretend that everything is grand.”

The flight attendants describe feeling as though a backstabber is always ready to pounce, to report any action or statement that doesn’t fit the corporate ideology. They’re being held to strict conduct and uniform standards while “accommodations” are extended to people in protected classes, such as a minority woman who was allowed to wear a nose ring—which got a white female in trouble—and a male flight attendant who described himself as “nonbinary”—neither totally male nor totally female—being allowed to wear a skirt that appeared to be shorter than regulations allowed.

The nonbinary employee seemed to be using his position at the airline as a platform for LGBTQ activism and self-promotion, rather than focusing on benefiting the company or its customers, fellow flight attendants said. They shared screenshots of the nonbinary employee’s social media posts. One is a selfie of the mustached man posing in his Southwest uniform, with the comment, “My dress looks better on me than most chicks.”

That employee no longer works for Southwest, flight attendants said. Yet they said they were aware that a couple of employees faced disciplinary action for referring to the nonbinary employee as “he” in a members-only Facebook group for flight attendants.

Antics Embarrass Fellow Flight Attendants

One flight attendant perceives that the company is making skewed, unfair hiring decisions, and creating a level of absurdity that’s hard to stomach. She knows of people who are related to Southwest employees and have college degrees—which go beyond the high-school education requirement for flight attendants—“and they don’t get hired, and yet we have this guy, with a mustache, in a skirt, distracting us all because the company wants to fight over his pronouns.”

Being a flight attendant used to be considered prestigious and classy; Southwest was viewed as “Mount Rushmore,” a pinnacle for flight attendants, who felt proud just to be hired.

“Now the pride is not about the brand of Southwest Airlines,” a flight attendant said. “It’s about how different I can be as an employee of Southwest Airlines—like, ‘Y’all need me more than I need you.’”

Public perception of the role has diminished, not just at Southwest, but across the industry. Airlines grant diversity-based exceptions to people who don’t want to look or act professional, the flight attendants said.

It used to be unusual to see flight attendants behave in ways that brought embarrassment to their coworkers. Now, quite a few of the new hires who were prized for their diversity “are rather risqué,” a flight attendant said. “They become very emboldened; they feel they can get away with this because they are in a protected class.”

Still, Southwest has had to fire employees who pushed the envelope too far, including one minority flight attendant who solicited sex in a social media video and another who videoed herself twerking. In both instances, the videos, provided to the Epoch Times, show the employees in Southwest uniforms.

Such conduct disgusts the flight attendants, and their concern is more than superficial. “If we relax the appearance standards and we’re letting people lower their professional standards, then they obviously are not equipped to handle any type of safety issue that can happen on that plane,” a flight attendant said.

“Where do you draw the line and say enough is enough?”

Commitment, Skills Insufficient

One of the flight attendants who has been targeted for religious and political views said her commitment to her job boils down to this: “I will give my life for my passengers and my crew, if that’s what I need to do. My last words will be, ‘Let’s roll,’” she said, referencing the famous words spoken by a passenger on one of the U.S. airplanes that were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

She doesn’t see that same level of grit from the new hires. “They don’t have the same tough mentality,” she said. Nor do they have the same work ethic, which might be attributable to differences between the younger and older generations.

The older flight attendant described being busy from the beginning to the end of each flight while many of the new hires tend to just serve one round of drink orders, “then they go back to the back (of the airplane) and sit down for the rest of the flight.”

The new employees aren’t demonstrating mastery of the skills they were supposed to have been taught, or willingness to perform them. A passenger was having a medical emergency but the flight attendant in charge of that section “wouldn’t even come out of the galley to assist,” said one flight attendant. Instead, she and a second colleague had to take care of the ailing passenger.

Such an incident stokes her worst fear: “Somebody’s gonna die. With the lack of training that we’re seeing in the new hires that are coming out … there’s going to be somebody who’s not trained, facing an emergency.”

The irony is that, because of conduct problems and lack of devotion to the job, many of the “check-the-box” new hires either quit or are discharged, the employees said. That’s why it would make more sense for Southwest to be more selective in its hiring decisions—and to make those decisions based on the applicant’s qualifications and commitment to doing a good job, both of which now seem to be lacking.

Too Many Hires, Too Fast?

A flight attendant who is familiar with hiring practices said she is concerned about the speed with which large numbers of new employees were hired in recent months. She is hearing that up to 10,000 employees have been added to the roster, so the airline is now up to pre-pandemic staffing levels.

Her concern: It’s doubtful that the company had the capacity to properly vet and train such a large number of employees, including flight attendants, in such a short timeframe. In fact, she says it’s “mathematically impossible,” (That’s OK, because mathematics is racist anyway [US Patriot]) based on past observations of failure rates among new trainees.

For each class of about 50 flight attendants, about 15 trainees would “wash out,” or not make it through the rigorous testing process, which includes mastering emergency evacuation drills. Considering that, it’s most likely that “the standards would have to be relaxed” to allow large numbers of new hires to complete the process rapidly.

“There’s a mindset that’s changed…it seems like they’re accepting almost any applicant—here’s a body and here’s a checkmark” on the diversity list, she said.

She’s puzzled as to why Southwest pushed so hard to hire so many new flight attendants. “We don’t have all the airplanes that we were expecting to get,” she said. “Then why are we hiring all of these flight attendants?”

Less-Rigorous Training

Today’s training is “a lot shorter and a lot simpler” than it used to be, she said.

Carter said it’s her understanding that flight attendants now must pass only a few tests. In years past, “there were about three tests a week for six weeks,” she said. “You were breathing through a fire hose all of this information.”

She also said that if a trainee flunked a test, that person was given one chance to retake it, “and if you failed, you were done.” Now, Carter has been told that people are being given multiple opportunities for do-overs.

As a result, “I’m hearing from flight attendants that these people don’t understand what our safety is about here.”

Employees say they feel as though core values and common sense are falling by the wayside when they are asked to give wide berth to people asserting that they are gender fluid, or identify with a gender that doesn’t match their biological sex.

“I don’t tell a pilot that I identify as a pilot, and I’m going to fly the aircraft—because there are no facts in that,” a flight attendant said.

While seeing a decline in the flight attendants who seem to be truly vested in their work, the flight attendants say the company is directing them to merely “inform” passengers about violations of safety rules, not to enforce the rules. This is in direct contrast to a few months ago, when flight attendants were required to function as the facemask police to enforce a federal pandemic restriction while it remained in effect.

Presumably in response to customer backlash over the much-despised mask mandates, Southwest has instructed flight attendants to cut passengers more slack. “We’re allowing customers to do as they please, and it’s causing safety issues,” a flight attendant said. People are refusing to remain seated during takeoffs and landings, for example. If something goes amiss, “You become a projectile; you can hurt other people,” the flight attendant added.

Airline Love Affair Ends

A longtime pilot described his passion for his job, and laments how the company killed it.

From the outset, “I was in a love affair with Southwest Airlines. They were smaller and scrappier. They were all bone and muscle. No fat. And I liked that,” he said. “We grew under the nose of American, Delta, and United, despite their tactics … We continued to grow and thrive around a very simple business model that revolved around the Golden Rule.”

That enabled the company to empower all employee groups so they could make decisions benefiting both internal and external customers. They didn’t get sucked into bureaucracies.

But the company crossed a rubicon last year when it took a stand on the COVID-19 vaccine and “woke” policies, he said. Employees were told: “You must get vaccinated and you must accept these diversity and inclusion principles even though it goes against the principles that you grew up with at this company.”

For the veteran pilot, that was a death knell, he said. “It was a complete and total divorce of the culture.”

“The company has destroyed the trust relationship. This is not the Southwest Airlines that I joined. … The love affair is over,” he said. “When you prioritize profits and special interests over people, this is what you get.”

Although the public perception is that many pilots lost their jobs because of vaccine mandates, pilots doubt that’s accurate. In the case of Southwest, many employees sought—and obtained—religious or medical exemptions.

The company still touts the Golden Rule, but that’s mostly lip service, the pilot said. “It’s the thing that allowed Southwest to rise to greatness. It’s less important now. What’s more important? I have to understand that a person’s gender can be on a sliding scale, or maybe they’re just a man who wants to dress as a woman.”

He resents the implication that “hopelessly bigoted pilots like me” need to take a new sexual harassment training module that encompasses LGBTQ considerations. He learned that if a person in that category believes they were looked at in a way that they felt was uncomfortable, “I could be written up, and I don’t even have to say anything,” the pilot said.

Southwest flight attendants were recently required to complete a DEI training or face being put on unpaid leave. That didn’t sit well. The flight attendants say they were already treating people as equally as possible—values embodied in the Golden Rule and basic human decency. “I say this as a minority: I don’t need to be told how to treat people with dignity and respect. I’ve been doing that all my life.”

Distractions Imperil Safety

These programs and the “woke” cultural shift are creating huge distractions, which by themselves pose a threat to safety in ways that most people never think about, the pilot said.

“People take it for granted that takeoffs equal landings. But I can tell you that there are close calls—regularly—where human intervention prevented things from getting really bad. … And the traveling public never knew about it,” the pilot said.

For everyone’s safety, all airline workers must be at the top of their game.

“We need the most qualified people in these safety-sensitive jobs. But it doesn’t stop at the cockpit door,” he said. If any part of the system breaks down because a person was distracted or wasn’t the most qualified person for the job, “the end result is the same if you had an unqualified pilot: the airplane is a smoking hole at the end of the runway and you have 170 people dead—and a lot of angry families.”

“If you crash one airplane, that one crash has the ability to put an airline out of business. When I go to work that weighs on me. All 170 of those lives are in my mind from the time we take off until we land,” he said. “In my mind, disaster is just around the corner.”

Ready for The Worst

Before each takeoff, pilots mentally rehearse how they would react to rare dreaded scenarios, which have actually happened: A maintenance guy doesn’t do his job and the engine falls off the airplane. Or the motor blows up. Or a fire erupts. There is an infinite number of things that can go wrong. But such incidents are exceedingly rare—and when they do happen, a miraculous interplay between humans and technology averts death and catastrophe.

“These are the things we think about,” the pilot said. “And instead, we’ve got people thinking about their special status and how they can get one of their coworkers in trouble?… When you’re cheating the laws of physics every day, DEI has no place.” (Great remark! [US Patriot])

Under these circumstances, it’s infinitesimally trivial to even give a moment’s consideration to a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other trait.

“I will treat that man, dressed as a woman, the same way I would treat a woman dressed as a woman, or a woman dressed as a man. I don’t care,” the pilot said. “Just do your job. Take care of those passengers. And then drag my sorry butt out of the airplane if it comes down to that, because I’m the last one to go.”

In one way, the “new” rules don’t really bother the pilot: He said he was already treating people well. That won’t change, he said.  He just hates knowing that at any moment, he could be “written up because I looked at you wrong.”

As a white male, the pilot recognizes he’s “the new minority.”

He says he has to go to work every day and prove “I’m not the hopelessly bigoted, homophobic, misogynist, sexist fossil that they think I am.”

And that’s OK with him.

“I’m fine with that. I don’t care,” he said. “Because I live by the Golden Rule.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Outraged parents launched a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Virginia for teaching inappropriate, sexualized material to children, and other violations of state constitutional rights protecting parents and children.

America First Legal on July 21 served discovery requests seeking answers from LCPS, School District Superintendent Scott Ziegler, and several other school board officials on behalf of 11 parents pressing charges.

LCPS was given three weeks to respond. They did not reply, except in “saying that they’re not going to respond,” said the lawsuit’s main plaintiff, Clint Thomas, to The Epoch Times.

On the first day of the school year, two of Thomas’s daughters were forced to declare their gender pronouns publicly in class. All five of his children have gone through LCPS.

The lawsuit takes aim at LCPS’s Policy 8040 and Regulation 8040, which Thomas says “is trying to stifle [parents] from even knowing if the children are expressing different genders in school.”

“There’s just an overarching theme trying to gain information about private matters in our home, survey after survey being issued, inappropriate surveys being issued asking students about their sex lives.”

Parents have observed “overtly pedophilic, highly sexualized books” in school libraries, and class assignments with “highly sexualized” and “misogynistic” content, Thomas added.

“It’s all basically about race theory, gender theory. … They’ve been forced to sit through homeroom especially during Pride Month and basically watch videos of people who are trying to change their biological sex.”

The parents accuse LCPS of “knowingly, systematically, and willfully violating the Plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to care for, nurture, and direct the education, moral instruction, and upbringing of their children.”

Public education should be about academic instruction, said Thomas. Values and moral instruction are for the parents to determine.

For the past year and a half, Loudoun County has been the main battleground for parents and school boards contending over matters of woke content, CRT, mask mandates, sexualized content, and the forcing of young children to use bathrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex.

During COVID lockdowns in 2021, thousands of parents took notice of what their kids were learning in class, said Thomas. Since then, it’s “just been one thing after another,” prompting parents into action.

Parent protests were galvanized in May 2021 by the sexual assault of a female student by a 15-year-old male in a girl’s bathroom in Louden County’s Stone Bridge High School.

This was exacerbated when State Prosecutor Buta Biberaj tried to jail parent Scott Smith, the girl’s father, for protesting the bathroom policy that led to her getting raped.

The lawsuit between the parents and LCPS is still in the early stages, the father of five said.

He speculates what aim lies at the heart of the woke education agenda fundamentally.

“The liberal agenda is no longer about providing a level playing field,” said Thomas. “It’s really about tearing down everything traditional. I think that’s the ultimate sinister reality of the equity agenda. It’s not about equality … it’s really tearing down America.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Twitter has permanently banned author James Lindsay for calling a transgender attorney a “child sexualization specialist” on the social media platform.

Lindsay said he made the comment after Alejandro Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic who previously worked as staff attorney for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, accused him of being racist and sexist.

Caraballo celebrated and took credit for Lindsay’s suspension, saying, “Tell James, I want him to know it was me” in a post on Twitter.

Over the last two weeks, Lindsay said, trans activists have banded together, targeted him, and claimed responsibility for a “mass reporting” campaign—which is against Twitter rules.

“They not only launched a massive reporting [campaign], but they bragged that they did it,” he told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, the day he was banned. “Twitter has a terms of service agreement that you can’t mass report or induce mass reporting. It’s considered targeted harassment, and it’s against the terms of service to do it, but nobody ever enforces it—ever.”

He was previously twice locked out of his @conceptualjames Twitter account, once on July 21 for responding “ok groomer” to Ari Drennen, an LGBTQ program director at Media Matters, and again on July 26 for using the word “groomer” in old Twitter posts that trans activists publicized.

Drennen, who took credit for getting Lindsay locked out of his account on July 21, wrote an article published online July 22 suggesting Twitter suspend users “slandering LGBTQ people as ‘groomers’” and calling Lindsay a “right-wing CRT alarmist.”

To get back into his Twitter account in that case, Lindsay said he was “forced to confess” the “ok groomer” comment violated Twitter rules because “it’s the only way to get your account back unless you want to get locked into appeal limbo.”

Lindsay has since appealed the permanent ban. When prompted to “describe the problem” to Twitter, he wrote: “The problem is that you arbitrarily changed the rules and suspended my account after repeatedly forcing me to lie to admissions of guilt for ‘violations’ that aren’t real. You should un-suspend my account and correct your biased and arbitrary policy enforcement.”

Ironically, Lindsay said that he felt like he was “let out of prison” after the ban.

“I don’t know why I want to go back. It’s so strange how immediate it is that I just feel relief that I’m not on there anymore,” Lindsay said. “The only reason I want it back as a matter of practicality, because it drives something like 80-something percent of my traffic to my website.”

He accused Twitter of using tactics similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes.

“That is a tactic of Maoism—a communist tactic to force people to confess to crimes to be able to get leniency. That’s literally how Mao ran his prisons in CCP-controlled China in the ’50s,” he said.

The term “groomer” has several meanings, and although it can refer to pedophilia, it can also mean a recruiter who “grooms” someone into a cult, club, or organization, or a person who “grooms” another for a job or position, he said.

Lindsay contends he used the term “groomer” to describe someone involved in what he views the “cult indoctrination” of others into the trans activism or and gender ideology movement and was not accusing anyone of pedophilia.

“I would not accuse anybody of that without substantive evidence. It’s a horrific accusation,” he said.

He has admitted publicly that he openly criticizes those involved “defending and engaging in cult grooming into a gender ideology rooted in queer Marxist theory.”

“It’s weird because the cult indoctrination is sex, gender, and sexuality, and so they’re indoctrinating people with concepts of sexuality which sexualizes children, but that’s not the same thing specifically as pedophilia, which is also the sexualization of children. There is this weird double meaning, or two meanings to the word,” he said.

Lindsay has produced a series of podcasts called “Groomer Schools” for his website, New Discourses, which has been very popular, he said.

“So, I’ve been calling these people ‘groomers’ for months. I started doing it back in October,” he said. “[It wasn’t] ambiguous in terms of what it means until 10 minutes ago.”

Twitter did not respond to an inquiry about Lindsay’s allegations that activists had launched a mass reporting campaign against him, but told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Aug. 5 that his account was “permanently suspended” for “hateful conduct” according to Twitter policies.

While Lindsay opposes “cancel culture” on social media, especially for expressing an opinion on an issue, he said people who abuse their positions or power to impose an ideology on school children “should be fired.”

As the author of several books, including “Race Marxism” and “Social (In)Justice,” that delve deep into today’s culture wars, Lindsay is no stranger to controversy, but he has never been banned from Twitter for his opinions on critical race theory, for example.

“It’s not the broader constellation of things I’m calling out; it is specifically that they want to protect the transsexual ideological grooming of children, and it is huge and it is coordinated,” he said. “There is a vested interest in protecting this specific thing, and I don’t know why that is.”

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of national parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, was recently locked out of the group’s Twitter account for a week over a post condemning controversial proposed legislation that would make California a transgender sanctuary state, and for also challenging gender ideology.

She wrote on Twitter July 25, “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”

After Justice deleted the post, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was unlocked.

Media Matters has also accused Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell, and others of slandering people with the term groomer.

Last week, Twitter also locked the Gays Against Groomers account. The group had posted: “Damaged people damage people. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, especially when you have radical alphabet activists openly grooming them. Protect your children from these people at all costs.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Biden administration is poised to deny free school lunch funding from a Florida Christian school that refuses to comply with the administration’s LGBT mandates, despite the school’s qualification for a religious exemption.

Grant Park Christian Academy in Tampa, Fla., represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, is suing Joe Biden and Florida agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried for enforcing the Biden administration requirement that schools comply with its LGBT mandates or lose federal school lunch funding.

In May, the Biden administration redefined the meaning of “sex” in Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, forcing schools to permit transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex in order to receive National School Lunch Program funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than half of state attorneys general rejected the memorandum, with Florida attorney general Ashley Moody saying the Biden administration was “using hungry children to advance a political agenda,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The Florida school refused to substitute gender identity for biological sex, costing them their ability to feed two meals and snacks daily to their 56 students when the fall semester starts. If Grant Park’s application is not approved by Aug. 10, the school will not be reimbursed for the meals it serves students. ADF legal counsel Erica Steinmiller-Perdomo said Fried should not block Grant Park’s school lunch funding, as Title IX provides a religious exemption.

“For five years, this Christian school has received funding to provide nutritious meals to dozens of low-income children in the community,” Steinmiller-Perdomo said. “Commissioner Fried and the Biden administration are trying to rewrite the law and ignore the exemption in an attempt to force this school to choose between violating its religious beliefs or providing lunches to children.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Florida’s governor on Aug. 4 suspended a state prosecutor who has vowed not to enforce laws related to abortion.

Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit due to “neglect of duty.”

In the order (pdf) outlining the move, DeSantis cites Warren recently declaring he wouldn’t enforce laws that largely prohibit late-term abortions.

Warren and other prosecutors signed a document in June that said “enforcing abortion bans runs counter to the obligations and interests we are sworn to uphold.”

“We decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who … provide, or support abortions,” the prosecutors stated.

No other state attorneys in Florida signed the document.

One Florida law bars doctors from performing abortions during the third trimester, or after a fetus achieves viability. Another law bans abortions, with exceptions, after a fetus reaches 15 weeks of age.

Warren “has put himself publicly above the law,” DeSantis, a Republican, told reporters during a press conference.

Warren’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Policies and Other Statements

The governor’s order also cites how Warren’s office has avoided prosecuting people who commit misdemeanors such as resisting arrest without violence, stating that the policies aren’t “a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion” and also usurp the authority of the Florida Legislature by not enforcing the law.

The order also notes that Warren in 2021 signed a separate statement with other prosecutors regarding biological males using female bathrooms and vice versa.

The prosecutors pledged to “not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” Gender-affirming is a term used to describe sex change operations and other procedures meant to facilitate a person’s change from male to female or female to male.

The joint statement said that bills that criminalize such treatments “do not promote public safety, community trust, or fiscal responsibility,” and suggested that they wouldn’t be enforced.

DeSantis appointed Susan Lopez to replace Warren while the suspension is in place. Lopez was appointed by DeSantis in 2021 to be a judge on the Hillsborough County Court, and she previously served as an assistant prosecutor in the 13th Judicial Circuit.

“I have the utmost respect for our state laws and I understand the important role that the state attorney plays in ensuring the safety of our community and the enforcement of our laws,” Lopez said in a statement. “I want to thank the Governor for placing his trust in me, and I promise that I will faithfully execute the duties of this office.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week called for lawsuits against doctors who perform transgender operations.

“They don’t tell you what that is—they are actually giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys,” DeSantis said at an event in Florida on Wednesday, referring to such procedures. “Both from the health and children wellbeing perspective, you don’t disfigure 10, 12, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria, 80 percent of it resolves anyways by the time they get older. So why would you be doing this?”

“I think these doctors need to get sued for what’s happening,” DeSantis said in conclusion. He didn’t say whether his administration would be taking steps to make it easier for individuals to file lawsuits against the doctors.

Earlier this year, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued statewide public health guidelines to restrict certain treatments for children and adolescents. It came after the Biden administration promoted its own guidelines on “gender-affirming care,” including hormone drugs, puberty blocker drugs, surgeries, and social transitioning for kids.

And in a letter to the Florida Board of Medicine in June, the Republican governor’s administration called on physicians to stop performing medical procedures on children who are said to have gender dysphoria.

“Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical interventions is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” the letter said, adding that the state “must do more to protect children from politics-based medicine.”

Gender Ideology in Schools

More than a week ago, 22 states filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over a new rule that would threaten to withhold funding to schools for meal programs unless states comply with its policies around the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in class.

Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, and West Virginia have signed the lawsuit.  The challenge was filed (pdf) against the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“The Biden administration’s sweeping rhetoric treats normal practices, such as sex-separated bathrooms and athletics, as ‘discriminatory’ even though DOJ [Justice Department] and the Department of Education treated those as legal, nondiscriminatory practices as recently as last year,” the suit stated.

In Congress, several Republican lawmakers in late June introduced a bill that allows individuals to sue doctors who performed gender transition surgery when they were minors. The measure allows a 30-year statute of limitation in most cases, prohibits federal health funds from going to states that force medical practitioners to perform transition procedures, and makes it clear that federal law cannot be construed to force practitioners to offer such procedures.

“Gender-transition procedures aren’t safe or appropriate for children,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill, said in a news release. “Unfortunately, radical doctors in the United States perform dangerous, experimental, and even sterilizing gender-transition procedures on young kids, who cannot even provide informed consent.”

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The federal government is one more of transgenderism’s many online promoters.

A help page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) website lists resources from government agencies and community organizations that seek to protect and support LGBT children and their networks by providing online advice on sexuality, with content that promotes transgenderism, anal and oral sex, and occult superstition.

“It is critical for the parents, guardians, and other family members of LGBT youth to have access to the resources they need to ensure their LGBT children are protected and supported,” the CDC’s website reads.

The CDC page for “LGBT Youth Resources” offers young people and their friends and families links to websites that promote questioning of gender and sex, as well as to sites with age-inappropriate advice.

One of the links listed by the CDC is the website Q Chat Space, which is designed to be hidden. A green banner across the bottom of the site reads “Click/tap here for a quick escape.” It immediately transfers site users to the Google Search page.

The Q Chat Space website hosts live chats for teens aged 13 to 19 that are “facilitated by experienced staff who work at LGBTQ+ centers around the United States,” the website reads. But the staff aren’t mental health professionals. They are “verified” facilitators.

The CDC’s website describes Q Chat Space as a “digital LGBTQ+ center where teens join live-chat, professionally facilitated, online support groups.”

Q Chat Space’s Instagram page provides the schedule for the live chats, along with the subjects to be discussed with the facilitators.

These subjects include sex change surgeries, a transgender and “nonbinary” sex ed night, an introduction to drag culture, a chat on “having multiple genders,” as well as oral and anal sex advice.

Other chats discuss binge drinking and how teens can drink safely.

“If you do choose to drink underage, it is important to be as safe as possible, have a trusted adult nearby and or the potential to contact emergency services if needed,” Q Chat Space’s post reads.

Still other chats discuss the use of condoms, oral contraceptives, intrauterine devices, preexposure prophylaxis against HIV, as well as other devices.

Many chats promote astrology, tarot cards, and other occult ideas. The site recommends “Self Discovery in Astrology,” “Queering Tarot,” and “vibes + auras.”

A disclaimer at the bottom of the CDS’s webpage states, “These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs.”

The nation’s health protection agency explains further: “Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. … CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.”

Directions for Parents

Another website on the CDC’s help page is HealthyChildren.org. This site encourages parents to accept a child’s claim of sexual identity without question.

“Some children have a gender identity that is different from their gender assigned at birth, and many have interests and hobbies that may align with the other gender,” the site reads. “It is natural for parents to ask if it is ‘just a phase.’ But, there is no easy answer.”

The website states that research shows gender identity can’t be changed and that parents must accept the gender identity that children announce.

“When your child discloses their identity to you, respond in an affirming, supportive way,” the site states.

The CDC website states that some young people who identify as LGBT are more likely to experience “negative health and life outcomes.” It then recommends that parents protect and “support” children who identify as LGBT.

The CDC also links to the Trevor Project. This website also announces that users can leave it quickly by pressing the “escape” key three times.

“When someone shares their gender identity with you, it’s inappropriate to assume or try to deduce that person’s sex assigned at birth,” the Trevor Project’s site reads.

The site states that doctors typically “decide” biological sex “based solely on one’s genitals.” Sex might not correspond to gender, the site says.

Using the right words around transgender youth can save lives, the Trevor Project says. It quotes a study that found that people who identify as transgender get less suicidal when referred to with different pronouns.

The site listed several pronouns people could use, including “they,” “ze,” “xe,” and “ve.”

The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A global push to provide students with much more than just education under the banner of “community schools” has left many parents wondering what the program is all about, who’s behind it, and why its agenda is centered around the leftist concept of “equity.”

A full-service community school strives to “meet the social, emotional, physical and mental health, and academic needs of students,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

It’s “the next generation of coordinated school health,” says the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, in response to a model for these schools developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and an organization once called the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development that now goes by ASCD.

The CDC calls them “healthy schools” and has developed a 10-part framework for addressing all aspects of a child’s health on campus called the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model.

But community schools don’t only address students’ health. The NEA describes a community school as “a network of partnerships offering services that remove barriers to learning, like trauma, hunger, homelessness and the myriad of other problems faced by families living in poverty.”

On the NEA’s website, Cindy Long recounts an example in Las Cruces, New Mexico that offered mental health services to a 13-year-old boy who witnessed the murder of his uncle, then days later lost his father to suicide.

“[T]he full-time community school coordinator spent hours researching and applying for a grant to pay for his father’s and uncle’s funerals, a time-consuming effort that would be impossible for staff at a regular public school to handle on top of regular workloads,” wrote Long.

She also discusses schools that offer food banks, family computer rooms, donated clothing, on-site laundry facilities, medical and dental care, and more.

Long said the hope is that these services can be expanded to address “the needs of a student’s siblings, parents, grandparents, and neighbors. The idea is that lifting up a student isn’t possible unless her community is lifted up, too.”

However, some parents and community members disagree with schools taking on these far-reaching responsibilities.

Taking on ‘the Role of the Parent’

Kelly Schenkoske, a California parent who has extensively researched community schools and hosts a podcast called “A Time to Stand,” told The Epoch Times the CDC and ASCD are working together “to turn every school into a community school,” and that while the schools may sound wonderful, there are legitimate concerns.

“The schools are trying to take on the role of the parent and remove the parent from their relationship with the child. This is a complete obstruction and an assault on the family,” said Schenkoske, who homeschools her two children. “For me, the biggest concern with all of this is having the school be the nucleus of every community and handing over more control to the government and all of these ‘experts’ who are going to invade the home and tell families how to parent.”

Schenkoske became especially concerned when she learned the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of the largest teachers unions in the state, and the NEA have fully backed the WSCC model and that state educators recently held a conference in Los Angeles where they discussed community schools and multiple plans centered around equity, she said.

The United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization, most U.S. states, teachers and many non-government organizations also support the push for community schools.

California has already invested $4.1 billion in the Community Schools Partnership Program, including about $649 million in grants to 268 school districts across the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) received more than $44 million.

The state program offers various grants to partners ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, and the U.S. Department of Education is also offering grants through its Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program.

CTA Vice President David Goldberg did not respond to inquiries, but he said at a virtual press conference on June 6 the teachers union is “all in” for community schools.

He applauded the state’s “deeper investment” in the community schools model, stating that “academic learning does not exist separately from social emotional learning.”

Echoing California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent assertion that democracy itself is under attack in the United States, Goldberg touted the community schools model as a way of “developing democratic processes” to include the voices of parents, students, educators, and administrators at the table.

California Models

Former teacher Ingrid Villeda said she left her position at the 93rd Street Academy in south Los Angeles to become the community school coordinator at the elementary school. She told The Epoch Times that most of the new funding will go to pay salaries for the next five years for community school coordinators, parent representatives, and employees with the Healthy Start program, another initiative that was designed to increase the health of women and children.

Community schools differ from other schools because they get input from “community stakeholders,” Villeda said.

“Traditionally, a principal arrives at a school, and it’s their vision that is rolled out, and when those principals change or go to other schools, the school goes through this trajectory of change until another leader comes in, and then it stabilizes again,” she said. “With community schools, and all stakeholders having a voice, you create a vision that includes everyone, so it’s not dependent on me or the principal, but on our needs … and the vision is there for the long term.”

Villeda has worked with the community to provide free vision and dental screenings for children. Out of 925 students at the school, 350 were able to get free eyeglasses, she said.

In LAUSD, some high schools have health centers on campus. Her school has a partnership with nearby Fremont High School which is equipped with a full-service health center.

“So usually, if parents tell me they need to take their kid to the doctor … we call directly and we actually make an appointment for them, and show them how to get there,” Villeda said.

Currently, there are about 30 community schools operating in Los Angeles and six in San Diego with plans to convert 10 additional schools this year and more in the future, according to Villeda.

The NEA and the CTA say there are about 5,000 community schools nationwide.

Equity: Who Decides What a Child Needs?

Villeda, a self-described Democrat and “lefty” union activist, said that although equity means different things to different people, to her it means having access to services and opportunities.

“Equity to me is not that we all have the same, but that everyone has what they need,” she said. “And there are some of us that need more than others.”

If children don’t have everything they need, then it becomes the problem of the schools, Villeda said. The schools are then forced to find solutions, and that’s what they’re doing through community schools, she said.

“Me giving a child a sweater at school doesn’t mean that child is going to get an ‘A.’ It just means that that child is going to be able to sit in a classroom without being cold,” she said.

However, James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and co-author of other books such as “Social (In)justice,” and “Cynical Theories,” told The Epoch Times that to understand the new education lingo, parents should first be aware that “equity means socialism.”

Equity is the “rebranding of socialism,” he said. “It’s the adjustment of shares so that individuals and groups are made equal.”

This means the proponents of equity, including the World Economic Forum (WEF), want to dismantle and rebuild “the whole system” of food distribution, transportation, and housing so the outcomes are made more equitable, Lindsay said.

He claims the WEF is also trying to create a bottom-up demand for health equity among the youth and ultimately change those systems in ways that may not appeal to everyone.

“They’re redesigning the whole system to create better so-called health outcomes, and they use it to justify bringing in things like ‘affirmative’ trans health care, as they call it,” he said.

“People need to understand that there is a purpose behind this, and it’s largely controlled by a few people who want to reshape what’s going on in the world according to what they think is necessary or that they want,” Lindsay said.

The WSCC model “mirrors the Soviet model where a council of appointed individuals make all the decisions with the schools,” he said.

‘Gender-Affirming Care’

A University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) document lists Planned Parenthood, which has actively supported “gender-affirming care,” as a potential partner of community schools. But schools and the medical community have recently come under fire for using this policy to encourage the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery on minors who identify as transgender.

Lindsay contends that these transgender medical interventions are “not care,” but are instead “amputating children’s genitals and sterilizing them.”

Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of sex education in the U.S., reaching 1.2 million people with education and outreach each year and promoting Comprehensive Sex Education as well as programs for LGBT youth.

In Dec. 19, 2019, Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles (PPLA) issued a press release announcing its instrumental role in the opening of 50 “Wellbeing Centers” in L.A. high schools, billed as the “first-of-its-kind collaboration between local partners to address the social, emotional, and sexual health needs of young people throughout Los Angeles County.”

According to the CDC’s virtual healthy school tour, under the WSCC model, school-based health centers can refer students and families to the public health department “for family planning, prenatal care, and concerns about sexually transmitted diseases,” and health educators will “frequently collaborate on activities and training for children and adolescents in the community.”

Planned Parenthood did not respond to an inquiry about whether its role in sex ed would be expanded under the community schools model nor whether it has applied for or received grant money as a community partner.

Meanwhile, Kimberly Ells, author of “The Invincible Family: Why The Global Campaign To Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win” and a policy advisor for Family Watch International, said she’s opposed to the WSCC model.

More and more parents are opting for homeschooling and realizing they may be better at educating their own children than the public school system they’ve trusted in the past, she said.

Ells wrote an article earlier this year for The Daily Signal, condemning “Communist-Style Community Schools” which she views as a globalist attack on the traditional role of parents and families.

“It’s like the worst example of cutting off the branch that you’re sitting on that I’ve ever seen. To try and undercut the family is to undercut civilization, because societies can’t thrive without strong families,” she told The Epoch Times.

A chapter in her book exposes the UN’s push to make Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) a “human right” of all children, while the program focuses heavily on gender theory and advocates for abortion, Ells said.

Another chapter focuses on the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, and how it exploits health to include many of these controversial medical practices, she said.

“We need to wake up to the fact that there is a global agenda,” Ells said. “Even in the Sustainable Development Goals, one of the goals is health, but then it depends on what you believe ‘health’ to be.”

The California Department of Education, CTA, and NEA did not respond to inquiries.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Twenty-two states are suing resident Joe Biden’s administration for threatening to zap school-meal program funding unless the states comply with new rules surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

The lawsuit represents the latest volley fired in the ongoing battles between state officials and Biden, who they accuse of usurping their authority through his executive orders.

The states complain that a federal nondiscrimination rule, set to take effect Aug. 15, seeks to impose “obligations that apparently stretch as far as ending sex-separated living facilities and athletics and mandating the use of biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns,” said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, Tennessee, on July 26.

“The Biden administration’s sweeping rhetoric treats normal practices, such as sex-separated bathrooms and athletics, as ‘discriminatory’ even though DOJ and the Department of Education treated those as legal, nondiscriminatory practices as recently as last year,” the suit says.

A fact sheet about the proposed policy cited examples of discriminatory acts, as interpreted by bureaucrats, under the new rule: “Preventing a transgender high school girl [a biological male] from using the girls’ restroom” and “preventing a transgender high school girl [a biological male] from “try[ing] out for the girls’ cheerleading team,” the lawsuit says.

The Tennessee and Indiana attorneys general are heading the coalition of states alleging that Biden and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the meal program, “issued directives and rules that misconstrue the law and impose unlawful requirements,” the lawsuit says.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided $2.6 billion to Tennessee last year; in sum, the 22 states received almost $29 billion through the program for low-income schoolchildren, working families, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita railed against the “extreme left-wing agenda” that he believes is fueling these policies.

“They’ve reached a new level of shamelessness with this ploy of holding up food assistance for low-income kids unless schools do the Left’s bidding,” Rokita said in a statement.

Rokita says he is, “fighting for Hoosier common sense and the rule of law,” which is what he believes citizens elected him to do.

The White House did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the lawsuit, which involves: Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Before filing suit, attorneys general from 26 states sent a letter to the president on June 14, expressing their concerns.

“By vastly expanding the concept of ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ to include gender identity and sexual orientation, the guidance does much more than offer direction,” the letter stated.

“It imposes new—and unlawful—regulatory measures on state agencies and operators receiving federal financial assistance from the USDA. And the inevitable result is regulatory chaos that would threaten the effective provision of essential nutritional services to some of our most vulnerable citizens.”

The National School Lunch Program provides meals to 30 million schoolchildren daily.

About 100,000 public and non-profit private schools and residential childcare institutions receive federal funding to provide subsidized free or reduced-price meals for qualifying children, a news release from Rokita said.

The states’ suit against the Department of Agriculture is similar to a separate federal lawsuit that 20 states, including Tennessee and Indiana, pressed against the Department of Education and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In that case, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the states. The order temporarily blocks the federal agencies from forcing the states to allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams.

The court ruled that they won’t be required to eliminate sex-separated showers and locker rooms, nor will they be compelled to use designated pronouns that individuals request.

The school-meals lawsuit against the department seeks the same relief.

In both the Education Department suit and the Agriculture Department suit, the controversial changes did not go through Congress.

Instead, federal agencies created them under an executive order that the president issued in January 2021, requiring policies that would fight discrimination based on “gender identity or sexual orientation.”

The states say they do not deny SNAP benefits based on those factors. But they take issue with memoranda and a “final rule” that both attempt to impose “unlawful and unnecessary new obligations.”

The states “sue to prevent the department from usurping authority that properly belongs to Congress, the states, and the people, and to eliminate the nationwide confusion and upheaval” that the proposed rule has caused, the lawsuit says.

“When will the Biden administration learn that making law is the legislature’s role?” Ohio attorney general David Yost said in a news release.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Maryland’s largest school district is prohibiting faculty from disclosing information about children’s chosen gender identity from their parents.

Montgomery County Public Schools has provided guidelines for working with transgender children that say a “student’s transgender status is confidential” and cannot be disclosed with their parent or guardian without their permission.

Public schools across the country this year have implemented policies excluding parents from their children’s education, especially with LGBT policies. In Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools prohibited teachers from consulting parents when students as young as kindergarten-age switch genders at school in July. Loudoun County Public Schools in the state issued similar guidelines in April. A California mother sued her daughter’s school district in January after two teachers allegedly coerced her child into adopting a transgender identity without informing her.

The guidelines say school principals and staff should “ascertain the level of support the student either receives or anticipates receiving from home,” helping the student create a gender-identity plan “even when the family is nonsupportive.”

Harold Maldonado, the father of a rising fourth grader at MCPS, told the Washington Free Beacon he is “angry” and “disgusted” that Montgomery County is pushing “inappropriate” sex education on students.

“The Montgomery County Public School System is overreaching, and this borders the line of criminal,” Maldonado said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

In a 10-page executive order issued on June 15, resident Joe Biden declared war on conversion therapy and pledged to defend the LGBT community from various forms of discrimination.

The order, which was accompanied by a seven-page explanation, is one more salvo in the clash of rights that has arisen in recent years over transgender issues.

The order describes conversion therapy as “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Keeping a campaign promise he made to the LGBT community, Biden called for an administration-wide push to eliminate the use of conversion therapy by therapists across the nation. He described it as a “harmful” and “discredited practice that research indicates can cause significant harm, including higher suicide rates…”

“My administration must safeguard LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” said Biden.

The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that there were two million Americans identifying themselves as transgender in 2021—about six-tenths of one percent of the nation’s population.

Twenty states and over 100 municipalities have banned conversion therapy for minors.

To further protect the rights of LGBT individuals from encroachment by other states, Biden is marshaling the resources of 10 departments of the federal government, along with numerous supporting agencies. The list includes the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.

Biden said in his order that the Federal Trade Commission “is encouraged to consider whether conversion therapy constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice, and to issue such consumer warnings or notices as may be appropriate.”

Such a designation by the FTC could expose therapists to prosecution.

The aggressive promotion of these and other LGBT policies has provoked a backlash around the country.

In the first quarter of 2022, 238 bills that would “limit the rights” of LGBT  individuals were proposed by legislatures across America—half of which involved transgender people, according to NBC News.

The state proposals aim to limit LGBT curriculum in schools, affirm parental rights, defend religious liberties, and restrict Gender Affirming Care (GAC).

The World Health Organization defines GAC as psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender the person was assigned at birth.

Biden’s order has aroused strong opposition from former gays and lesbians, clients and their therapists, and civil liberty legal foundations, who say that individuals have the right to voluntarily seek help to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria (an uncomfortable state of confusion).

Brothers Road is a Virginia peer support fellowship made up primarily of men seeking to align their sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with their personal values, beliefs, faith, commitments, and life goals.

Rick Wyler, the group’s founder, told The Epoch Times, “Many of us have been harmed, sometimes deeply, by therapists who demand that we embrace a gay identity and engage in gay relationships as, supposedly, the only possible path to peace, even if doing so would mean leaving otherwise satisfying marriages or cutting ourselves off from faith communities, beliefs, and traditions that we greatly value.”

Elizabeth Woning of California is a co-founder of the Changed Movement, an international network of people who no longer identify as LGBT.

Woning told The Epoch Times, “So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is a pejorative phrase that is being used to promote state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination. LGBTQ-identifying people deserve the right to follow their conscience, even when it means receiving support to diminish unwanted sexual feelings.

“Such bans dramatically oversimplify the lived experience of anyone who identifies as LGBTQ. They offer only one route for people to follow, no matter their faith or conscience.

“And so, anyone who doesn’t endorse Gay Pride for their own life is disallowed counseling that addresses trauma and emotional distress related to their sexual identity,” she said.

“In the end, counseling bans cause harm and simply limit everyone’s freedom.”

Nevada therapist Robert Vazzo told The Epoch Times, “Don’t ban anything that is poorly defined and can lead to a witch hunt among therapists whose world view regarding homosexuality is different from the mainstream.”

Vazzo questioned the ability to determine at what point during a counseling session the therapist can be said to be actually practicing therapy and attempting to change a client’s sexual orientation.

“The desire to change one’s sexual orientation is often linked to one’s religious views and having thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are congruent with those views,” he said.

“How a person expresses their sexuality and deals with attractions is a very personal thing, and we especially don’t need Joe Biden and the federal government telling us what we should like, dislike, or try to change in ourselves.”

Vazzo said the courts have consistently affirmed a therapist’s right to give his opinion during a session as part of free speech.

He described Biden’s order as “an assault on both personal and religious freedom.”

Tampa, Florida, recently lost a case that challenged the city’s ordinance banning conversion therapy on First Amendment grounds.

New York City recently ended its ban on conversion therapy because of a civil rights lawsuit.

In a July 13, 2022, statement to The Epoch Times, Family Watch International, an organization which promotes and defends marriage and family values, said of Biden’s executive order, “Elite leftists are seeking to prohibit parents and children from obtaining necessary, and demonstrably successful, care [while] the Biden administration is pushing ‘gender-affirming therapy’ as normative treatment. This ‘therapy’ includes such horrifying procedures as blocking normal adolescent development, administering cross-sex hormones, and performing mutilating surgeries that result in permanent sterilization.

“Federal bureaucrats should not be micromanaging matters of health and wellness, especially as it relates to children. It is the role, responsibility, and right of all parents to determine the upbringing of their children, especially as it relates to their healthy development,” the organization said.

Attorney Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty and family issues, told The Epoch Times in an email, “I am confident that litigation will eventually doom these counseling bans … To deny a client the right of self-determination is both unconstitutional and dangerous.”

“The ultimate goal of this movement is to prohibit change-exploring therapies and counsel, and to abolish the Judeo-Christian ethic regarding human sexuality, and even the very understanding of God,” he said.

He pointed out the irony in a system of laws where it is not considered harmful to take puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, or undergo life-changing surgeries,  yet it is regarded as harmful to learn about the causes of gender dysphoria and how to become comfortable with one’s birth sex.

Staver said that, under some laws banning conversion therapy, or what he calls “change counsel,” a counselor must either tell the client the type of counseling he may desire is not permitted; or even though the client wants to change, the counselor must, by law, override the client’s decision and counsel the client to accept unwanted attractions, behaviors, and identities.

“These laws unconstitutionally restrict only one viewpoint—change—on the subject matter of same-sex attractions, behavior, or identity. The U.S. Supreme Court has never upheld viewpoint discrimination. … Such viewpoint discrimination violates both First Amendment rights of the client and the counselor … [the] government must not censor the viewpoint of any subject matter the client wishes to receive and what the counselor or therapist may provide.”

California therapist Joseph Nicolosi told The Epoch Times in an email, “In a client-therapist relationship, the client is in the driver’s seat. They set their own goals, which the therapist helps them achieve. Politicians have no business telling people that their therapy goals are illegal.

“Everyone should be free to choose a life consistent with their values … no government should bar access to another person’s choice to live consistent with their faith and their values.”

Medical Experts Divided

The American Psychological Association, in a report released in 2009, said therapies used to try to change sexual orientation can be harmful and that most do not succeed.

In a 2018 position statement on conversion therapy and LGBTQ patients, the American Psychiatric Association recommended that “ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals’ sexual orientation” and “respect the identities of those with diverse gender expressions.”

The psychiatric association said it encourages “psychotherapies which affirm individuals’ sexual orientations and gender identities.”

In a 2018 policy statement, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) stated, “Conversion therapies’ (or ‘reparative therapies’) are interventions purported to alter same-sex attractions or an individual’s gender expression with the specific aim to promote heterosexuality as a preferable outcome…

“These interventions are provided under the false premise that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are pathological. They are not; the absence of pathology means there is no need for conversion or any other like interventions.”

The American Psychiatric Association ceased classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.

The AACAP statement warned that “there is evidence that ‘conversion therapies’ increase risk of causing or exacerbating mental health conditions in the very youth they purport to treat.”

Biden’s executive order and the current narrative of the professional psychiatric and psychological guilds upon which it is based; have received strong criticism from other medical quarters.

“The habitually misquoted American Psychological Association’s Task Force’s 2009 report (on page 43) stated specifically that modern change-allowing therapy ‘since 1978’ was ‘nonaversive,’ meaning free of infliction of pain or shame,” wrote Dr. Andre Van Mol, MD. in an email to The Epoch Times.

Van Mol, a Board-certified family physician and co-chair of the Committee on Adolescent Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians, said the Task Force’s report explicitly states on pages 43 and 82, that research meeting scientific standards did not allow attributing harm or help, inefficacy or efficacy, to change-allowing therapy.

“Banning counseling choice for gender dysphoria condemns already at-risk sexual minority youth to experimental and unproven hormonal and surgical gender-affirming therapy (GAT), which permanently and prematurely medicalizes children for a condition that overwhelmingly resolves by adulthood,” he said.

Van Mol stated that GAT has not been proven safe and effective. It does not reduce suicides and is not the international standard of care for gender dysphoric minors.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) have introduced legislation that would allow adults who undergo body-altering gender-transition surgeries as minors to sue surgeons for damages for up to 30 years after the procedure.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Branch says it ‘derives its strength from the diversity of its force’

The Minnesota Army National Guard paid tens of thousands of dollars to advertise in an LGBT publication that has promoted transgenderism and “queer” identities among children.

The National Guard, which operates through the Department of Defense, between 2019 and 2022 awarded $76,951 to Minneapolis-based Lavender magazine, paying for advertising campaigns in an effort to “reach the LGBTQ community” and “lend credibility to the National Guard.” Between May 2021 and May 2022 alone, it paid $22,224 to the LGBT magazine, according to a federal government contract disclosure. The advertising campaign appears to be related to the Minnesota National Guard’s “LGBT Special Emphasis Council.”

The magazine focuses on LGBT issues, and has published multiple profiles on children who identify as transgender. As the National Guard was paying for advertising in October 2021, for example, Lavender published a profile of 11-year-old boy Hildie Edwards, who identifies as “trans nonbinary.” The magazine also publishes a monthly column written by transgender activist Ellie Krug, who in a 2016 piece compared using bathrooms that align with biological sex to the Holocaust. Krug ends the piece by offering to speak at the schools of “trans youth in Minnesota.”

The National Guard is not the only military organization to promote transgenderism under the Biden administration. Republican senators found that the military has subjected service members to nearly six million hours of diversity, equity, and inclusion training. The Army this year coached officers on “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” while the Navy in May published a video that instructs sailors on “proper gender pronouns,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. After combat veterans criticized what they consider the military’s “woke” posturing, left-wing pundits called them racists.

Stephen Rocheford, the president of Lavender magazine, told the Free Beacon that “the reason the MN National Guard and Lavender magazine have a good relationship is because of statistics.” Rocheford pointed to a study commissioned by the magazine that indicated that LGBTQ individuals are overrepresented among the Minnesota National Guard. He said that the magazine has “received positive feedback from Minnesota National Guard leaders” and “from the LGBTQ+ community.”

A spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard in a statement told the Free Beacon the branch “derives its strength from the diversity of its force” and “has seen an increase in LGBT+ service members.”

In addition to the paid advertisements, Lavender has provided extensive positive coverage for the Minnesota National Guard. The positive coverage is not part of the advertising contract.

The Free Beacon contacted the magazine to inquire as to whether their coverage of the guard was related to their business relationship.

In its 2021 contract with Lavender, the National Guard requires the magazine to ensure the branch is “not associated with drugs, alcohol, adult content, or sites that may damage brand reputation.”

The magazine has run pieces that allege a connection between BDSM sex and Christianity, positively portrayed an organization that distributes LGBT books to kindergartners, and promoted a group that pairs children with LGBT “mentors” without notifying their parents.

Another article in the June 2022 Pride Month issue of Lavender states, “I have been thinking about younger queer kids.” The piece, also by Krug, details the author’s experience as a transgender woman mentoring “queer” middle and high school students on gender and sexuality through a local school district. Krug called the activities “holy work.”

“We need to protect the kids,” Krug’s essay concludes. “It always has to be about the kids.”

The National Guard shares advertising space in Lavender with Planned Parenthood and “gaymortgage.com,” among other advertisers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said her organization has had to introduce a Women’s Bill of Rights, which defines what a woman is, in response to transgender ideology and a larger Marxist agenda that aims to destroy Western culture.

“Gender ideology is just one strand of a much bigger, radical, Marxist agenda, and that is critical theory,” she said. “So you’ve got critical race theory, critical gender theory, [and] critical class theory. That’s a bigger assault on freedom,” Sheffield told NTD on July 15 during Freedom Fest 2022.

“[Critical theory] originated in Germany at the Frankfurt School and it was to indoctrinate and to basically destroy Western civilization,” said Sheffield.

The Women’s Bill of Rights was necessary because basic scientific truths are under attack, said Sheffield, pointing to when the recently appointed Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not define the word “woman.”

“I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said during her confirmation hearing.

“[Jackson] knew it was a hornet’s nest, no matter what she said, that it would be just torn to shreds. So she played it very cautiously. And I think that that’s unfortunate because it just showed how the left has cowed anyone from being able to just speak the most basic commonsense,” said Sheffield.

“The polling is overwhelmingly in our favor, that people say, ‘we reject allowing biological men to compete in biological female sports,’” added Sheffield.

Sheffield said she is not against anyone identifying as they wish in their personal life, but there are biological differences that should be respected, especially in law.

“There are biological realities for women, and they put us at a physical disadvantage to biological men. And the fact that we have to spell this out, I think, is unfortunate,” said Sheffield.

“The definition of what it means to be a woman is under attack, the definition of what it means to be a mother is under attack, in terms of the protections for women and girls that we have been fighting for,” said Sheffield.

Proposed Laws Could Have Opposite Results

Laws under Title IX were created to protect women but are now in jeopardy, she said.

“And now they’re under assault because some people want to allow biological men to come in and take away scholarships and championships and opportunities, and we believe that it’s counter to science and it’s counter to the law,” said Sheffield.

The transgender issue is bringing conservatives and some on the left together, said Sheffield, with the progressive Women’s Liberation Front working with Sheffield’s conservative Independent Women’s Forum.

Because transgender male prison inmates are allowed to self-identify as women and have carried out assaults, Sheffield said, “We see this as an assault on the basic safety and the civil rights of biological women to have places where we are protected, where we have equal protection under the law where civil rights were not violated.”

Democrats in Congress led by Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are once again pushing to change the Constitution and add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that they say would ensure women’s rights. But conservatives like Sheffield say the move will harm biological women and create unfairness in areas including sports and reproduction, giving transgender males an advantage.

“As women leaders in Congress, we are here today—all these decades later—still fighting this same battle. We won’t stop until we win, when the ERA is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” said Maloney during a speech on the anniversary of the ERA on March 22.

However, Sheffield said attorney and Eagle Forum founder, Phyllis Schlafly, fought against the ERA when it was first introduced because it would achieve the opposite of what it proposes.

“What Phyllis and conservatives said at that time was that if you put this into place, you’re actually going to erase women, you’re going to force biological women into the draft, you’re going to allow men into women’s bathrooms, because it’s not going to recognize that there are actual biological distinctions,” said Sheffield.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

America’s current education system is antiquated, wasteful, and “bent on saving and serving itself,” argues former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

She is one of the very few department heads to have advocated for the abolition of the agency she ran. Education gaps have only widened since the establishment of the federal Department of Education under President Jimmy Carter, she says.

Two years of remote learning have now put children months, if not years behind during this pandemic. “You couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming,” she says.

DeVos is the author of the new book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.” Tonight, she breaks down creative new approaches to schooling being adopted in states like Florida and Arizona that could soon change the game for millions of children across America.

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Below is a rush transcript of this American Thought Leaders episode from Jul 21, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Jan Jekielek:

Betsy DeVos, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Ms. Betsy DeVos:

Thank you, Jan. It’s great to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s been several years since we spoke last. You were the Secretary of Education at the time and you were getting, I think it’s an understatement to say a ton of flack for just about anything that you were trying to do. And now, you’ve written about it in your book. What is it like to be outside of government now? How has your life changed?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’ve been busy writing this book, which is about how we actually fix American education. And it’s been very, I would say, energizing and cathartic at the same time. And I’m continuing to advocate for kids and for their family’s ability to direct their own child’s education as I had for 30 years before I went to Washington.

So in that regard, not much has changed. I just am able to do it now with a different perspective and a different set of experiences. And I’m working with governors and state legislators and some of our federal elected officials as well to really promote and advance policies that are going to empower families to do just that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So tell me about this different perspective. What is it that you, what were the big lessons of being in an administration?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it only confirmed further for me what I knew before even going there. And that is the federal government does not do education well. It is not involved in education in a good and positive and constructive way. It is really the purview of the family and the most local units of government that really have to be able to take charge of and control for the kids’ education.

And we’re seeing this happen now in more meaningful ways across the country with Arizona being the most recent state, the first state to enact a universal education freedom policy, which is going to change the life trajectories for thousands of kids in that state. I’m very excited about that. I’m also excited about how that’s going to continue to build momentum in other states for the policy changes necessary to do that same thing.

Mr. Jekielek:

And so it’s interesting to me, because you are the head of a large federal department. Of course, education is left to the states, but there’s been all sorts of federal mechanisms created to be able to influence the states with time, right?

Ms. DeVos:

Yes. Well, people often don’t realize the fact that only 8% or 9% of funding for K-12 education comes from the federal government and yet the regulations and all of the policies that directly impact state and local education are far beyond that 8% or 9%. And so there are a lot of strings attached to the money that government sends and funds for K-12 education.

I contend that that money is better spent when directed by families from the state level as well. And I use the metaphor of a backpack. Kids go to school every day with the stuff they need for the day. Metaphorically, we should attach the funds that are already being spent on that child to that child’s backpack, for that family to figure out, is there assigned school working for them? If not, let’s figure out where is going to work.

And K-12 education is the least disrupted industry in our country. And it is an industry. We spend $750 billion a year on K-12 education, and we continue to get poorer and worse results in spite of the fact of spending more and more and more money. If we would empower families with those resources to make those buying decisions, we will get the creativity and ingenuity and entrepreneurship we need in K-12 learning experiences that we haven’t had to date with a 175-year-old industrial model approach.

Mr. Jekielek:

What place is there, if any, for a federal department of education? I’ve had someone on the show very recently who simply said, “Do away with it all.”

Ms. DeVos:

I concur with that. I think the department should not exist. It was a payoff to the teachers unions that Jimmy Carter made in 1979 or ’76 when he was running for election. And it was actually affected or implemented in 1979. We have since then spent over $1 trillion at the federal level alone with the express goal of closing the achievement gaps. Not only have those gaps not narrowed one little bit, by most measures they’ve actually widened.

And so there is no compelling reason for having a federal department of education. There are a couple of laws that we need to make sure are followed, protecting civil rights and making sure children with disabilities have the kinds of supports they need. But those don’t need to exist in a federal department. They can exist in another already established department and be overseen very well in those places. The federal department of education does not add any value to kids’ educations.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re perhaps the first department head I’m aware of who’s advocating for the abolition of the department that they headed.

Ms. DeVos:

I did while I was there. I said, I would be very happy to work myself out of a job. And in fact, the last two budgets that we presented to Congress actually sought to block grant all of the funds to the states and local districts. Congress didn’t take it up seriously to even debate it. I hope they do.

I think it’s a very worthy discussion, particularly with how we’ve seen the system act and respond this last two years when families have had a front row seat to see firsthand the failings of the system.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk about this Arizona law that you mentioned earlier. It’s obviously a major development. Before we go there, I just want to touch a little bit on this past administration. You actually quit following January 6th. You said that President Trump had crossed the red line. I want to give you a chance just to kind of say your piece, like what exactly happened so people understand what your position was very clearly before we continue.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, to put it a little more in context, following the election in November, during the rest of November and December when there was debate happening around a second COVID relief package, there was a very real opportunity to get a school choice, education freedom provision included in that bill. But The White House was not focused on doing those kinds of things and advocating for that kind of policy.

And so what could have been wasn’t, and my role, my job, focusing on doing the right things and everything we could for students, I’d pretty much come to the end of what we could possibly accomplish. And on January 6th, when I saw what was happening and I didn’t hear the president say the things that he could have or should have said, at least what I felt, to put an end to what was happening.

And when he turned his back on his vice president, it was kind of a line in the sand for me. I also felt we should have been taking victory laps about all of the accomplishments of the administration, of which there were so many. And instead we were focused on this. And so I’m always a forward looking person. That’s what I continue to do. And that’s what I think we need to do.

Look ahead. Let’s learn from what we did in the past, but let’s keep moving forward and doing the right thing for, in my case, the right thing for kids and more broadly the right thing for Americans.

Mr. Jekielek:

So again, you started talking about this Arizona law. A number of people are saying this is groundbreaking. There’s been nothing like this before. So, tell me a bit about this law. Do you see this as the future for the American child and where should it go from here?

Ms. DeVos:

Yeah, so the Education Savings Account is what Arizona just passed and Governor Ducey signed into law. That means that for all 1.1 million students in Arizona, if their families decide that the school to which they’re assigned is not working for them, they can take 90% of what the state would spend on that child and use it to buy that child’s education.

They could use it to go to a different school, one that requires tuition, a faith-based school or another private school of some sort. Or they could use it to customize their child’s education and maybe buy a couple of classes at one place, maybe buy a virtual class, maybe a couple of classes at a charter school, let’s say. Any combination of those things, or perhaps some things that haven’t yet even been developed.

In Arizona during the lockdowns, there were many families, many of them in the urban areas that started to band together in small cadres or consortiums of families and basically start up what I would refer to as a 21st century one-room schoolhouse with multi-age kids. They would hire a teacher that was looking for a different experience. And for them, if that’s working, they need to have the opportunity to continue to pursue that kind of experience for their children.

And like I said, the system has been so one size fits all for 175 years. We haven’t really wrapped our heads around what education in the K-12 years could really look like for kids, because we haven’t had the kind of creativity that we’ve seen in every other industry. This in Arizona, and I think there will be other states that will soon follow, we’re going to see that creativity really fostered and growing in ways that we can’t predict today.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re just making me think of something bizarre that I heard fairly recently. Basically, in a school where all the teachers were not in school. This is in New York, basically. One of the moms is describing this situation. The parents banded together and created one of these schoolhouses in that same school. And they said, how bizarre an experience was that? The teachers couldn’t come and actually, some of these teachers were somehow involved in the creation of this as well.

So on the one hand, the actual system wasn’t really functioning except perhaps virtually, although, certainly not at a hundred percent. And on the other hand, there were people creating these sorts of things. In some cases, even employing people that were involved in the educational system in the first place. What do you make of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I think it’s just one example of people finding solutions to problems. And I’ve used the example recently of a small school that I’m familiar with in West Michigan. I live in Michigan. It’s cold in the winter in Michigan. And yet there’s this small school where the kids are outside all day, all year long and they’re learning outside and they choose to do this. It is an outdoor school by design. And the teachers who are there are choosing to be there.

And I use it as one small example of thinking about solutions that we need to be much more open to because we know kids learn differently. They have different needs. And parents again have had front row seats to that in the last couple of years. And they’ve seen if distance learning was just the ticket for their child or if it was a disaster. They’ve seen in many cases, curriculums that they didn’t want their children to be exposed to.

And in other cases, they’ve seen curriculums that were very low in their expectations of what a child could do. And the parents may know that their child is capable of much more. They should have the opportunity to find the solution that’s going to work for that child to unlock that child’s full potential.

Mr. Jekielek:

For all intents and purposes, from everyone that I’ve heard, the distance learning didn’t work for most kids. It worked for a few kids that were very self-directed, but it didn’t work for most of them. And I guess, the other part of the previous question, these teachers weren’t in school. And so this is one of the reasons the parents had to start organizing. But what about the fact that these teachers weren’t in school in the first place? There’s a lot of contention about that, right?

Ms. DeVos:

And I think many of them had longed to be in school. They knew that their kids were falling further and further behind, but the system in many cases precluded them from doing that. There were a lot of teachers who I think have walked away from teaching because they’ve become so frustrated by the system.

And in an education freedom environment like Arizona is just creating, teachers are going to become the most valued part of that equation. And there are going to be opportunities for them like they’ve never seen before. Opportunities for them to be really creative themselves about solving problems for families and kids, or addressing needs.

And I’m just very excited about what it can mean for students in Arizona and more broadly, how it’s going to continue to drive change. Because we know that this is a very winning issue for families, for everyone … Like three out of four Americans say, “Money for students should follow the student to where that student goes to school.” You cannot deny the power behind that sentiment.

And when that actually happens at a scale to really make a difference, again, we’re going to see creativity and experiences for kids in their K-12 learning that we haven’t even begun to dream of because we’re just so stuck in this one-size-fits-all old model that is no longer working for way too many kids across the country.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re expecting because of this new legal structure around the funding for students, all sorts of new models will spring up. Teachers will be able to enter them, figure new things out. It’s sort of like this innovation land in education.

Ms. DeVos:

Absolutely, absolutely. And Florida is one state where they’re farthest along with the greatest number of students. They’re going to continue to expand those opportunities for kids. But we’re only at the tip of the iceberg as to what that could look like.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to touch a little bit more on this, the learning during the pandemic. I think you were urging schools to open very early on. And I think you even threatened to withhold funding as part of the urging, so to speak. How did that end up playing out in the end?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there was no ability to withhold funding at the federal level. But we did everything we could as an administration to urge and encourage schools systems, all of those involved to find the solutions, to get kids back to learning.

And again, we don’t even begin to understand the breadth and magnitude of the learning loss and the impact, the negative impact on kids, particularly the most vulnerable kids, low income kids, many kids from minority families. They’re the ones who have been most hurt by the system’s behavior during the pandemic. And you couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming.

Again, this is the ideal time for states to change their policy, to support funds going to the families for their children’s education, not to systems or buildings that are going to simply double down on doing the same thing, the same way over and over again, with more money and expect different results. It’s not going to happen. It hasn’t happened in the last 30 years. It’s not going to happen tomorrow because the system is bent on saving and serving itself.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is something that’s been really troubling me. This arguably a generational crisis caused by these two years for some students of almost a complete loss of education. I forget what the numbers are exactly. But some significant percentage of students is almost a complete loss in the prime of their lives, so to speak, or their childhood lives. One way to deal with it is to adopt new, innovative methods. But have you thought about how America and frankly, every country that’s faced this is actually going to deal with this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I believe you’re only going to deal with it when you interject creativity and entrepreneurship into it to solve problems because you are not going to get a different result by doing the same thing. And we’ve seen families actually start to address these issues because they did so out of necessity during the pandemic. We should support those and many more who are suddenly attracted to something different because they’ve seen the opportunities.

And the reality is that the traditional system or systems, they’re going to ultimately make changes because they’re going to see the competition. They’re going to have benchmarks to be able to compare themselves to, they’re going to make changes that are ultimately going to benefit kids too. But you have to allow for the families to make those choices and those decisions in order to foster that kind of change.

Mr. Jekielek:

Were there any policies that you instituted while you were a secretary of education that you felt just didn’t work out the way they were planned or things that you wish you had done differently now with a bit of hindsight, like looking at it?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I wish we had been able to get the federal tax credit to support education freedom passed and accomplished. Short of that, everything else we did was really focused on doing the right thing for students. And our work on Title IX on making sure that kids, when they are on campuses and they have an issue with sexual misconduct, that they have a framework that is fair, that is balanced, that is going to treat everyone fairly and with respect, and put the one who brings it forward in control of what happens next.

That and other issues on which we regulated or dealt, those are all … The current administration, the Biden administration is trying to undo all of those and turn us backward. This is a travesty for students, and we have to speak up. We have to push back against this effort to totally upend all of the progress that we made on behalf of students.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s kind of a fundamentally different view of how education should function, isn’t it? I mean, we saw this debate that saw Glenn Youngkin win in Virginia.

Ms. DeVos:

And Terry McAuliffe said that parents didn’t have any business in their knowing or directing what was going on in their child’s schools. I mean, he said he doubled down on it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

So I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take their child, make their own decision.

[Sound bite/Speaker 4]:

You vetoed it, to our parents. You vetoed it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

I stopped the bill that I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you feel like that’s the MO here with undoing these pieces? Or what do you think the operating principle is here?

Ms. DeVos:

It’s a very, very left wing, far left of the Democrat party that is really driving these policies. And they are really turning back and doubling down on the disastrous policies that the Obama administration advanced. It would totally reverse everything that we did. It would also expand the definition of biological sex to gender identity, and basically anything you decide at any point in time. And it would decimate women’s sports, ultimately.

Mr. Jekielek:

So we also have this situation where there’s a lot of people that are advocating against school choice, who actually send their kids to private school. And this has always struck me as kind of a bizarre dichotomy.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it’s a total hypocrisy. It’s for people who consistently fight against low income and middle income parents being able to make these decisions, they’re making those decisions themselves. And the fact that they blatantly do so without apology is, to me, I cannot fathom it or understand it. I don’t. These are the very kids they profess to want to help. And yet they consistently protect and defend a system that denies those families those opportunities.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk a little bit about higher education, about college. New York University right now, it’s like, a year is something like 80 grand, $80,000. It’s very difficult to access for the majority of Americans, or frankly, anybody. And so does that make sense?

Ms. DeVos:

No, it doesn’t make any sense. And the cost of higher education has continued to skyrocket and you saw it take off dramatically when the federal government, when they federalized student lending under the Obama administration, ostensibly to pay for Obamacare.

Not only has it not paid for anything to do with Obamacare, it has cost American taxpayers, most of whom never went to college or took out student loans, billions and billions of dollars. It is an unsustainable model. It is out of control. And now you have an administration that’s trying to wipe away all kinds of student debt.

You cannot do that. The president cannot do that. He cannot legally do that on his own. And you cannot say with a straight face that wiping out a bunch of student debt is a good policy, because it is not fair to the two out of three Americans who didn’t go to college, who will ultimately have to pay those bills. And it’s not fair to the students who took out student loans and have faithfully paid on them, or the families that save for their children to go to college, or for the veterans that served and earned their college funds.

It makes zero sense. And even if you said it did make sense and you wiped it away, where does that leave you? You haven’t solved anything. You’re going to have students next year taking out student loans and you’re going to have the same problem all over again.

So this is an issue that Congress and the administration have really got to deal with. It is unsustainable the way it has gone. There is no accountability on the part of higher ed institutions for what kind of quality or what kind of outcomes they are serving up. And there’s just no governor on what they can charge for a tuition.

Mr. Jekielek:

And for those of us uninitiated, what are the nuts and bolts of how that worked? How did that Obama policy basically create this trend?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there used to be private lenders that were backed by the federal government for certain students. And that worked. It worked for everyone, but the federal government took over all student lending in 2010.

And at that point … And so they send all the student loans directly to the schools and then the schools take out what they’re going to take out. And if there’s some left over, then the students get it. But very often the students don’t understand the implications of that. And they will go and spend it on things that are not related to education, which is not a good decision either.

And so the whole model is it’s not a logical or defensible model for the long term.

Mr. Jekielek:

But how did that actually balloon these? Just the university-

Ms. DeVos:

Well, because they’re on the government’s balance sheets as though they’re all good loans that are going to be fully repaid. And in many cases, they’re not. And in many cases, students have elected and Congress has continued to adopt all of these repayment plans that are based on a student’s income versus what they actually owe. And so they’re ultimately paying back pennies on the dollar from what they have borrowed and someone somewhere has to pay that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So I guess the big question here is, American education already prior to COVID was in rough shape. And we’ve talked a little bit about this already. And so now we have this prototype in Arizona, but we don’t know for sure how that’s going to play. What are you suggesting states do?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’m suggesting all states adopt policies that are going to give parents and families the freedom to direct their children’s education, to choose where their child gets their K-12 education. And I’ve cited Arizona as the most recent state, the first state to do a universal model in approach.

But there have been many other states that have been very forward leaning on this. Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, there are a lot of states that have undertaken these programs. They’ve been at smaller scales. But Florida, as I said, is the most advanced in this, has the greatest number of students in programs, going to schools other than their assigned schools.

And interestingly, the districts where students are the highest number or percentage of students are going to schools other than their assigned school, the students who are remaining in their assigned schools are actually the outcomes, the achievement levels are actually improving.

I argue there has not been a definitive study on this, but there’s a couple of reasons, logical reasons. First, the kids have left if that school wasn’t working for them. They’re choosing to go somewhere else that is working. And the kids who are still staying there are the beneficiaries of leadership now making decisions and changes that they refuse to or wouldn’t make before, because they have other schools and other experiences now to benchmark themselves against.

And they’re actually improving opportunities for kids within the traditional schools as well. It’s a win-win for everyone. And the system that continues to defend the monopolistic government run system cannot fight back against these arguments because they are obvious and they are proliferating in many states where these policies have been adopted.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re very obviously against Critical Race Theory, Praxis, within education K to 12, I suspect any area. Now, what do you make of the fact that some of the most woke schools are actually the elite private schools? And so, we talk about school choice, the opportunity. Ostensibly, these are the schools that anybody would dream of coming, yet they’re the ones that have seemed to be hit by this ideology, perhaps the most. I mean, obviously not empirically, but that’s what people are telling me. So what do you think of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, this is a problem all over the place, and that’s why I think parents need to be demanding and expecting radical transparency around curriculum. And while many of these elite private schools are experiencing the same type of phenomenon or families have finally found out about it, there are many other schools, faith-based schools in states across the country that have been doing a great job of preparing and educating students and giving families opportunities at much lower costs than these elite private schools.

Many people, when we talk about choosing a private school through an education freedom model, immediately go to these, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year schools. But there are many, many schools that educate children at a much lower cost, $10,000, in some cases less, and have a faith-based grounding that are doing a good job and families want to be able to make those choices as well.

And so these policies can support whatever families decide is going to be the right environment and the right setting for their kids.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re seeing this correlation between them being faith based and having the more classical education model, basically. That’s what you’re saying?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there are a lot of classical models that there’s classical charter schools, there’s classical Christian schools. And that focus, I think, have been reawakened and is going to continue to grow. The opportunity to access those opportunities is only going to happen for all families if they’re empowered to make those choices with policies that support that.

Mr. Jekielek:

Got it. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Ms. DeVos:

Just again, thanks for the opportunity to be here. My book is really about how we fix American K-12 education and how we can make learning a great experience for every child. And I hope that folks will enjoy it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Betsy DeVos, it’s such a pleasure to have you on.

Ms. DeVos:

Thanks so much, Jan.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The State Department helped fund a film festival in September that featured movies depicting drag queens, incest, and pedophilia, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Queer Lisboa, an international queer film festival held in Portugal, was given $10,000 as part of the Biden administration’s push to “support LGBTQ+ and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility efforts” abroad, according to a State Department spokeswoman. The festival’s offerings included P.S. Burn This Letter Please, a documentary about drag culture in post-war New York City, Saint-Narcisse, a film about incestuous twins, and Minyan, a movie about a 17-year-old Jewish boy who leaves his parents to explore New York City’s gay scene and eventually has sex with an adult bartender.

The event was one of several bankrolled by taxpayers to promote LGBT acceptance abroad. In the last year, the State Department funded the “first gender and sexuality library in Lebanon,” provided diversity and inclusion consulting to Latin American police forces, and hosted a transgender recognition webinar in Norway, according to an interagency report. The department said locals sometimes pushed back against LGBT promotion, perceiving it as “Western,” “imported,” or “against cultural or religious values.”

The festival also screened a biopic of Harvey Milk, the United States’ first openly gay elected official. Milk, a city official in San Francisco during the 1950s, once dated a 16-year-old boy while Milk was in his 30s. He also tried to get another teenage boy to run away from home to live with him, according to a biography of the politician.

Top officials at the U.S. Embassy in Portugal launched the event as part of the State Department’s effort to implement resident Joe Biden’s “Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons Around the World.” The head of the embassy expressed gratitude and said she was “very happy” to support the festival as part of its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

A spokeswoman for the State Department told the Free Beacon their grant also paid for high-profile director and Democratic donor Gus Van Sant to speak at the event and facilitated travel to the luxurious island chain on which it was held. In its initial communication, the department declined to provide a dollar amount for the festival grant.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The controversial male-to-female transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been nominated for NCAA’s Woman of the Year.

The award “honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athletes,” according to the NCAA’s website. Since it was established in 1991, there has never been a biological male nominee. Thomas beat out around 219,000 biological female competitors for the nomination.

Lia, formerly William, began transitioning in 2019 before the swimmer’s junior year at the University of Pennsylvania after years of competing as a man. Thomas gained national spotlight after winning the Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships 500-yard freestyle event in March, leaping from a 65th ranking as a man to the first place spot as a woman and breaking Ivy League records.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe biological males should not be allowed to compete in collegiate or professional women’s sports, according to a June Washington Post poll.

In January, the NCAA Board of Governors mirrored the International Olympic Committee’s guidance on trans athletes, allowing the governing bodies of sports to make their own gender-qualifying rules. FINA, the international water sports federation, had not yet announced their new transgender policies by the time Thomas was permitted to compete and erase records set by outstanding biological women.

The Woman of the Year nominee pool will eventually be narrowed to 30 finalists, with the winner selected in January. Each NCAA member school has the opportunity to nominate up to two athletes for the honor, though a second has to be an “international student-athlete or student-athlete of color.”

The NCAA selects the Woman of the Year based on athletic and academic performance as well as a personal statement and service and leadership work. Thomas holds a national title, so his athletics score is the highest possible on the selection scale.

The service and leadership section asks nominees to list special recognitions received. Thomas has been mentioned in hundreds of news articles since 2019 and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated earlier this year.

Thomas’s Olympic dreams were dashed last month when FINA banned post-puberty male-to-female transitioners from competing as women. Thomas now plans to attend law school and become a civil rights attorney, citing experiences with gender discrimination.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘This government entity believes that it can shut a citizen out of public life entirely if he challenges them, their decisions, or their authority,’ says lawyer

A Maine parent is suing his local school board after he was banned from district property for speaking out against school library books that promote transgenderism and pornography.

In the wake of those complaints, Shawn McBreairty received a criminal trespass notice from the school district, according to a copy of the notice and the lawsuit. The Maine father of two daughters, who has campaigned against sexualized lesson plans in public schools, said during an April school board meeting that the books were “grooming students on premature sexual ideology,” referencing a pornographic book the library marked as appropriate for all age groups.

The school board demanded that McBreairty leave for playing a recording of a conversation between him and Chairman Heath Miller, saying his descriptions of the books involved “vulgarity and obscenity.” McBreairty said government-run school libraries should not offer the books, which the school board deemed too inappropriate to discuss among adults, to minors.

“I’m not anti-LGBTQ,” McBreairty told the Washington Free Beacon. “I’m not anti-anything, but when somebody tries to use our tax dollars to indoctrinate kids with hypersexual materials, to me, that’s nonsense.”

The Hampden, Maine, school district is one of many nationwide to face pushback from parents over sexual library books. Florida parents in April demanded the Osceola and Orange County school boards remove from the library controversial books such as Gender Queer, the story of a person with “e/em/eir” pronouns, which parents said included “pornographic” details. A Virginia Beach, Va., school district removed Gender Queer and similar books from its libraries after parents complained in May. Parents in Frisco, Texas, also protested sexually explicit books in their children’s school libraries.

McBreairty raised concerns about the district’s Reads Three Reading Challenge, which awards K-12 students for reading books like All Boys Aren’t Blue, which has been removed from libraries in at least eight states for concerns about “sexually graphic material, including descriptions of queer sex,” and Hurricane Child, in which a 12-year-old girl falls in love with another girl.

The criminal trespass notice against McBreairty, which bans him from all virtual and in-person school-related meetings, violates his First Amendment rights, according to the lawsuit. The district should let McBreairty express his ideas and allow the community to judge the books for themselves, said Marc Randazza, who is representing McBreairty in the U.S. District Court for Maine.

“This government entity believes that it can shut a citizen out of public life entirely if he challenges them, their decisions, or their authority,” Randazza told the Free Beacon. “It shouldn’t matter what he’s advocating for. If you can’t advocate your position before the government without being told you’re now locked out of public life, because you challenged us, well, that’s not what freedom is.”

In the recording McBreairty played at the April board meeting, Miller justified pornographic excerpts of a library book in the Hampden High School library, saying, “If you were to read it in the context of the whole book, it would have a different meaning.” The board cited the incident to justify the criminal trespass notice, but no official policy against playing a video or recording during a school board meeting exists, the lawsuit states. Randazza said the board tried to add limitations to its policies to stop McBreairty from criticizing the library books.

The library at the district’s Reeds Brook Middle School offers The Other Boy, a book about a 12-year-old boy who was born a girl and tries to conceal that he is transgender when his family moves towns; Middle School’s A Drag: You Better Werk, the story of a young gay entrepreneur who starts his own junior talent agency with a 13-year-old aspiring drag queen as his first client; and Rick, a book about a boy who joins a “Rainbow Spectrum club, where kids of many genders and identities can express themselves.” It also offers It’s Perfectly Normal: A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, which McBreairty read at a different school board meeting.

Another district library, Leroy H. Smith Elementary School, includes My Maddy, in which a child celebrates her “genderfluid” parent who is neither a mom nor a dad; My Rainbow, in which a mom “creates the perfect rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter”; and Julián Is a Mermaid, about a boy who wants to dress as a beautiful mermaid. It also offers Rise Up: The Art of Protest, which teaches children to protest for “gender equality, civil rights, LGBT rights, refugee and immigrant rights, peace, and the environment.”

“Eight-year-old kids who don’t know how to spell ‘blue’ are basically being asked to do art for protests,” McBreairty said.

The Regional School Unit #22 school district and 2022 Maine Teacher of the Year Kelsey Stoyanova, who crafted the Reads Three program, have appealed to “intellectual freedom” in defense of the library books. But McBreairty said the intellectual freedom argument is a Trojan horse for the Maine Department of Education’s radical agenda.

“Their program is to indoctrinate kids while they’re young without parental permission,” he said. “Don’t try to force that stuff on me or my daughters with my tax dollars.”

Regional School Unit #22 did not respond to a request for comment. Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

America’s progressive elites have transitioned from “Follow the Science” to “Science is Violence.”

Their senior-most judges will not define what a woman is, nor will their celebrated scholars acknowledge that only a woman can give birth. In fact, to even assert the latter, in our betters’ view, is to render one a dangerous societal menace.

That is one of the takeaways from the recent dumbfounding exchange between Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and U.C.–Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the legal consequences of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the question of abortion to the states.

The back-and-forth, provoked in part by Bridges’ unwillingness under earlier questioning to refer to those who are pregnant as “women,” went as follows:

Hawley: “Professor Bridges … you’ve referred to ‘people with the capacity for pregnancy.’ Would that be women?”

Bridges: “Many women, cis-women have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis-women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy, as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy.”

Hawley: “So this [abortion] isn’t really a women’s rights issue …”

Bridges: “We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.”

Hawley: “Your view is, is that the core of this right, then, is about what?”

Bridges: “I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.”

Hawley: “Wow, you’re saying that I’m opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies?”

Bridges: “I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide …”

Hawley: “Because of my line of questioning? So we can’t talk about it?”

Bridges: “Because denying that trans people exist, and pretending not to know that they exist …”

Hawley: “I’m denying that trans people exist by asking you if you’re talking about women having pregnancies?”

Bridges [After repeatedly interrupting Hawley’s question with “Are you?”]: “Do you believe that men can get pregnant?”

Hawley: “No, I don’t think men can get pregnant.”

Bridges: “So you are denying that trans people exist.”

The exchange reflected a level of condescension, arrogance, and bad faith on the part of Bridges—an apparent radical left academic and activist who has spent much of her career (pdf) teaching on critical race theory and “reproductive justice”—that was nearly as striking as its substance.

What Bridges illustrated is that progressivism requires one to ignore science, our basic humanity, and what we know to be true, and subordinate it all to a secular regressive anti-faith, of which radical gender ideology has become a sacred and integral part.

Should one dare to call out the insanity of being unwilling to recognize that women and solely women can bear children, such dissent must be treated as hateful, and the dissenters cast as dangerous. To recognize reality must not be permitted. “Submit or you are a transphobe with blood on your hands,” the professor tells us.

This tactic is both cheap and low, but its brazen usage here constituted something of a public service. It made clear that devotees of radical gender ideology cannot debate openly and honestly. When challenged, they drip with contempt, dodge, and resort to ad hominem. This is the best that one can expect from the best they have: academics with the most sterling of credentials, hand-picked by U.S. senators to best represent their position.

The notion that words with which the left disagrees—or truths that if broadly acknowledged would hamper their agenda and undermine their power and privilege—constitute violence, and that therefore those articulating them must be chastised if not punished using force of law or worse, of course arises from the academy. And we are all living on the campus now.

This can be seen in the whole-of-ruling class War on Wrongthink under which we are currently suffering, whereby those dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy over draconian coronavirus policies, critical race theory indoctrination in schools, on matters of election integrity, immigration, or climate are targeted for censorship and silencing if not treated as domestic terror threats by the world’s most powerful national security and intelligence apparatus.

As conditions in America get worse, and the ruling class’s worldview grows ever more radical, expect the censorship to get worse.

What else can you do when the most ardent adherents of your political movement reject biological sex, promote abortion up to the point of birth (infanticide), celebrate drag queen story hour, indoctrinate kids into believing America is a bastion of racist evil, support the freeing of violent criminals while disarming the law-abiding and throwing the book at them should they seek to defend themselves, throw wide open our borders, and cripple the energy industry on which modern life and prosperity relies—and all to predictable disastrous effect?

For normal people seeking a normal society, this is indefensible. Silencing and punishing the ever-growing chorus of critics is the only option.

This is precisely why it’s incumbent upon those who reject such a worldview to speak ever more openly, honestly, and boldly. To remain silent in the face of such crybullies is to be complicit in their totalitarian effort—totalitarian in the sense of its expansive aspiration to control every aspect of our society, starting with our speech, and in the means used to achieve it.

For progressives, it’s clear that every norm and civilizational pillar must be transgressed.

Their fragility is best demonstrated in their every effort to stop you from calling them out on it.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A prominent LGBT activist group on Wednesday argued that social media platforms are not “safe” for “LGBTQ users” and called for increased censorship of right-wing content as a remedy. 

GLAAD, an NGO that formally collaborates with Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok and works to “accelerate acceptance” of the “LGBTQ community,” called on tech companies to amend their algorithms so they don’t “amplify harmful content, extremism and hate.” GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis singled out narratives advocated by “right wing media and politicians” as threats warranting content moderation. The group urged social media companies to prohibit individuals from referring to transgender individuals by their biological pronouns and using their pre-transition names. 

GLAAD issued its call for censorship in its annual “Social Media Safety Index” report, which “provides recommendations for the industry at large and reports on LGBTQ user safety across the five major social media platforms.”

“While Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms must balance concerns around free expression,” GLAAD said in the report, “it cannot be stated strongly enough that social media platforms must take more meaningful and aggressive action to protect the safety of their LGBTQ users and to staunch the epidemic of hate, falsehoods, and extremism.”

According to GLAAD, opposition to giving hormone treatment and puberty blockers to children qualifies as the “promotion of falsehoods” and “disinformation.”

The organization called people who opposed them on social media “troll-cum-pundits” and accused artificial intelligence of being biased against “LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.”

Psychologist Jordan Peterson was suspended from Twitter last month after he referred to female-to-male transgender actor Elliot Page as “Ellen,” the celebrity’s former name. Several other influential conservative accounts have been suspended for questioning gender ideology. GLAAD claims that gay and transgender people are censored disproportionately on social media.

Every social media platform rated by GLAAD in the report scored under 50 on a scale of 100 for “LGBTQ safety.” Instagram scored the highest and TikTok the lowest. One category used to determine how safe a website was for gay people is whether it had a dedicated feature for users to list their pronouns on their profiles.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Khiara Bridges might be a law professor at Berkeley, but on Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley was teaching the lessons.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the legal aftermath of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade in June, the Missouri Republican opened up his line of questioning on an area of human biology any 10-year-old is familiar with.

And the law professor couldn’t give a straight answer.

Check out the video here. It’s got to be seen to be believed:

Hawley, a former attorney general of the Show-Me State and a skilled interrogator, started off easy:

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“Professor Bridges, you’ve said several times, you’ve used a phrase, I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it. You’ve referred to ‘people with a capacity for pregnancy.’ Would that be women?”

Give credit to Hawley for keeping a straight face here. Like any good lawyer, he knew the answer to the question before he asked it. And it’s a good bet that he knew just as well that the witness was going to try to wriggle around it.

“Many women — cis women — have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy,” Bridges answered, falling back on orthodox leftist jargon that dares any doubters to see through the nonsense.

“There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy.”

When Hawley suggested that that answer took abortion out of the realm of “women’s rights,” Bridges responded with the kind of answer that probably sounds masterful in a faculty lounge but is nonsense to normal human beings.

“We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups,” she said, fairly bubbling with her own cleverness. “Those things are not mutually exclusive, Sen. Hawley.”

She then accused Hawley of being “transphobic” and even inviting violence against transgender people.

Hawley wasn’t buying it.

“Wow, you’re saying that I’m opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies?”

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That’s the question the left can’t answer.

They can pull dodges like then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson claiming she couldn’t define “women” because “I’m not a biologist.” They can take refuge in scary factoids, as Bridges did by throwing out the statistic that “one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide.”

But they can’t give an answer that has been a fundamental part of the human experience since there have been humans walking the earth.

In the current political environment, cosseted by an establishment media that’s either too corrupt or too cowardly to call them on it, activists like Bridges have been able to get away with the pretense that sex is a matter of individual choice, that there are no objective differences between men and women, that human agency is the real authority rather than creation itself.

But Bridges’ semantics didn’t work with Hawley, as they wouldn’t work on any sane observer.

I’m a moderate
I’m socially liberal
I work in higher education

I think the witness is insane
She is, sadly, not at all unique in higher ed.
Her attitude towards discussion is becoming the norm

The social sciences, as a respectable academic endeavor, are on life support.

— The Robber Baron (@Robber_Baron_) July 12, 2022

It’s extremely disturbing watching college level educators become visibly angered and accusatory at the point of any debate. This isn’t at all my experience when I attended college. We were encouraged to challenge and openly discuss ideas. Something has gone wrong in education.

— 🌎 Sal (@J1262Sal) July 12, 2022

When cornered, accuse and call them names.

— M_Thomas (@M_Thomasss) July 12, 2022

So, in conclusion, only women can get pregnant.

— JPaulNorton (@JPaulNorton) July 12, 2022

There’s no doubt Bridges and her progressive colleagues thought she came away the winner of this contest — the liberal HuffPost headlined its coverage “Professor Schools Sen. Josh Hawley For His Transphobic Questions In Abortion Hearing,” while a website called LGBTQNation went with “Law professor humiliates Josh Hawley during Senate committee hearing.”

But the reality is, Hawley’s question — Do only women get pregnant? — was one Bridges couldn’t handle.

“Is this how you run your classroom?” Hawley asked. “Are students allowed to question you, or are they also treated like this?”

“We have a good time in my class. You should join,” Bridges answered. “You would learn a lot.”

“Wow, I would learn a lot,” Hawley said, with evident sarcasm. “I’ve learned a lot in this exchange. Extraordinary.”

It’s doubtful the pretentious Professor Bridges came out of it questioning her own beliefs, of course. But Americans who watched learned, once again, that the left of the 21st century is capable of denying a basic truth of existence – and deny it’s denying it.

For Hawley and the rest of the country, it was a masterclass.

Few companies have embraced wokeness with as much zeal as Disney. The company has leaped headlong into America’s culture war to become one of the most activist corporations in the United States.

Disney management’s public battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the state’s Parental Rights in Education law — which critics disingenuously called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — drew national attention to the company this spring.

Videos from company meetings leaked in March showed company leaders bragging about Disney’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and its moves to create “canonical trans characters” in children’s programming.

In April, we learned that the Walt Disney Co. had kicked its LGBT activism up a notch by offering a new benefit that will assist employees and their minor children with “gender affirmation procedures.”

And following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, the company immediately assured employees that regardless of where they live, they will be reimbursed for the cost of travel to the nearest state that allows abortion.

What a great work environment for a liberal employee. This company really has their backs.

But what if you’re a conservative?

This is precisely where Disney content producer Jeremiah Daws found himself. The pro-life, conservative Christian recently shared his story with The Daily Wire.

Shortly after his arrival in Hollywood, Daws learned to keep his conservative views to himself. In the late 2000s, he and his brother signed up for a screenwriting workshop.

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“The man who ran the workshop noticed some conservative posts on my social media and invited us to breakfast to let us know we would be blacklisted in Hollywood if people knew we held those beliefs,” he told the Daily Wire.

In 2015, Daws went to work for Disney. He managed to avoid political discussions and got along just fine until the summer of 2020.

In reaction to the riots that had spread throughout the country following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody, Disney began sending employees to mandatory diversity and inclusion training sessions.

“That was the last straw” for Daws, he said.

He recalled being told that “as a white, straight, male, I should be quiet and listen” and that “promotions would be on hold for the white men on the team.” He said he’d been instructed to “start casting non-binary children for our photo and video shoots.”

Related:

Leaked Disney Footage: Hidden Sex Message Found in New Kids Cartoon – Can You Spot It?

That fall, Daws read a book that had an impact on him. “Live Not By Lies,” by The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, tells the “stories of Christians who resisted totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.”

Daws told the Daily Wire he felt like he was “living every day promoting a company, a belief system, and even COVID hysteria, that I didn’t agree with. … I was living by lies, putting on this false exterior.”

He quoted Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Daws left the company several months later.

“I just couldn’t lie anymore,” he told the Daily Wire. “I would remove myself from the equation. Living in that kind of environment is soul-crushing. I wanted to be free to express myself without fear of losing my job. I wanted to be in an environment where I could make friends who would accept me as I am, not as they demand me to be.”

Since leaving, Daws has enrolled in trade school and plans to open a machine shop.

“I had hope in the back of my mind that if Disney ever got back to just making magic, maybe I could go back,” he said. “But the lie was still out there. There were 10 years worth of friends and coworkers that still believed I was one of them.”

“It was time to end the lies once and for all. I wanted my next phase of life to be open and truthful. Wherever I worked next, everything would be out on the table.”

Daws said he was pleased by the Supreme Court’s decision last month to reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling. “People have prayed for this day for 50 years,” he said. “We are now on the path to righting this horrible wrong.”

“This was a day to celebrate. I had a small platform among my liberal friends to be a different voice,” he said.

Daws chose that day to “come out” on social media as a conservative. Predictably, his liberal friends responded with “a lot of negativity.”

He was wise to get out.

Although Disney likely tops the list of major U.S. corporations that have adopted a woke agenda, this toxic ideology has spread like a plague throughout corporate America.

As Disney’s executives chase their woke dreams, they’ve forgotten their two primary responsibilities: to provide entertainment to families and to maximize shareholder value. No doubt a portion of the company’s clientele thinks it’s wonderful to include transgenders in films and to add gay characters to Disney classics, but my guess is that the majority of American parents disagree.

That they’ve failed at both is apparent in the price of the company’s common stock, which has been cut in half over the past year.

The pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and ordinary Americans are fed up with identity politics and speech regulation.

Hopefully, voters will deliver a huge “thumbs down” to the woke agenda in November.

The Army suspended a decorated general for criticizing a tweet by first lady Jill Biden, USA Today reported.

The branch released retired three-star lieutenant general Gary Volesky, a veteran of the wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from advising senior officers because of his June 25 response to a Jill Biden tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade.

“For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies,” the first lady tweeted. “Today, that right was stolen from us.”

“Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” Volesky replied.

Volesky’s tweet has since been taken down.

Volesky was likely talking about Biden’s support for transgender rights, a cause the military has also embraced. As Russia this year began its bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army was training officers on “gender pronouns” and “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Top-ranking General Mark Milley, who secretly promised to warn the Chinese People’s Liberation Army about U.S. military actions, has in recent years embraced left-wing causes, saying he wants to “understand white rage” and apologizing for appearing with former president Donald Trump.

This is the second time this month that the Army has punished service members for disagreeing with someone in the Biden White House. The Army announced July 1 that it will deprive soldiers of pay and benefits if they do not comply with the administration’s vaccine mandate.

Volesky, who retired in 2020, received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest decoration for valor, the New York Post reported. He served as the Army’s chief of public affairs from 2012 to 2014 and commanded the 101st Airborne Division.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden Justice Department has yet to take action against abortion extremists menacing pro-life clinics and members of the Supreme Court. Republican lawmakers are resolved to hold leadership accountable after the midterm elections—even if that means impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who is in line to take over the House Judiciary Committee if Republicans prevail in November, didn’t take a Garland impeachment inquiry off the table in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. Jordan cited a range of alleged misconduct, from failure to enforce black-letter law to protect clinics and justices, to secret collusion with leftwing groups opposed to parents protesting woke curricula changes.

“That’ll be a decision that will be made by the entire conference,” Jordan said of an impeachment push.

The oversight planning is a response to conflict roiling the country following the High Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Pro-abortion protesters tried running Justice Brett Kavanaugh out of a downtown Washington, D.C., steakhouse on Wednesday night, weeks after a gunman came to his home planning to assassinate him. And the militant pro-abortion network Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for more than a dozen acts against pro-life clinics and churches, ranging from vandalism to fire-bombing.

It is a federal crime to demonstrate outside of a judge’s home with intent to influence deliberations. Regular pro-abortion demonstrations outside the homes of the conservative justices seem to fit that bill exactly. The Justice Department has taken no action against protesters as of this writing. Local police told inquiring neighbors that federal agencies are declining to enforce the judicial anti-picketing law, according to a Fox News report.

Jordan wonders whether the Justice Department and the White House are following a template.

“The key question we would like to find out, if in fact the American people put us in control, is was this similar to what happened with parents at school board meetings? In other words, was the Biden White House working with some outside left wing influence groups, and also then communicating that information to the DOJ?” Jordan said.

The Ohio Republican added that a dozen whistleblowers have quietly come forward to speak about the Biden Justice Department and FBI matters, though he declined to get into specifics.

The Free Beacon was first to report that White House aides colluded with the National School Boards Association to push the Justice Department into investigating parents protesting critical race theory and gender ideology as domestic terrorists.

It’s also a federal crime to attack or destroy houses of worship and clinics for pregnant women. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who enforces those laws, has derided pro-life clinics in the past. While Biden administration officials have shared intelligence assessments with clerics and local law enforcement, the administration has yet to make even a single arrest or indictment related to dozens of attacks on churches and pro-life crisis pregnancy centers.

There have been almost 50 documented instances of violence, vandalism, or intimidation at houses of worship and pro-life clinics since the Dobbs draft leaked, according to a June report from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

House Republicans will be better positioned than their Senate counterparts to force Biden officials to cooperate if they stonewall investigators. Senate committee rules incentivize, but do not require, bipartisan cooperation when issuing subpoenas. The House has no such constraints. And House committees have historically taken the lead on compelled testimony and sharing of evidence.

Republican senators are putting public pressure on federal law enforcement to take immediate action. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray in June requesting a briefing on the bureau’s efforts to combat pro-abortion extremism.

“Our law enforcement officers are obliged to duly enforce the laws of our country—not just those that are politically suitable to the current administration,” Grassley’s letter reads.

“We’re usually the tip of the spear in terms of shining a light on issues and embarrassing an agency into compliance,” a Republican Senate aide told the Free Beacon. “The more attention they get for ignoring congressional oversight, the worse it looks for them. And that’s a pretty effective tactic for us.”

Outside groups are also pressing GOP lawmakers for accountability. Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, said there is ample reason to remove Garland from office. Davis was nominations chief for Grassley during the Kavanaugh confirmation and led the outside support team for Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation.

“When Republicans reclaim the House in January, they must impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland,” Davis told the Free Beacon. “There must be consequences for his dangerous dereliction of duty that has led to highly dangerous attacks on the Supreme Court of the United States.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration spent nearly $1.5 million to produce a “transgender programming curriculum” for inmates held in the nation’s 122 federal prisons.

The Justice Department disbursed the funds for a consulting firm to develop a program to help transgender inmates “manage identity concerns during incarceration” and advocate for their “sexual health and safety,” according to a government summary of the contract. The contract also asks the firm to develop a program to help transgender inmates access hormone treatment after they are released.

There are only about 1,200 transgender individuals serving sentences in federal prisons, according to a 2021 Department of Justice estimate, meaning the Biden administration spent roughly $1,250 per transgender prisoner. That is more than the $1,200 checks Americans received during the first round of COVID-19 stimulus payments.

The Justice Department’s $1,496,500 contract is part of resident Joe Biden’s larger, controversial effort to promote transgenderism—even among minors. The Justice Department in March sent a letter to all state attorneys general warning them against restricting transgender hormone treatment for children. That same month, Biden’s State Department announced it would allow individuals to select “X” as their gender when completing passport applications. The administration also released updated guidelines in January that make it easier for transgender inmates to be placed in facilities that match their “gender identity.”

Following a district court ruling last month, a convicted terrorist is set to become the first transgender inmate to receive federally funded sex-reassignment surgery, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The American Civil Liberties Union, a Biden administration ally, waged the successful legal battle on behalf of Cristina Iglesias, who in 2005 mailed fake anthrax to British government office buildings.

The Biden administration’s push for transgender accommodations in federal prisons comes amid a spike in sexual assaults committed by biologically male inmates in women’s prisons. Female prisoners have sued state governments, citing sexual assault concerns, in an attempt to keep male-to-female transgender inmates in men’s prisons.

The funds were first disbursed in 2021 to Nevada-based consulting firm Change Companies, and the contract runs through September of this year. The firm, which creates educational materials for correctional facilities, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department told the Free Beacon it “recognizes the importance of appropriate gender-affirming management and treatment of transgender individuals in its custody.” The department did not respond to a request for comment on whether any of the programs have been implemented in federal prisons.

Justice Department officials recommended that the firm draw on research from left-wing advocacy groups, such as the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), to guide its work. The NCTE dubbed former president Donald Trump’s White House the “Discrimination Administration” and supports Democrats’ Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” The organization also launched a politically oriented “action fund” in 2017, which has exclusively endorsed Democratic candidates.

The Justice Department programs appear to align with the agency’s most recent guidelines on transgender prisoners. The guidelines, released earlier this year, prohibit prison staff from referring to inmates by biologically accurate pronouns if they identify as transgender. The document defines gender as “a construct” based on “social identity, psychological identity, and human behavior.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

State senator Tiara Mack says she’s shaking her butt for ‘black girl magic’

Democratic Rhode Island state senator Tiara Mack on Thursday posted a series of flyers saying she will “twerk for trans rights,” among other reasons.

Mack was responding to a video posted on Monday by influential Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” that shows the state senator “twerking”—dancing in a provocative manner that involves shaking her butt and thrusting her hips. Mack in response blasted “the media” for “trying not to cover the real issues.”

“Not on MY watch,” she wrote. “I #TwerkFor joy, abortion justice, body autonomy, trans rights, and intersex rights.” She then posted the flyers.

While Mack will likely win reelection in her heavily Democratic state Senate district, Democrats face a surprisingly tough race in one of the deep-blue state’s congressional districts. Republican Allan Fung is polling ahead of all potential Democratic nominees in Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District, a seat the GOP has not held for 30 years. The Rhode Island Republican Party is using the Mack controversy to fundraise.

Other causes for which Mack shakes her butt include “the human right to safe housing” and “black girl magic.”

Links to donate to Mack’s reelection campaign accompany the flyers.

Mack faced extensive backlash for the twerking video, with user @nikki_1968, who describes herself as “an admirer of Michelle and Barack,” writing, “I’m not a conservative and I’m disappointed. Where do we draw the line on the behavior of public figures?”

“Girl,” Mack responded. “I have an Ivy League degree and am a state senator.”

This is not the first time the senator has tried to combine politics and sex. Mack, who calls herself a “Queer Educator,” this year pushed a state bill to teach 11-year-olds about “pleasure-based sexual relations.” Rhode Island parents spoke in “overwhelming opposition” to the bill, which one mother told the Providence Journal was “disgusting and inappropriate.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Maine’s Biden-funded lesson described transgender person as ‘someone who the doctors made a mistake about when they’re born’

The Maine Department of Education cited George Floyd’s death to defend its Biden-funded sex education lesson that taught kindergartners about transgenderism, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Facing criticism from parents, the department in May scrubbed a lesson plan from its website that described a transgender person as “someone who the doctors made a mistake about when they’re born.” But privately, the department dismissed opposition to the lesson plan, which received funding through resident Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, as a “political disparaging of our education system” and insisted that teaching elementary-age students about transgenderism “is more important than ever to end this cycle of violence and hate.”

“We have to stand firm against hate,” Kelli Deveaux, then-associate commissioner of public education, wrote to all department employees in a May email that was obtained through a public information request. “Two years ago we were all shocked to witness the murder of George Floyd, this weekend 10 people were murdered in Buffalo because of their race.”

The Maine sex education debate is the latest in a series of fights nationwide over whether public schools should teach children about LGBT issues. Liberal advocacy groups funded by top Democratic Party donors have pushed school districts across the country to teach gender identity and transgenderism to elementary students, the Free Beacon reported last year. A group of Nebraska parents last year discovered through public information requests that their children’s sex education curriculum was secretly reviewed by a Planned Parenthood activist and excluded religious groups, the Free Beacon reported.

The state’s transgender lesson was a part of an online module, Maine Opportunities for Online Sustained Education (MOOSE), which the Maine Department of Education established in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic as students transitioned to remote learning. The module, which the state spent $2.8 million to develop, contains optional online lesson plans that are written by teachers for students. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which Congress passed in March 2021, funneled additional funds to the MOOSE program.

The Maine Education Department removed the LGBT lesson and placed it under review, Deveaux said in the internal email to employees, due to “one inartful sentence in which the teacher is explaining what LGBT stands for.” The department faced public pushback after the lesson plan was the subject of a Maine GOP ad launched in opposition to Democratic governor Janet Mills, who campaigned on her pro-LGBT record in a tight race for reelection this year. Clips of the lesson also went viral on Twitter.

“Some people, when they get a little bit older, realize what the doctors said was not right,” Maine kindergarten teacher Kailina Mills, who is not related to the governor, said in one now-deleted video lesson. “They might say the doctors told me I’m a man, but I’m really a woman.”

In another section, transgender activist Jazz Jennings read from her children’s book, I Am Jazz, which details how she transitioned from male to female starting at five years old.

“I have a girl brain, but a boy body,” Jennings read. “This is called transgender. I was born this way.”

Shawn McBreairty, a Maine father of twin daughters who has campaigned against critical race theory and sexualized lesson plans in public schools, said the Maine Department of Education is pushing radical gender ideology on young students.

“We shouldn’t be spending taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate kids through the hypersexualization of minors,” McBreairty told the Free Beacon.

The Maine Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment about the internal emails. Deveaux, the associate commissioner who sent the emails, left the Maine Department of Education this month. The department did not respond to questions on whether Deveaux was fired.

The department designed the lesson plan to teach kindergartners that people “want to be free to love whoever they want—whether that’s men, women, non-binary people, transgender people, or anyone else they choose.” Among other activities, kindergarten students were instructed to advocate for LGBT causes through artwork.

“Even though some people refuse to let LGBT+ people love freely, LGBT+ activists have used their voices, their art, and their bodies to fight for their freedom,” the lesson stated. “Today, you’re going to do the same thing. You are going to write and/or make art to show what love means to you. For people in the LGBT+ community, love means freedom. What does it mean to you?”

The lesson linked to two videos that promote pride parades as a “party” and “celebration,” including the Blues Clues Pride Parade episode that shows a cartoon drag queen singing about animal families with gay, nonbinary, transgender, asexual, bisexual, and pansexual members. Students were then told to design their own pride parade float.

The lesson recommended LGBT-themed literature for young readers, including My Princess Boy, a story of a boy who likes to wear princess dresses, and Pride Puppy, which follows a “protagonist of ambiguous gender” through a Pride parade. Another recommendation, Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity, teaches there is a difference between children’s bodies and gender identity.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about whether it supports Maine’s decision to pull the lesson plan.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Seth Dillon will not back away from making fun of irrational and dangerous ideology

Seth Dillon, CEO of the satire news website The Babylon Bee, said the company’s goal is to show the irrationality of the popular narratives that pervade modern culture by making jokes about the issues of the time, from Roe v. Wade to the fact that a Supreme Court nominee could not define the word “woman.”

“Rationality itself is under attack. It’s not just free speech. There are people who have abandoned rationality on purpose, and are trying to get you to go along with agreeing with them that two and two make five,” Dillon said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

Dillon’s goal with The Babylon Bee is to make people laugh and question their own thinking, he said, but he’s found the company taking on a more important role.

“The goal was to make people laugh, and to make them think a little bit, to be subversive the way that satire is supposed to be subversive, to poke holes in the popular narrative,” said Dillon. “The goal wasn’t to be on the front lines of some kind of big battle but that is where things are at.”

Although clearly satire, The Babylon Bee has been attacked as being fake news, banned on some platforms, and subjected to “fact-checks.”

Fact-Checking Satire

“The issue that we’ve had with the fact-checkers is that if they had just gone to our pieces and said, ‘Hey, this is a viral piece of content, you may have seen it going around. This is satire. Laugh, it’s satire,’ that wouldn’t have been detrimental to our business,” Dillon said.

“The problem was that they were out there saying, ‘Oh, these guys have managed to pull off these tricks before. They’re duping you. They’re presenting you with fake news. They’re pretending to be satirists, but they’re really deceivers, and it’s a hub for disinformation.’”

One of the fact-checking companies told Dillon they only fact-check an article if they get hundreds of people asking the company if a headline is true.

Dillon said when he questioned this fact-checker about where they were getting their complaints about The Babylon Bee articles, the fact-checker could not give him an answer and stopped responding to his emails.

“There’s no question in their mind that we are legitimately satire,” Dillon said about the fact-checkers, “but they use the fact-checking as an excuse to try to vilify us as being someone who’s out there trying to mislead the public.”

“This is not merely innocuous content moderation where they’re saying, ‘This is lewd or indecent content, we’re taking it down,’” said Dillon. “It’s viewpoint discrimination under the guise of benign content moderation.”

What Is a Woman

In order to poke fun at Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for saying she couldn’t define the word “woman” during her confirmation hearings, The Babylon Bee produced a video in which a young boy is asked to spell the word “woman” during a spelling bee. He asks the judges for the definition, and they can’t give it to him.

“When you play it out, what a sketch like this allows you to do is take the absurdity of the absurd position that someone holds and put it into a practical context, like an everyday context where it’s exposed for how absurd it really is,” said Dillon.

“She said, ‘I’m not a biologist,’ but what’s a biologist got to say about it? You know, as far as gender ideology goes, your sex, your biological makeup has nothing to do with your gender at all,” he said.

Dillon has found that the public is hungry for The Babylon Bee’s type of humor.

“I think that comedy that pushes back, and is willing to make jokes that you’re not supposed to make, is really refreshing right now,” he said.

Comedians who push back on the “woke” narrative, like Dave Chappelle, are the ones audiences want to listen to and that are gaining popularity, but they’re attacked for “punching down.”

“Punching down is a derogatory term to describe jokes made at the expense of people who have less power than you,” said Dillon.

Included in this way of thinking is that these groups should not be made fun of because they are weaker and more victimized in society, said Dillon.

“I think it’s the most absurd thing in the world to try to put yourself in the mindset when you’re writing a joke, stopping yourself and thinking to yourself, ‘You know what, I can’t joke about those people, they’re beneath me.’ That’s just a ridiculous condescending thought to have,” said Dillon

‘Safeguard Against Insanity’

The Babylon Bee was accused of punching down when the website jokingly named the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, “man of the year” in one of its headlines.

“Well, this is a white male, high ranking government official, for one thing, and this is an idea that’s being foisted on us from the top down,” said Dillon, who believes his website is justified in joking about Levine.

“I think it’s a real sign of not just, you know, mental, but also spiritual immaturity, to be incapable and unwilling to examine yourself and laugh at yourself,” said Dillon

All of the jokes are meant to make people laugh and to expose irrational and dangerous ideology, not to be cruel, said Dillon.

In addition, the indoctrination of young children with the current transgender ideology is having a detrimental effect on children, he said.

“You can call it cruel because it hurt somebody’s feelings, but I think that it’s actually a safeguard against insanity, which is harmful,” said Dillon

Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee’s account over the Levine “man of the year” article and said if The Babylon Bee deleted the tweet, the account would be reinstated.

Deleting the tweet would mean acknowledging that The Babylon Bee engaged in hateful conduct, Dillon said, and he doesn’t agree with that assessment.

“That’s why we’re not [deleting] it,” he said.

Dillon stands firm about people’s right to free speech.

“You either have to be compelled to say what we want you to say or remain silent and censor yourself. When we’ve reached that point, that’s where I say that’s a hill worth dying on,” said Dillon.

Some of The Babylon Bee’s satirical headlines, including “Pants Sales Plummet as Everyone Working From Home” or “Progressive Church Announces New Drag Queen Bible Story Hour” have come true after the headlines were published.

Opposing Transgender Indoctrination of Children

“There’s this weird thing happening, where it’s becoming difficult for us to make jokes that are so absurd [that] they don’t come true because we’re kind of on this fast track towards insanity,” said Dillon

“I quoted [English writer G.K.] Chesterton, who said that the world has become too absurd to be satirized,” said Dillon.

Currently, with school children being indoctrinated with transgender ideology and some communities having drag queens come in full garb to do story time, or instructions being sent home with kindergarteners about masturbation, Dillon believes sane people need to voice their opposition because this is harmful to young developing minds.

“There’s a moral obligation you have as a parent to insulate your children from things that would corrupt their innocence to the extent that you can. You certainly don’t want to be exposing them to it, or indoctrinating them, or trying to normalize behavior that you know is lewd or indecent,” he said.

Dillon said he is shocked that more people are not outraged about this type of indoctrination, sexualization, and grooming of young children.

The people doing the indoctrination are “pretty open about their motivations and their purpose, their mission is to stir up the queer imagination in children,” said Dillon.

“The culture of what is accepted by the left is getting more and more extreme, but they are not willing to be made fun of,” Dillon said, adding that this is the reason The Babylon Bee is targeted by the left.

“There’s no tolerance on the left for jokes about their sacred cows. So there needs to be a two-way street, where the jokes are allowed to flow in both directions, because they’re very vicious in their humor about conservatives, about Christians,” he said. “They are willing to dish it out but they can’t take it.”

Recently, Dillon personally backed the creator of the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, who exposes the left’s obsession with transgender ideology.

“What Libs of TikTok is doing is, I think, important journalistic work that a lot of journalists are neglecting,” said Dillon. And the reason the left has targeted the account is that it is exposing their amoral agenda

A Meeting With Musk

In December 2021, Dillon, along with The Babylon Bee’s Editor in Chief Kyle Mann and Creative Director Ethan Nicolle, sat down for a longform interview with Elon Musk.

“I asked him, what do you think is so harmful about [woke ideology] and he said it’s divisive, it’s exclusionary, it’s hateful, it gives mean people an excuse to be cruel, while armored in false virtue,” Dillon recalled.

Musk told the leaders of The Babylon Bee that he is a free speech absolutist, and because he is in the financial position to buy Twitter, wants to ensure that true public discourse is allowed to happen on the platform, said Dillon.

“That’s the reason that he’s interested in and taking over Twitter, because wokeness is a lot of the driving force behind compelling certain speech, pressuring people to censor themselves. Otherwise, they’ll be canceled and deplatformed. He sees free speech as being vital for the health of a society,” added Dillon.

The Babylon Bee will continue to speak out against irrational attempts to cancel what they are doing, said Dillon.

“The best way to subvert, the best way to push back on that, is to speak the truth boldly and not censor yourself,” said Dillon.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Catherine Cortez Masto presents award to self-described ‘faglicious homo’ for hosting ‘Drag Queen Story Time’

Nevada Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto quietly honored a drag queen and self-described “faglicious homo” for his years of work with children at a local library.

During a June 26 “Drag Queen Story Time” event in Reno, Masto’s office presented a “certificate of commemoration” to drag queen Miss Ginger Devine, a Washoe County Library tweet shows. Devine, who also goes by Reverend Divine and whose real name is Christopher Daniels, has performed as a drag queen in the Reno area for more than a decade and has read to children at local libraries since at least 2019. In a 2010 blog post, Daniels described himself as a “Broadway loving, Project Runway watching, rainbow scarf wearing, footlong Subway sandwich eating faglicious homo.”

Cortez Masto has yet to publicly promote her award to Daniels and did not interact with the library’s tweet that revealed the honor, suggesting the Democrat is hesitant to weigh in on the controversial “Drag Queen Story Time” program as she faces a difficult reelection bid against Republican Adam Laxalt.

On the same day as the library’s event with Daniels, for example, Cortez Masto accused Republicans of working to end same-sex marriage and pledged to stand with “LGBTQ communities.” But the senator has refrained from discussing more hot-button, “culture war” issues such as drag queen story hours and critical race and gender theory, even as she praises far-left activists who say Nevada “should be teaching” critical race theory in public schools. Laxalt, meanwhile, has called to keep critical race theory out of the state’s schools and “protect students and teachers from indoctrinated bigotry.”

Cortez Masto did not return a request for comment.

Prior to his drag career, Daniels attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he minored in LGBT Studies and Women’s Studies and worked for Sex Out Loud, a campus organization that teaches students “all about the world of kink, including role play, kinky toys, and bondage.”

For years, Daniels wrote and managed a “Confessions of a Drag Queen” blog that detailed his experiences as a performer in Reno. In one post, Daniels discussed how he “get[s] so much more action as a drag queen” than he does “as a guy.” In another, Daniels wrote that he “almost got into a fight with a 10 year old” at a Reno roller rink and arcade—where he said the “average individual in the establishment was 8″—because a “band of stupid 10 year old boys” objected to his song request of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

“Now … I am not entirely sure what happened next. I think it was the combination of flashing strobe lights, the pain in my calves from bracing myself on the floor, or perhaps Mars was in retrograde but I basically went off on this ten year [sic] and started screaming and ranting while skating around the rink. From what I remember it went something like this,” Daniels recalled.

“‘Uh excuse me you prepubescent choir boy. What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck can you do?'” Daniels asked the child. “‘I can buy porn, cigarettes, and liquor and enjoy them at my leisure if I desire. I can drive, vote, and gamble if I want to. Join the 21st century you 8 year old Justin Bieber worshiping wannabe. Cyndi Lauper is TIMELESS so shut the fuck up and sit down.”

In addition to his rousing roller rink stories, Daniels has dismissed concerns from the “parental units of America” that sexually explicit materials are “influencing the young impressionable minds of the youth.” Daniels called the complaint “bullshit.”

“I would really like the parents of America who are outraged to remove the pole from your sphincter and get the fuck over it,” Daniels said in 2010. “Are you kidding me with all of this? Take a look around. Television shows are increasingly featuring more violence, more sex, and more foul language; a reflection of our society which as of late has more violence, more sex, and swears a hell of a lot more.”

Daniels has also delivered “sermons” as “Reverend Divine” at Reno’s Center for Spiritual Living, a religious science group that believes “in the healing of the sick through the power of this Mind.” In a 2017 appearance at the center, Daniels called drag queens “God’s sacred messengers on this earth.” The comment came after Daniels retired from performing as a drag queen in 2014—roughly five years later, he returned as Miss Ginger Devine in a show he called “The Come On Her Back Tour.”

“When all of a sudden, God parts the clouds and he shines a light and tells you to take your wig off the shelf, don your best hooker heels, and go to church, you don’t question the good Lord, you just do,” Daniels said in 2017.

Daniels did not return a request for comment on his award from Cortez Masto. The incumbent Democrat will face Laxalt in November after both candidates handily won their June primary elections.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A Virginia school district is prohibiting teachers from consulting parents when students as young as kindergarten-age switch genders at school.

Fairfax County Public Schools is instructing teachers and administrators to forgo parents’ permission when a student requests to use a bathroom or locker room associated with his or her so-called gender identity, according to screenshots of a mandatory faculty training module obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The district will also allow schoolchildren without parental consent to change their names and on its virtual learning portal “identify as male, female, or nonbinary.” Teachers could not proceed with the “Supporting Gender-Expansive and Transgender Youth” training until they checked the correct boxes, regardless of their personal beliefs.

Fairfax County Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment. A county teacher said it was unclear what penalties teachers face for refusing to comply.

The teacher training module is the latest instance in which a public school board has implemented controversial policies without parental consent. A New Jersey public middle school forced students to watch a video about hormone treatment without notifying parents beforehand, the Free Beacon reported in March. Parents have informed the Free Beacon their children “socially transitioned” to another gender at school without their knowledge.

The news comes as parents nationwide have agitated for more oversight of public education. A Fairfax County School Board meeting in June saw dozens of parents turn out to oppose handbook rules that suspend students starting in fourth grade for using the wrong pronouns to refer to gender-nonconforming classmates. The school board adopted the handbook amid parents’ objections that the rules violate the First Amendment by compelling speech.

Three parents with children in the school district have formed an ad hoc “shadow board” to monitor and rebut the Fairfax County School Board. Its first meeting, which was held opposite the county school board’s own meeting on Thursday, discussed recent lawsuits the district faces for sexual assault accusations, the prospect of sex education becoming co-ed to accommodate transgender students, and pushback by left-leaning education groups after Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin (R.) initiated a tip line to report “divisive practices” in public schools. The Virginia Association of School Superintendents, which is now headed by Fairfax superintendent Scott Brabrand, called in a March 10 letter for the tip line to be “terminated.”

Members of the so-called shadow board say the current school board is out of step with parents’ demands for quality education for their children.

“It is unconscionable that even with plummeting standardized test scores and record-level teacher vacancies in Fairfax County Public Schools, board members remain hyper-focused on politicizing education,” Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Fairfax mom of three and shadow board member, told the Free Beacon. “This recent ‘gender-inclusive’ training, meant to indoctrinate teachers and keep parents from knowing critical information about their own children, is irresponsible and borderline criminal.”

Luke Berg, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, told the Free Beacon the teacher training is also unconstitutional.

“Policies like this violate parents’ constitutional right to raise their kids,” Berg said. “We are currently suing two Wisconsin school districts over similar policies, and I’m aware of roughly 10 other lawsuits around the country on the same topic, including two in Virginia—one against the Harrisonburg City school district and another against Loudoun County Public Schools.”

Republican members of Congress including Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.) have written companion pieces of legislation to stop such policies. The Empower Parents To Protect Their Kids Act, which was introduced in the Senate in October and in the House in June, cuts federal funding for schools that conceal information about students’ gender identity from parents or pressure students to go through with a gender transition.

“Schools should never be allowed to impose radical, harmful gender ideology on children—especially without parents’ knowledge and consent,” Cotton said.

“Our schools are a place for math and history education, not gender theory indoctrination,” Banks said. “No parent should have to worry that their child’s school is enabling, promoting, or facilitating a child’s ‘gender transition’ behind their back.”

Fairfax County Public Schools lists hundreds of job vacancies on its website. Pass rates for reading, science, and math students in the county are down by around 10 percent or more as of the 2020-2021 school year, according to Virginia Department of Education data. This year’s pass rates have not yet been listed.

“These board members’ overt negligence—including the prolonged exclusion of our children from in-person learning—is not a partisan issue, it is a parents’ issue,” Lundquist-Arora added. “We need to vote them out in November 2023.”

Fairfax County’s transgender youth training module follows model policies for the treatment of transgender students disseminated in 2020 by Virginia’s Department of Education. In that document, school districts were encouraged “to communicate openly” with parents about their child’s gender identity, except when those parents do not approve of their child transitioning.

“When a student informs the school about their transition or requests a change to their name and gender, it is recommended that a point-of-contact, or a multi-disciplinary school team if needed, meet with the student (and parents/guardians if the parents/guardians are affirming of the student’s gender identity) to develop a plan to accommodate the student’s needs and requests,” the model policy states. “There are no regulations requiring school staff to notify a parent or guardian of a student’s request to affirm their gender identity, and school staff should work with students to help them share the information with their family when they are ready to do so.”

The state education department policy supports concealing the students’ gender switch at school, citing privacy and safety concerns. “Privacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who do not have supportive families,” the policy says. “If a student is not ready or able to safely share with their family about their gender identity, this should be respected.”

Update 7/6/2022 at 11:26 a.m.: This piece has been update with additional comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A transgender activist who creates widely distributed educational resources for nonbinary students called for a “Supreme Court assassination challenge” on the same day Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Eli Erlick, a founder of Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER) and creator of a popular “Gender Unicorn” graphic for “gender fluidity,” tweeted and later deleted the remark on Friday, when the High Court delivered its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Since 2011, Erlick and the “youth-led” organization have helped implement transgender policies in dozens of school districts, including Wisconsin, New York, and Texas. The group backs sweeping “structural change” as opposed to “equality,” which according to its website, “reinforces systems of white supremacy, transphobia, and injustice.”

Following the leaked Dobbs decision in May, pro-abortion activists have targeted pro-life offices and crisis pregnancy centers across the country. Vandals firebombed pro-life buildings in Wisconsin and New York and defaced four pro-life churches in Washington State. Fears heightened in June when an armed California man was arrested outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh and later confessed to plans to assassinate the justice.

Assassination threats, sometimes from accounts with thousands of followers, erupted on social media on the day the Court ended constitutional protection for abortion.

“Can someone kill Clarence Thomas??” an account with more than 14,000 followers tweeted. The post hadn’t been taken down as of this article’s publication.

Another user said, “i’m going to assassinate supreme court justice Clarence Thomas,” in a tweet that has since been taken down. The account is no longer visible.

After deleting the assassination post, Erlick, who has more than 10,000 followers on Twitter, called out conservative pundit Ann Coulter for having joked six years ago that someone should “rat poison” former associate justice John Paul Stevens.

“The right only wants to defend the Supreme Court when it leans conservative,” Erlick tweeted.

Erlick was named one of Glamour magazine’s 2017 Women of the Year and has received breathless media coverage since transitioning and becoming a political activist as a teen.

Violence has only worsened since the Dobbs ruling. Protesters in Los Angeles assaulted police with fireworks and a makeshift blow torch, injuring four officers. In Phoenix, others attempted to storm the state capitol building while its Senate was in session, smashing windows and tearing down a fence in the process.

Some Democratic politicians, meanwhile, have fueled institutional distrust. In Washington, D.C., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) on Friday stood outside the Court, shouting “illegitimate” and urging supporters “into the streets.” In Chicago, Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot said, “Fuck Clarence Thomas!” in front of a crowd at the Windy City’s annual Pride parade.

Erlick, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in “political philosophy, social movements, and trans history” at the University of California, Santa Cruz, did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment. Neither did TSER. The Trans Youth Equality Foundation also did not respond to a request for comment.

“Critical thinking requires carefully considering the source,” Max Eden, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Free Beacon. “The ‘Gender Unicorn’ graphic makes profound claims about the fundamental metaphysical nature of mankind. The source doesn’t particularly appear to be a balanced and disinterested sage, to say the least.”

Update 4:13 p.m.: This piece has been updated with an additional comment.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/transgender-activist-who-created-gender-unicorn-calls-for-supreme-court-assassination-challenge/

A 29-year-old biological male beat a teenage girl to the top prize in the women’s division of a New York City skateboarding contest, sparking criticism from skateboarders about biological men competing in women’s sports.

Ricci Tres, who was born male but now identifies as female, on Saturday won a $500 prize for beating 13-year-old Shiloh Catori in the Boardr Open. Four of the six finalists were girls between the ages of 10 and 17.

Tres’s domination of the Boardr Open comes less than a week after the International Rugby League prohibited male-to-female transgender rugby players from competing in women’s matches. The International Swimming Federation announced last Sunday that it would restrict transgender athletes from competing in women’s events. The federation made the announcement after transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won multiple victories against biological women. Meanwhile, the Biden administration last week proposed Title IX changes that will effectively abolish sex-separate activities and spaces.

Tres’s victory reminded female skateboarder Taylor Silverman of her losses to transgender athletes in women’s events.

In at least one case, Silverman wrote last month, the decision to include biological men “took away the opportunity that was meant for women to place and earn money.”

“I am sick of being bullied into silence,” Silverman wrote.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans say that transgender athletes should be banned from professional women’s sports, according to a Washington Post poll released last week.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/adult-biological-man-beats-teenage-girl-to-win-womens-skateboarding-contest/

‘One would have thought that racial discrimination on buses was a thing of the past’

When a gay activist group handed out free bus and ferry tickets to “self-identifying Trans, Black, and/or brown” people headed to New York’s Fire Island over Juneteenth weekend, it said the goal was “transportation equity.” But lawyers tell the Washington Free Beacon that the move likely ran afoul of civil rights laws that ban race and gender identity discrimination, reflecting a broader rift between elite mores and legal safeguards.

The Black and Brown Equity Coalition of Fire Island says it works to foster “a sense of belonging” on Fire Island, a mecca for New York’s gay and transgender community. It advertised the free tickets in a Facebook group—the “Boys of Fire Island”—posting on June 17 that the tickets would “make our events look more like the queer community at large.”

“One would have thought that racial discrimination on buses was a thing of the past,” said Michael Buschbacher, a former Justice Department official now working in private practice. “Apparently not.”

The ticketing plan is rife with potential civil rights violations, Buschbacher and others told the Free Beacon, including potential violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans racial discrimination in private contracting, as well as New York State’s Human Rights Law, which bans discrimination in public accommodations based on race and gender identity. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Equity Coalition is bound by both laws.

In the run-up to the holiday weekend earlier this month, the Equity Coalition asked two public accommodations, Bay Bus Fire Island and Sayville Ferry Service, to provide the group with 54 free tickets for “volunteers and staff” running events on the island, according to an email from the group to the bus service reviewed by the Free Beacon. The Equity Coalition then distributed those tickets based on race and gender, the group’s Facebook post suggests.

The Equity Coalition is extreme even by the standards of other progressive groups. It launched its own pride parade, the coalition’s website states, after learning that Fire Island’s main parade would include police officers. It also trumpets the importance of “white accomplices” to its social justice work, which involves helping those “most impacted by racism, transphobia, xenophobia, colonialism, white supremacy culture, and hyper-capitalism.”

“The work that we are doing requires amplifying BIPOC voices but to make progress we also need white accomplices,” the group’s website says. “Thank you to our white accomplices!”

The free tickets reflect the race-conscious consensus that has formed throughout public and private bureaucracies, even—and perhaps especially—those that claim to be concerned with race discrimination. The Biden administration in 2021 allocated billions in pandemic relief funds to minority owned-restaurants, and multiple states, including Utah, in January gave minorities first dibs on scarce COVID-19 drugs in the name of “health equity.”

Such schemes have proliferated amid concerns that they violate federal law: Utah was told that racially rationing COVID drugs was illegal but did so anyway with the blessing of the Biden administration.

As blue states extend civil rights protections to more and more groups, these clashes between law and policy may become more frequent, if the Equity Coalition is any indication. New York in 2019 updated its human rights law to preclude discrimination based on gender identity. Offering free tickets to transgender people—but not cisgender people—is a “presumptive violation” of that law, said Dennis Saffran, a New York City attorney who served as general counsel to the New York State Division of Housing and a special assistant to the New York State attorney general.

The law covers organizations that are leasing public accommodations, Saffran added, not just the accommodations themselves. If New York courts treat the Equity Coalition as a lessee of the bus and ferry services, it can be hit with penalties and even lose tax-exempt status in the state.

It could also lose its federal tax-exempt status, another lawyer said. The Equity Coalition is part of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, PODER Inc., “a Spanglish, nonpartisan organization that is building local power, block by block.” The Internal Revenue Service has revoked the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that violate anti-discrimination law, the lawyer noted. Though nonprofits can give out gifts based on race, they can’t racially discriminate in contracts or employment.

“If these tickets are being provided in exchange for an agreement to perform work of some sort on Fire Island,” Buschbacher said—as the email to the bus service suggests—”then there’s a good chance that this discriminatory program is therefore illegal.”

The Equity Coalition did not respond to a request for comment.

A representative of Bay Bus Fire Island, John Luc, said the coalition never told the bus company that it planned to distribute the tickets based on race and gender identity.

“That sort of thing is really frowned upon here,” Luc told the Free Beacon.

Update June 28, 10:48 p.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Michael Buschbacher said the Equity Coalition could lose its federal tax-exempt status. We regret the error.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/a-gay-activist-group-gave-free-bus-tickets-to-minorities-and-trans-people-it-likely-violated-civil-rights-law/

Send them to the Island of Misfit Toys. We’ve got bigger problems. We need not accommodate the very, very few by subjugating the many. [US Patriot]

The Biden Education Department on Thursday proposed changes to Title IX that would allow students to participate in school events based on their gender identity, regardless of biological sex.

The proposed changes will effectively abolish sex-separate activities and spaces, including bathrooms and locker rooms. They would also define misuse of gender pronouns as a form of sexual harassment. The Education Department cited the Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County to justify its interpretation of Title IX, claiming schools may not discriminate against a person based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The department withheld a likely more controversial proposal that would allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports, saying it will provide the rule at a later date.

The hesitation signals caution on the part of the Biden administration, which had twice delayed rolling out the changes. Polls have found a majority of Americans oppose transgender athletes participation in women’s sports. Critics say the Biden administration’s changes are bad for women.

“A shift from biological sex to gender identity means that girls and women will be forced to accept the presence of biological males in what have always been single-sex spaces.” said Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for Parents Defending Education. “Dignity and respect matter for everyone but so do fairness and safety, and these proposed changes represent a total rejection of fairness and safety in the name of ideology.”

The regulations also deliver on resident Joe Biden’s campaign promise to bring about a “quick end” to the Trump administration’s Title IX ruling. The Trump-era regulations preserved due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct, which Education Department has now reversed. The Biden-era proposal strips students of such protections and “reverts back to an ‘inquisitorial’ model,” according to Sanzi, “in which the Title IX coordinator gets to be the sole investigator as well as the judge and jury.”

“The Biden administration made the decision to deliberately target the rights of accused students,” Sanzi added.

Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX. In a press release marking the occasion, the Education Department claimed the proposed rules ensure “fairness for all parties, respect for freedom of speech and academic freedom, respect for complainants’ autonomy, and clear legal obligations that enable robust enforcement of Title IX.”

The Education Department’s proposed changes come as schools across the country grapple with policies pertaining to transgender students. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that parents have voiced constitutional objections to a Virginia school district’s decision to suspend students who use the wrong pronouns for transgender peers.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/no-girls-allowed-biden-education-department-proposes-radical-title-ix-changes/

A New York school district is standing by a sex-ed lesson that instructed students to discuss terms such as “face fuck,” “coochie slayer,” and “professional raw dogger.”

The Croton-Harmon school district says its teachers should discuss these sexual terms, which were part of a lesson plan this month for a district high school’s 10th grade health class, so that students can learn “the importance of using respectful language” about sex. A photo of these phrases on a classroom whiteboard, which also included “ejaculate and evacuate,” “bust one in me,” and “rearrange my insides,” circulated on social media, sparking outrage from parents. The school district, however, is refusing to back down.

Look what’s being taught in 10th grade at a Westchester HS & in schools around NY, according to many concerned parents who contacted me. Inappropriate, vulgar & criminal sexual content needs to be banned from classroom. Stick to core academic subjects. #revengeofthenormalpeople pic.twitter.com/XBmYvBhQ69

— Rob Astorino (@RobAstorino) June 14, 2022

“Learning experiences such as this one are important for our students, and we trust our highly trained, dedicated, and passionate professionals in their facilitation of these experiences,” the district said in a statement last week.

Some of the phrases appear to be obscure slang for graphic descriptions of sex: One of the terms—”charzarding”—is defined only in Urban Dictionary.

The Croton-Harmon school district did not respond to a request for comment.

The incident marks the latest in a series of controversies over how sex education is taught to schoolchildren around the country. Liberal advocacy groups funded by Democratic Party donors, including the Sexuality Information and the Education Council of the United States, have pushed school districts nationwide to teach elementary school students about gender identity and transgenderism, the Washington Free Beacon reported last year.

The Westchester County school district’s sex education plan sparked heated debates at a June school board meeting. One parent whose daughter was in the classroom said, “I frankly do not see the connection of using this level of vulgarity in the classroom and teaching the concepts that the administration says are the goals.”

Some state Democrats, meanwhile, have come to the school district’s defense. Peter Harckham, a New York state senator present at the meeting, defended the school and thanked its teachers for their “sensitive conversations and professionalism.”

The health curriculum for district high schoolers includes a Planned Parenthood-produced video about consent that only portrays same-sex couples. The Trans Student Educational Resources’ popular “Gender Unicorn” graphic, which claims that “gender identity” and sexual attraction are on a spectrum, is also listed in the curriculum. The middle school curriculum, meanwhile, includes several lessons about transgenderism and an activity in which students create an exhibit on LGBT issues for the Museum of Natural History.

The New York district’s push for sexualized health lessons comes as the Biden administration advocates in favor of sex transitions for children through hormones and surgery. The White House in June released a plan to counter Republican states that attempt to ban transgender hormone treatment for minors, which have already been met with lawsuits from LGBT groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rob Astorino, a New York Republican gubernatorial candidate who shared the photo of the vulgar terms, said he is concerned parents are unaware of the growing instances of overly sexualized lesson plans.

“Kids who can’t get into a rated-R movie are now learning about twisted and dangerous sex acts,” Astorino told the Free Beacon. “If someone was caught teaching kids this stuff in a park, he or she would be arrested as a sex offender.”

https://freebeacon.com/campus/not-safe-for-school-ny-district-defends-x-rated-sex-ed/

Val Demings hopes ‘Gamers for Demings’ posts on Chinese app TikTok will take down Marco Rubio

Florida Democratic Senate hopeful Val Demings is promoting a popular “children’s game with a sex problem” to court voters in her race against Republican incumbent Marco Rubio.

Demings in March used Chinese app TikTok to share the first installment of her “Gamers for Demings” series, which used the children’s game Roblox to depict a virtual version of the Democrat running through Florida. The post came just weeks after the BBC highlighted the game’s “sex problem.” Roblox—which two-thirds of U.S. children between the ages of 9 and 12 reportedly have played as of 2020—came under fire for hosting user-generated sex games known as “condos,” where gamers’ avatars can have virtual sex. In one instance, the BBC reported, a “naked man, wearing just a dog collar” and a leash, was “led across the floor by a woman in a bondage outfit” as a man “wearing a Nazi uniform” looked on.

Demings’s decision to use Roblox and TikTok to promote her campaign shows how Democrats are widening their political strategy to use unorthodox means of communication. Demings is far from the only Democrat on TikTok, a Chinese-owned app that has sparked bipartisan security concerns. Fellow Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan (Ohio) has posted videos of himself lip-syncing on the platform, and Sens. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) and Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are also active users. In February, resident Joe Biden moved to address TikTok’s security risks—but he’s also used influencers on the app to sway public opinion, even inviting some to film in the White House.

After Demings’s first Roblox-themed TikTok post, a popular Roblox news account on Twitter praised the Democrat, asking if a “Robloxian” could “be Florida’s next senator.” Demings’s communications director responded to say the campaign was “proud to launch Gamers for Demings,” and the Democrat went on to share two more Roblox posts in the following months. One, which Demings posted in April, shows her blasting off into space on a virtual rocket. Another, shared on June 11, depicts a virtual Demings dancing with LGBTQ flags under a “Happy Pride Month” banner. That post includes the hashtags “PrideMonth,” “roblox,” “LGBTQ,” “foryourpride,” “fyp,” and “valdemings.”

It’s unclear how Demings expects to use a game most popular with preteens to attract voters. Her campaign did not return a request for comment.

In addition to concerns over Roblox’s sex problem, the game has faced criticism for exploiting child labor. Roblox allows its users to create, share, and play their own games within the Roblox platform. As a result, the Guardian reported in January, Roblox has made millions off of the work of children with no formal contracts in place.  

Demings is widely favored to face Rubio in November but will first have to emerge from an August primary race. Neither candidate has a strong financial advantage—both Demings and Rubio have raised roughly $30 million and hold roughly $13 million on hand as of March 31. Rubio is polling at 49 percent, 9 points better than Demings’s 40 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/val-demings-promotes-childrens-game-with-a-sex-problem-to-court-voters/

An excerpt from Matt Walsh’s new book, ‘What Is a Woman?’

The following is an excerpt from Matt Walsh’s new book, What Is a Woman? One Man’s Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation, an investigation into the radical gender ideology movement. The passage is taken from Chapter 5, “The Transgender Takeover.”

***

Transgenderism has taken the (western) world by storm, and there’s no medium where we aren’t confronted with it, often on a daily basis. While this appears to have happened rather rapidly, pressure had been building for quite some time.

In the early 1950s, a former GI from the Bronx who renamed himself Christine Jorgensen went to Copenhagen, Denmark, received a sex change surgery and massive doses of estrogen, and became the first international transgender media sensation. Three wire services together sent out a sum total of 50,000 words on the Jorgensen story in the first two weeks of coverage. While Alfred Kinsey and John Money conducted their experiments and the ideas behind sex change surgery and gender theory spread through academia, society at large took passing interest in the transgender issue after Jorgensen. One could be forgiven for living life in the mid 20th century without worrying if your daughter would come home and announce she is actually a man. It was a simpler time. Jorgensen was a media sensation, but like all media sensations, he was soon forgotten.

In the 1970s, the controversy over Renee Richards broke onto the scene, presaging debates we are still embroiled in today. Renee Richards was a tennis player who underwent a sex change and proposed that, as a result, he was a woman. As Dr. Bowers recounted to me, “Renee Richards was a competitive tennis player who was assigned male at birth, went through a transition, and when her [sic] situation was found out, the women in the U.S. tennis circuit were very upset, thinking that she [sic] had a competitive advantage, and [they] tried to block her [sic] from competing.”

Renee’s case went all the way up to the New York State Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, writing that forcing Renee to take a Barr body test to determine his sex before being eligible to compete was “grossly unfair, discriminatory and inequitable, and violative of her [sic] rights under the Human Rights Law of this state.”

After that, it was yet again largely quiet on the western front until all of a sudden the trans movement stopped making splashes in the headlines and began to form a tidal wave that would wash over society. In 2008, the reality show “America’s Next Top Model” featured a transgender character, normalizing transgenderism with regular appearances on many Americans’ TV diets. A few years later, Bruce Jenner was reborn as “Caitlyn.” Vanity Fair ran a flattering cover story, and nearly every media outlet in America praised him as a hero. Soon after, the Obama administration lifted the ban on transgender service members in the military (a ban that President Trump reinstated and resident Biden lifted yet again).

Transgenderism was moving from sideshow to the main stage, and now it’s in absolutely every sphere of life. There’s no avoiding it. Transgenderism is the heart of the cultural conversation in America, and the only escape is death or becoming Amish.

In the movie industry, Amazon Prime produced a remake of the classic Cinderella, casting the fairy godmother as transgender. In the Marvel Universe—which produces the biggest blockbuster hits today—Disney (which owns Marvel) announced that there would soon be a transgender superhero.

Television boasts its own array of transgender characters. The hit show Glee on Fox introduced a transgender character as far back as 2012. A series called Transparent about a father of three grown children announcing he is transgender ran for five seasons until 2019. Orange is the New Black on Netflix featured a trans character played by an actual trans actor, Laverne Cox. Netflix is reportedly introducing its first non-binary (meaning not following the “binaries” of male or female) character in a series for preschool children.

The celebrity world is filling up with a sizeable collection of trans or non-binary personas from Chaz Bono to the creators of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers (now proclaimed “sisters”), to actress, singer/songwriter Demi Lovato. Lovato—a former Disney child star—is a self-anointed prophet of the sexual anarchy pioneered by Kinsey and Money. One of her Instagram posts in 2021 read, “Be a slut. Show your body. Get naked. Have all the safe, different, consensual sex you want. Be kinky. Masturbate. Make/watch porn. Make money. Just a reminder that being sexual is okay.”

Lest you worry that only adults and former Disney child stars are in on the fun, Desmond is Amazing is a prepubescent drag queen who was featured glowingly in a segment on Good Morning America. His abuse-courting parents also allowed him to dance at a Brooklyn gay club while grown men tossed dollar bills at him. Of course, no cell phones were allowed while he danced for the men at the bar.

Even if you aren’t a pop culture junky, it’s impossible to get by watching the news over the past few years without enduring a continual parade of transgender “firsts.” Rachel Levine was confirmed as the first transgender cabinet secretary, and he now runs the Department of Health and Human Services charged with managing health policies governing, among other issues, Medicare, Obamacare, and the coronavirus. We’ve had our first transgender Rhodes Scholar, our first transgender boy scout, our first transgender national political party convention speaker, and even our first high-profile transgender government leaker and whistleblower in the person of Chelsea Manning. The amount of history being made is just staggering.

Drag Queen Story Hour swept across the country as frighteningly dressed and confused men (generally) with a strange affection for young children formed chapters and invaded local libraries across the country. Human Resource specialists and allies everywhere have taken it upon themselves to announce their preferred pronouns in emails and everyday conversations at work and in social gatherings. You can be sure if you refuse to do the same, your lack of inclusivity will be noted.

Even having a baby has become another avenue for the pervasive touch of gender theory. Hardly a hospital in America has blue or pink blankets and caps for tiny newborns anymore. They are either a mixture of pink and blue—or lack the colors at all—apparently in an effort to save that puffy-eyed nugget of a baby from having a gender imposed on her at any point in time.

There is no escape. Maybe you’ve already had your kids, and you’re not having any more. Maybe you work from home or for yourself, and you even homeschool your kids. Maybe you’ve already cut the cord on the television, deleted the social media apps, and the only celebrities you can name are Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Audrey Hepburn, and Mickey Mouse. Well, that doesn’t stop the parents down the street from engaging in the hot new trend of raising their children Zyler and Kadyn as genderless or genderfluid. (Zyler and Kadyn, by the way, are actual twin children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose parents are raising them without gender so that the children can decide for themselves when they’re older.)

You don’t just have to worry about your kids. When was the last time you had a real conversation with your spouse about gender identity? When I spoke with Dr. Bowers, I asked him how his family dealt with his transition, seeing as he was married and had kids at the time. “If you marry someone who is your best friend, they’re likely to understand you, and they’re likely to be with you in the long run,” Dr. Bowers said. “We’re still married legally,” Dr. Bowers said of his wife, “but I wouldn’t call it a marriage. I would call it more like a modern family.”

“Is your experience typical, where the spouse is supportive?” I asked.

“Increasingly so,” he said. “I think as trans as a phenomenon has emerged and become, you know, more acceptable, spouses go along for the ride.” He continued, “If somebody is not a great spouse, whether male or female, and you add this into the mix, you’re likely to create problems. But if you have someone who you’ve been friends with and you have mutual respect for, you know, it often remains.” Got it. So if your spouse declares that he or she is the opposite sex and the marriage breaks down, it’s really your fault for not accepting it. There were probably already problems with you in the first place.

Matt Walsh is a writer at the Daily Wire. His book, What Is a Woman?, was published this month by DW Books. A companion documentary of the same title was also released in June.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/how-transgenderism-moved-from-sideshow-to-the-main-stage/

A lawsuit has been filed against a California school district and staff accused of coaching a middle school student into thinking she was transgender and secretly changing her name and pronouns at school.

The lawsuit alleges school staff manipulated the sixth-grade student into “believing she was bisexual and that her gender did not match her biological sex” and instructed her “not to tell her [mother] about the new gender identity and expression.”

Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which is representing the minor student and her mother, told The Epoch Times the case could be the first of many exposing the consequences of transgender activism in schools.

The lawsuit, filed on June 14, names Spreckels Union School District, Katelyn Pagaran, the principal at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., and two teachers: Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki as defendants.

Jessica Konen, the child’s mother, came forward after a leaked audio recording revealed Caldeira and Baraki telling other teachers about how they secretly recruited students into the school’s LGBT club.

The teachers bragged about spying on students’ online searches and activity as well as eavesdropping on their conversations to identify and recruit sixth-grade students into the LGBT clubs whose membership rolls were kept hidden from parents.

“We totally stalked what they were doing on Google,” Baraki said in the recording.

The duo led a workshop called “How We Run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities” at a California Teachers Association (CTA) conference billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities” in Palm Springs last October. They described the hurdles they encountered as teachers to conceal the activities of the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) “Equality Club” from parents.

New details have surfaced in the case now that Konen’s daughter, who is protected under the pseudonym “A.G.” in the lawsuit because she is a minor, is actively participating in the case, Dhillon said.

The lawsuit alleges that the teachers acted with principal Pagaran’s knowledge.

“Pagaran was aware of the Equality Club and Caldeira’s and Baraki’s tactics … and approved of them. In fact, Pagaran frequently attended Equality Club meetings,” the lawsuit states.

It also alleges that Baraki and Caldeira tried to push identities on students that they resisted.

Near the beginning of the 2018 school year, when the student was 11 years old, she was invited by a friend to attend an Equality Club meeting but was not interested in the discussion and decided not to return, according to the lawsuit.

About two weeks later, Caldeira approached Konen’s daughter and asked her to come back to the club, saying that she “fit in perfectly,” and the child obliged, the lawsuit alleges.

In the spring of 2019, Konen’s daughter told a school counselor she was depressed and began attending weekly counseling sessions, after which “Caldeira and Pagaran would often have follow-up meetings with [her] and the school counselor,” the lawsuit states. “During those meetings, the counselor and Caldeira informed [the child] that the feelings she was having were because she was ‘not being who she was’ and that if she became her ‘true self,’ her depression and stress would be better (or words to that effect).”

Caldeira encouraged Konen’s daughter to change her name to a boy’s name, and she began wearing boy’s clothing, the lawsuit further alleges.

“Sometimes, Caldeira and Baraki would introduce and push identities on students, and the students resisted,” states the lawsuit.

Before attending a school board meeting in mid-December to expose the alleged manipulation her daughter had endured, Konen went public with her story and accused school staff, including the two teachers, of “coaching” her daughter.

The Center for American Liberty filed a notice of claim under the Government Claims Act, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit against the California government, on Jan. 19. The state had 60 days to respond, but did not do so.

“For me, as a civil rights lawyer, I think adults should be allowed to do whatever they want, and if they want to express themselves that way after full information, then that’s their right. But, people are not getting the full information about this radical transgender agenda,” Dhillon said.

“They’re not learning about the permanent effects of these changes. They’re not learning that their sadness and their depression is never going to go away. In the process, American school teachers are actively interfering with the civil rights of American families. And so, we intend through this lawsuit and others … to put a stop to this before they permanently damage and scar more children and destroy more lives.”

Dhillon disagrees with President Joe Biden’s recent push for “gender-affirming care” and state legislation proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) to harbor transgender-affirming parents who’ve been charged with child abuse in other states.

Some treatments, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, used to treat minors who identify as trans have not been properly medically tested for use on children, Dhillon alleged.

“The use of puberty blockers on children is not on label. It is not tested,” she said. “They’re using drugs meant for other diseases like prostate cancer. They’re using that to suppress hormones in American children.

“This is barbaric,” Dhillon continued. “When we see other countries mutilate the genitalia of girls and boys, we call that ‘barbaric.’ We call for human rights sanctions on those countries. We’re doing that in America under the guise of ‘gender affirming care.’”

Decisions on transgender medicine are best left to adults—patients who are 18 and older—and can legally make those decisions for themselves, she said.

“I think it will be sad if they do that, but I have no problem with it legally. I have a huge problem, legally, with parents being alienated from the children,” Dhillon said.

Schools hiding the gender identities of children from their parents is not only problematic, but it is illegal, “and we will show that in this lawsuit,” she said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mom-daughter-sue-school-district-in-alleged-transgender-coaching-case_4539279.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-17-3&utm_medium=email&est=QMTTgQegfsMmsyZOhKzwNvn7vOAdL5kZA44Uy3q1CJlsmUPYemWqwpAXT2%2BkH275IQ%3D%3D

The U.S. education system appears to have been hijacked by people with a specific agenda. Actual education has been replaced by indoctrination, teachers replaced by activists pushing nefarious agendas.

Young children are being exposed to provocative, highly-sexualized content. They’re also being encouraged to question their privilege and supposedly racist roots.

However, all is not lost. More and more Americans are speaking up against the madness. They have had enough. According to the latest University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll, an increasing number of Americans want the insanity, or the slide into insanity, to stop—and they want it to stop now.

The vast majority of respondents stated that teachers asking children in grades K-6 for their preferred gender pronouns was wrong. The vast majority also said they were against the idea of assigning children in grades K-6 books that discuss transgender issues. They also opposed the idea of teachers discussing their sexual orientation with young children.

Commenting on the poll, author Don Surber had this to say: “LGBT classes are indoctrination, not education.” The same could be said about CRT classes. As Surber noted, although “CRT proponents claim this is only taught in college, they should have no problem with banning teaching a racist and anti-American doctrine that seeks to discredit the Constitution.” But, for some strange reason, “proof of CRT instruction in schools keeps popping up.”

Surber finished by asking a pertinent question: “If so many people oppose teaching CRT and LGBT, why are these subjects being taught in public schools?”

He’s right. How did we get here?

I’ll tell you how. Last year, in an article for The American Mind, I discussed something called the gated institutional narrative (GIN), a concept first put forward by the polymath Eric Weinstein. The GIN perfectly encapsulates the madness that has swept, and continues to sweep, through the U.S. education system.

As I said at the time, the “GIN explains the ways in which heavily filtered information is presented to the public by the mainstream media and academics.” Take the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” for example. Although the project has been lambasted by highly-respected commentators, it still, for some unfathomable reason, carries a great deal of authority.

On closer inspection, however, the reason it carries so much authority is entirely understandable. After all, the project was initiated by the NY Times, one of the most influential papers on the planet. Additionally, its historically inaccurate narrative has been pushed by comparably powerful outlets, frequently and forcefully. Furthermore, it appeals not to facts, but to feelings. In this age of speaking “your truth” instead of the truth, the NY Times decided to tell its “truth.”

The GIN, as I said in The American Mind piece, “is like an exclusive nightclub. Only the right kind of people can enter.” Orthodox thinkers—in other words, people willing to follow the herd—are the only people permitted entry. Those who refuse to comply are quickly turned away. “Go away and sober up,” they’re told.

Bad ideas beget bad ideas—the inaccurate (often pernicious) ideas generated within the GIN bounce around in a gigantic echo chamber. Then, like a swift missile strike, they’re launched into broader society.

At the same time, good ideas—that is, ideas that counter the bad ones created within the system—are intentionally blocked from entering. With such a design, it’s easy to see how bad ideas, even wicked ones, continue to circulate and become more virulent in nature.

Bad Ideas Spread Like a Virus

In his latest book, aptly titled “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense,” Dr. Gad Saad discusses how bad ideas, or “idea pathogens,” spread like a virus, killing common sense in the process. In the American education system, as you’re no doubt aware, commonsense is in short supply.

If in doubt, let me point you in the direction of a recent piece written by Jonathan Turley, one of the country’s leading legal scholars. Unlike so many involved in academia, Turley has a backbone. He has a significant voice and is not afraid to use it. Instead of echoing the narratives of the GIN, Turley exposes the absurdities occurring within the gated community.

In the insular world of academia, he noted, “there have been growing controversies over language guides and usages, including the use of pronouns that some object to as matters of religion or grammar.” Now he warned, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), “the largest association of science teachers in the world,” wants to add to the controversy.

Take a read of the NSTA’s latest guide, and you’ll quickly see that Turley’s concerns are very much warranted. The educators are now pushing for “gender-inclusive biology.” What, you’re probably wondering, could this new-age biology entail?

In short, unscientific calls to permanently abandon everyday terms like “men,” “women,” “parent,” “mother,” and “father.” Mothers, according to the guide, should only be referred to as “persons with ovaries.” Fathers, meanwhile, should be referred to as “persons with testes.”

Although tens of millions of Americans have had enough, don’t expect the GIN to stop churning out bad ideas anytime soon.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/crt-and-lgbt-in-the-classroom-americans-have-had-enough_4529306.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-17&utm_medium=email&est=8OU%2B9BaVgNnKArRXOqxqfMucj8Bx917XCFjwHHbfAVQOk1p78Q3AxLpe9z7LfUExIA%3D%3D

‘Drag queens—not only are they not hurting our kids—drag queens make everything better,’ said state AG Dana Nessel

Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel (D.) said Wednesday that drag queens ought to be in every school.

Nessel, who is best known for passing out drunk in the stands after two Bloody Marys at the 2021 Michigan-Michigan State football game, admitted she did not poll-test the idea before floating it at a civil rights conference in Lansing.

“A drag queen for every school! That is what would be fun for the kids and lift them up when they are having emotional issues,” Nessel said. “Drag queens—not only are they not hurting our kids—drag queens make everything better! Drag queens are fun.”

The attorney general made the remarks by way of saying she doesn’t understand why the electorate is deeply divided over social issues. She said that state leaders should ignore “wedge issues” and come together in pursuit of common goals, such as education and health care.

Nessel’s “drag queens for any age” platform is a marked contrast with states like Texas and Florida, where exposing children to pornified dancers giving lewd performances can trigger a child abuse investigation.

Her comments also stand in contrast with her sprawling probe of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Nessel’s long-running investigation, which covers allegations going back decades, has netted fewer than a dozen indictments. And the probe is larger than her office’s investigation of Michigan State University and Dr. Larry Nasser, the physician who assaulted over 250 young girls in his role as team doctor for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, according to the Detroit News.

Nessel is seeking a second term this November. Her Republican challenger, Kalamazoo lawyer Matthew DePerno, said the comments show her unfitness for office.

“Students in the third grade are behind on their reading, our test scores are some of the worst in the country thanks to these disastrous COVID lockdowns, and she calls for drag shows for Kindergarteners,” DePerno said.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-dem-calls-for-a-drag-queen-for-every-school/

Students could be suspended for using wrong pronouns for classmates

Virginia parents are holding a rally on Thursday to oppose a Fairfax County School Board vote on proposed handbook changes that could suspend students as young as fourth grade for “malicious misgendering.”

Fairfax County Public Schools would reserve the right to suspend for a week students who engage in “malicious deadnaming” or use slurs based on “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “sexual orientation,” according to a copy of its new Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Parents opposed to the measure will speak out against the handbook proposals in front of the elementary school where the school board will meet to vote on Thursday evening. Many say they are motivated by a desire to put their child’s education first, rather than “gender politics.”

The “school board is prioritizing these types of initiatives versus focusing on what parents would expect: recovering from learning loss, home/virtual schooling, and getting our kids back into the classroom, post-COVID,” Jeff Hoffman, a Fairfax County father of three, told the Washington Free Beacon.

The vote is the latest political scuffle that has pitted parents against the heavy-handed tactics of public school officials. Led by teachers’ unions and left-wing activist groups, school boards across the nation have implemented policies to encourage the expression of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, often without parental consent. The Free Beacon reported in March on a New Jersey public middle school that forced students to watch a video about hormone treatment, without notifying parents beforehand. Other parents told the Free Beacon their child “socially transitioned” to another gender at school without their knowledge.

The new handbook also represents the lasting influence of the 2020 Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which expanded the definition of the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against sex discrimination to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” After assuming office, resident Joe Biden issued an executive order to the same effect, and Democratic governor Ralph Northam signed companion legislation in Virginia.

The initiative led to a model plan for transgender students put out by the Virginia Department of Education. Among other recommendations, the plan encouraged prohibiting discrimination, harassment, or bullying based on gender identity, as well as identifying students and maintaining their records in “compliance with applicable nondiscrimination laws.” The document cited the Civil Rights Act and Biden’s executive order to explain its reasoning.

The school board had planned in May to vote on the handbook changes. It punted on that decision after a conservative legal group sent a letter to board members and the county chairman warning that the new student rules may be unconstitutional.

America First Legal senior adviser Ian Prior in a statement said the group will monitor whether the school approves the rules on Thursday.

“Fairfax County Public Schools’ amendments increasing punishment for children as young as 8-years old for misgendering other students creates a completely subjective disciplinary regime that is vague, overbroad, and threatens the constitutional rights of students and parents,” Prior said.

The Fairfax County School Board in July 2021 unanimously voted to approve changes to its 2021-22 handbook, which allowed students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity, be referred to by their preferred pronouns, and prevent the disclosure of their gender identity or sexual orientation if they so choose.

Fairfax County parents requested the school board host an in-person townhall on the proposed handbook before the vote, but none has been organized. They have also asked that the vote be delayed until a special report is commissioned to document every “gender-expansive” provision that has followed Virginia’s model transgender student plan.

The rally will be held at 5:30 p.m. at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church before the school board votes at 7 p.m.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/say-their-pronouns-virginia-parents-organize-to-stop-misgendering-rules-at-public-schools/

Career criminal Cristina Iglesias mailed fake anthrax to British Commonwealth and Foreign Office in 2002

A transgender inmate who goes by the name Cristina Iglesias has not spent a day outside of federal prison as an adult. Iglesias was locked up in 1994 for sending death threats to federal judges and then pleaded guilty in 2005 to mailing fake anthrax to U.S. allies in the earliest days of the War on Terror. Now, thanks to a judge’s ruling, Iglesias is set to become the first transgender inmate to undergo sex-reassignment surgery—on the taxpayer dime.

Iglesias in 2020 became the poster child of the American Civil Liberties Union‘s quest to ensure even the most hardened criminals enjoy transgender rights, and the civil rights group that once focused its energies on free speech sued the government, arguing that denying the costly surgery is a violation of Iglesias’s constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel agreed, writing in an opinion issued last month that “Iglesias suffers daily and is at risk of self-mutilation and suicide.”

Iglesias, 47, is set for release on Christmas Day, but wants the surgery before that time—and Rosentengel is ordering the Bureau of Prisons to find a surgeon to carry out the sex change. Cost estimates for the surgery itself vary widely. Some hospital estimates reach six figures, while the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery pegs the figure at about $25,000. Pricey quality-of-life care is required for years after the surgery, running about $40,000 annually in the first five years, according to a 2015 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The cost falls to $10,000 per year after a decade. The Bureau of Prisons declined to say whether taxpayers will provide that support.

New Biden administration policy requires prison officials to use a transgender inmate’s preferred name and pronouns and consider housing transgender inmates in prisons matching their “lived gender.” Federal policy doesn’t require surgery in every case, but left-wing groups like the ACLU are now using cases like Iglesias’s to make sure it is widely available for inmates. There are about 1,300 transgender inmates in federal jails, according to a Bureau of Prison spokeswoman.

Iglesias, who according to prison records is white but has used Hispanic names since 2004, is nearing the end of a 20-year bid for mailing white powder—from prison—to the British Commonwealth and Foreign Office in 2002, which prompted evacuations and street closures around London.

“I hope to see to it you people die a slow and painful death!!!” Iglesias wrote in a letter containing faux-anthrax. “This anthrax is very lethal and deadly!!!!”

Iglesias’s defense lawyers attributed those crimes to a long and clinically documented history of mental illness, which includes a pattern of compulsive and self-destructive behavior that is difficult to control.

“The subject’s history and the results of this evaluation suggest that his behavior is influenced by the existence of severe psychological deficits that are of long-standing duration,” Dr. Jethro Toomer wrote in the 2005 assessment. Defense filings from that case indicate Iglesias has from a young age been diagnosed or treated for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and alcohol addiction.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2015 allowed Iglesias to begin hormone therapy. Iglesias went on to request facial laser hair removal, a transfer to a female facility, and “gender confirmation surgery.”

Iglesias in 2019 sued the Bureau of Prisons without counsel. A year and a half later, the ACLU showed up on the scene, took over the case, and filed a new complaint on Iglesias’s behalf. The Chicago legal powerhouse Winston & Strawn LLP also lent firepower to the cause. They argued, among other things, that the bureau’s “deliberate indifference” to Iglesias’s medical needs violates the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishments.

“To Ms. Iglesias, her genitalia feel like an abnormal and life-threatening growth on her body, like a malignant tumor from cancer that needs to be removed,” the lawsuit reads.

The Bureau of Prisons emphasized in court filings that it has never opposed those steps. It was willing, for example, to transfer Iglesias to a female prison provided that Iglesias sustained hormone levels that would make it impossible to maintain an erection—a condition essential for the safety of female inmates, according to prison authorities. And while the bureau has never categorically denied Iglesias’s requests for sex-reassignment surgery, the bureau maintained Iglesias should spend 12 months living as a woman in a female prison before undergoing the procedure.

Rosenstengel said the Bureau of Prisons violated Iglesias’s constitutional rights. Rosenstengel accused the bureau of manufacturing its prison rape rationale in response to the ACLU lawsuit. And she faulted authorities for holding Iglesias to “categorical” pre-surgery requirements, rather than individualizing medical decisions with input from LGBT medical experts.

The judge added urgency to her decision, writing that Iglesias requires the surgery but is “running out of time,” apparently referencing a government-funded sex change.

The ACLU says that Iglesias will be the first federal inmate to undergo a sex-reassignment procedure and on June 2 celebrated its victory as a legal landmark.

It’s not clear when the procedure will happen. Iglesias over the course of the case posed other problems for the bureau. Iglesias in 2021 leveled “unsubstantiated” allegations of violence and forced prostitution against another inmate, according to an affidavit from a corrections captain. And Iglesias had to be transferred to a different prison after authorities discovered Iglesias incurred “substantial debts to multiple inmates” to buy drugs. Court records are sparse on details about treatment the inmate needs ahead of release at the end of this year.

The Bureau of Prisons said it would not comment on matters subject to ongoing legal proceedings. The ACLU did not respond to a request for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/courts/taxpayers-to-foot-bill-for-terrorists-sex-change/

A single incident of anti-transgender harassment on the Washington, D.C., metro in the past two years has prompted an ad campaign to fight such hate across the city.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in May launched a campaign—funded with money from its $2.9 million annual advertising budget—at stations across the D.C. area pledging to make “Metro safer” by reducing harassment of transgender passengers. One advertisement features a white male with a man bun and beard yelling “transphobic slurs” at a gender-ambiguous person sitting on a train.

“NOT IN OUR HOUSE,” the ad reads while also encouraging D.C.-area straphangers to report such incidents to the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD).

Yet such incidents have almost never occurred, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of public crime data provided by the MTPD and the FBI. Metro police have not recorded a single incident of harassment or violence on the basis of race or gender in 2022 or 2021 and just one anti-transgender bias incident in 2020. Federal data additionally show that over 99 percent of anti-trans incidents in the last decade do not involve white men.

The ad campaign comes as D.C. residents flee public transportation due to fears of seemingly random acts of violence on the metro. Metro ridership has dropped 80 percent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also corresponded with a sharp uptick in violent crime.

Anti-transgender hate crimes in 2020 accounted for less than 3 percent of all hate crimes recorded by the FBI, with black people as the most common offenders.

In the 28 anti-transgender hate crimes in D.C. logged by the FBI in 2020, none of the offenders were white. The same FBI statistics show that in the last 10 years white people have been responsible for just 2 out of the 217 recorded anti-transgender hate crimes in the city.

Source: FBI

Source: FBI

Requests for more information from the WMATA on the ad campaign’s cost went unanswered. Although an employee said the agency does keep records on harassment incidents, that person declined to provide them. An employee of the agency’s anti-hate crime task force told the Free Beacon that he is not supposed to talk to reporters.

The D.C. government announced in April it will increase police presence at Metro facilities as a response to plummeting ridership and a spike in certain violent crimes. According to WMATA data, aggravated assaults doubled from April 2021 to April 2022.

D.C. authorities in 2021 recorded a five-year high of 183 assaults at public transportation facilities. D.C.-area workers’ decisions to work from home or take alternative transit have resulted in a nearly $500 million budget shortfall for the D.C. metro system projected by summer 2023.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/dc-launches-ad-campaign-to-combat-anti-trans-hate-on-public-transportation-theres-been-one-incident-in-the-past-two-years/

Conservative nonprofit group Consumers’ Research is bringing billboards to State Farm’s Las Vegas conference this week and releasing national ads as part of its campaign against the insurance company’s decision to distribute books about sexual orientation to kindergartners.

State Farm partnered with The GenderCool Project to give thousands of books such as A Kids Book About Being Transgender and A Kids Book About Being Non-Binary to children five and older, according to emails leaked by Consumers’ Research. The insurance company ended its partnership with GenderCool only after Consumers’ Research exposed it, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month.

Consumers’ Research executive director Will Hild said that merely ending the partnership is not enough.

“They owe their customers, agents, and parents everywhere real answers and a plan of action,” Hild said.

State Farm is just one of many U.S. companies and elite organizations, including Disney and top law firms, to take left-wing positions on transgenderism and sexuality. Consumers’ Research says that Nike, BlackRock, and American Airlines also profess “woke politics.”

As part of Consumers’ Research’s “Stop Being a Creepy Neighbor” campaign, the nonprofit is paying for a truck to carry a mobile billboard outside State Farm’s conference, as well as for a digital ad and a national television ad. The group wants State Farm to audit programs aimed at children, determine where the books were donated, and notify the public about where children received the books.

Those moves are “the least that State Farm can do to prevent further harm to children and make sure that they don’t have programs like what they do with GenderCool currently happening,” Hild told the Free Beacon. “It helps parents whose kids may have been exposed or are being exposed currently to these materials because of State Farm.”

The books, which State Farm intended to “help diversify classroom, community center, and library bookshelves,” promote the use of “they” as a singular pronoun and teach that “everyone’s journey to understanding their gender is unique to them.”

“Gender is how you feel in your heart and mind, but it may not match what the doctor says when you are born,” reads A Kids Book About Being Non-Binary, which is marketed as age-appropriate for five-year-olds.

Hild said the Consumers’ Research campaign against State Farm is “ongoing.”

“We’re going to continue to remind them of their obligation to their own customers and to America’s parents,” Hild said.

https://freebeacon.com/culture/stop-being-a-creepy-neighbor-ad-campaign-fights-state-farms-plan-to-distribute-lgbt-kids-books/

The government-funded research project that created transgender monkeys is in turmoil after a Washington Free Beacon report exposed its existence, internal emails show.

Just days after the Free Beacon report on the study that injected male monkeys with female hormones, the study’s lead researcher “expressed concerns” about publishing the results because his or her name would appear on the final report, according to internal communications obtained by the Free Beacon through a Freedom of Information Act request. Professor Mauricio Martins, who heads the study for Scripps Research, informed the National Institutes of Health of the development in a Jan. 19 email, complaining that his monkey-based research to determine why transgender women have high rates of HIV was “being twisted and berated by people who are not qualified to judge its merit.”

The NIH official who received the email, Dr. Jeff Cummins, told Martins he stood by the study and called the Free Beacon‘s story “misinformation.”

“Unfortunately, these are the times in which we live,” Cummins wrote in his Jan. 20 response to Martins. “I am amazed by the misinformation that is so quickly spread on social media.”

The emails are the latest example of public backlash derailing the Biden administration’s radical spending initiatives. After the Free Beacon exposed in February that the Biden administration was funding the distribution of crack pipes to promote racial equity, for example, the New York Times reported that the “uproar” over the program “derailed” the administration’s entire drug policy.

Cummins did not respond to a Free Beacon inquiry on what was “misinformation.” A spokeswoman for Scripps Biomedical Research, which now operates in partnership with the University of Florida, told the Free Beacon the lead researcher had “concerns about the negative impact of prior media coverage and subsequent politicization of the research.”

The NIH redacted the lead researcher’s name from the now-public emails, and the researchers have yet to publish their findings from the study, which stopped receiving funding on April 1.

The initial Free Beacon report detailed how NIH-funded researchers at UF Scripps Biomedical Research injected male monkeys with feminizing hormone drugs to determine why transgender women have high rates of HIV. Researchers then tested the monkeys to determine if their immune systems were weakened in response to the simian immunodeficiency virus—the monkey equivalent of HIV.

The NIH-funded study faced criticism from animal rights groups, government accountability organizations, and transgender activists. Fox News host Tucker Carlson covered the Free Beacon story in a January segment with an official from PETA, which slammed the study as pointless and cruel.

“It’s an experiment that an eighth-grade science student could figure out is totally meaningless,” said Kathy Guillermo, vice president of the animal rights group.

The University of Florida said its researchers “stand behind its relevance.”

“This important research is necessary to stay ahead of a global epidemic that has cost an estimated 35 million lives since 1981, and continues to affect an estimated 38 million people globally who are living with HIV,” the group told the Free Beacon.

Cummins defended the study in internal emails, assuring Martins his efforts to address a “critical knowledge gap in gender-affirming hormone therapy” are “incredibly important.”

Martins disclosed in the emails that he was caught off guard by the source of the backlash.

“To my surprise, the segments in question prompted a backlash on Twitter by the transgender community, who stands to gain the most by the research outlined,” Martins wrote in the Jan. 19 email to Cummins.

The transgender monkey study is a part of a larger effort from the NIH to counter the spread of HIV in the transgender community, whose members are 49 times more likely to be infected with the disease than nontransgender individuals, according to the agency. Other NIH studies include a $155,000 project with a University of Alabama researcher to study how testosterone treatment for women weakens disease-fighting microorganisms in the vagina. A project at Emory University received $230,000 from the agency to study the rectum immune cells of transgender people.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, awarded $477,121 to the research project between December 2021 and April 2022. The NIH division acquires 400 to 600 rhesus macaque monkeys each year from a South Carolina island leased by Charles River Laboratories, which has a $27.5 million federal contract. The transgender monkey study used rhesus monkeys, although researchers acquired them from the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.

Researchers kept the transgender monkeys alive after the study and returned them to their colony at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, according to documents obtained through the information request. The center did not respond to inquiries on the status of the monkeys after the hormone treatments.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admins-transgender-monkey-experiment-in-turmoil-after-free-beacon-report/

The Biden administration is requiring schools to comply with its LGBT policies or lose billions in federal funding for school lunches.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service announced in May it will prevent low-income students from participating in its National School Lunch Program if their public school does not adopt the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which holds that the federal civil rights law’s provision against discrimination based on sex includes designations of sexual orientation and gender identity. The move was originally reported by The Center Square.

A spokeswoman for Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) said the Biden administration’s decision to “withhold food from disadvantaged children in order to advance a deranged political agenda” was “appalling.”

“We will not allow Biden to force Floridians to choose between children’s food and parents’ rights,” DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw told the Washington Free Beacon. “That is the kind of ‘decision’ that a totalitarian regime would force upon its citizenry.”

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem (R.) told the Free Beacon her state will take legal action.

“Joe Biden has threatened to take away children’s school lunch money to pursue his radical agenda,” Noem said. “He’s targeting states like ours that make it clear biological men do NOT belong in girls’ bathrooms and sports. If you act on this, Joe, we’ll see you in court and we will win.”

Joe Biden has threatened to take away children’s school lunch money to pursue his radical agenda.

He’s targeting states like ours that make it clear biological men do NOT belong in girls’ bathrooms and sports.

If you act on this, Joe, we’ll see you in court and we will win. pic.twitter.com/i8oU0aYTfL

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) June 1, 2022

Critics of the administration’s decision said it could unnecessarily harm disadvantaged students. Christian K-12 schools that participate in the NSLP can apply for a religious exemption, but public and nonreligious private schools must follow the new rules or lose their funding.

“All people should be treated with dignity and respect, but it’s wrong for the federal government to take away free meals from economically disadvantaged students if their schools do not embrace radical gender ideology,” Greg Baylor, a senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Free Beacon.

The announcement builds on President Joe Biden’s Day One Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, which permits transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex. Biden’s executive order drew on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which altered the meaning of “sex” in Title VII to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Biden administration will also force schools that receive funds from FNS to investigate accusations of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Students at colleges and universities who reject the Biden administration’s definition of sex could also lose their Federal Student Aid. 

“Any discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in FNS programs will be handled as sex discrimination,” a USDA spokeswoman told the Free Beacon.

Baylor suspects most public schools will comply with the new interpretation as they heavily rely on federal funding. He encouraged parents to submit their concerns to the Department of Education, which is expected to issue new Title IX protections soon that could permit transgender individuals to access sex-segregated spaces.

Jonathan Butcher, a fellow in education at the Heritage Foundation, said the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX would also prohibit schools from informing parents of their child’s decision to assume a different gender.

“It is a parent’s right to know what their children are doing or what sort of health services or even counseling services are being provided to their children in a school setting,” Butcher said. 

Parents Defending Education director of outreach Erika Sanzi called the Title IX decision “preposterous.”

“The notion that schools will not receive funding for student meals if they refuse to let biological males use the girls’ bathroom and compete against girls in athletics is so preposterous, it sounds like parody,” Sanzi said.

Update June 2, 2022, at 10:15 a.m. and 2:35 p.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from Gov. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.).

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/no-free-lunch-biden-admin-will-pull-meal-funding-for-schools-that-dont-comply-with-its-lgbt-agenda/

Actor and outspoken Christian Kirk Cameron recently blasted America’s public school system in an interview with Fox News.

Cameron — whose new documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” premieres Monday, June 13 — told Fox News, “The problem is that public school systems have become so bad. It’s sad to say they’re doing more for grooming, for sexual chaos and the progressive Left than any real educating about the things that most of us want to teach our kids.”

Thus, as Cameron explained in the interview and in his movie, the solution to the poor quality of public education is to homeschool your kids. He also took issue with those who say only experts, or the government, should be responsible for American school children’s education.

“And that’s just a fundamental difference in the way that we look at who has been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising our children. … Is it the parents or is it the government?” he said to Fox.

Cameron also blasted public education for “destroying” certain institutions and patriotism in America.

“And you can take your pick. Just go down the list. The things that are destroying the family, destroying the church, destroying a love for our great country: Critical Race Theory, teaching kids to pick their pronouns and decide whether or not they want to be a boy or a girl, the 1619 Project,” he said.

“If we send our children to Rome to be educated … we shouldn’t be surprised if they come back Romans,” he added. “If we want them to love God and love their neighbor and feel gratitude and thankful that they live in the United States of America, the freest country on earth, then you’ve got to teach them those things. … I realized that there was no better way for our family to do that … than to bring them home and join in with this rich, robust community, with tons of curriculum to be able to have the flexibility and freedom to raise our kids the way we wanted them to be raised.”

The father of six admitted some days are more difficult than others, but said that it was worth it.

“Yes, there are hard days,” he explained. “Yes, there are times when you just feel like pulling your hair out. But it’s nothing compared to wanting to go back and do it all over again. If you see that your children went down a road and you can’t pull them back, [asking] … how did they lose their faith? How did they get pulled into an ideology that undermines everything that is going to lead to their success?”

“They learn to reject God … they learn to reject our country. And how did that happen? Well, that’s the kind of regret that we don’t want as parents,” Cameron added. “And so, if we’re willing to put in some extra effort and time now, we will be so glad that we did and we’ll lift our hands in gratitude and say, ‘Thank you that I woke up and I saw the light.’ And millions of parents are.”

Leftist critics of Cameron have suggested that he is allegedly taking part in a racist plot to segregate society — even if unwitting.

Sort by Best

• kmann332151 day ago: And with all the children going to private schools or being homeschooled, we probably have education budget surplus, right? So the government can offer vouchers, offer a tax cut, or even put in school security systems. Reply17
  • ShadowBaby🍩☕🎺🎵1 day ago: That’s what I’ve been saying – we’re freeing up resources, right? By removing the kinds of kids the establishment hates anyway, right?Reply4Show 1 more reply
• steve34911 day ago: What a great evening with several actors speaking out in support of America and dedication to The Lord. Thank you Kirk.Reply21
• leftistsmakemequeasy1 day ago“And that’s just a fundamental difference in the way that we look at who has been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising our children. … Is it the parents or is it the government?” Bingo.Reply211 reply
• CinziaV1 day ago: Kirk has been championing homeschooling for a long time and he is absolutely 💯% correct. God bless him. Keep it up Kirk!Reply22
• kgraham4606341 day ago: I home school my boys in the in the 1980’s and 1990’s because I saw what the public schools were teaching back then. My eldest went to Cal-Poly and got his Computer Engineering Degree and my middle son got his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and then received his Master also at Cal-Poly. They have g…See moreReply40
  • TheWayisNarrow1 day ago: I homeschooled my four in the 90’s and they are all successful. One is a systems manager for programming code for Comcast, one is a chiropractor, another is a paralegal soon to be court reporter and the other a CFO of family business and homeschools her children. They are all literate and patriotic…See moreReply2
  • blsinsc53721 day ago: Congratulations on your Family’s success! I would bet that with such a grounded foundation, your boys would have been equally successful had they remained in Public Schools but with YOU there to guide them. One of my college Professors said at the beginning of a semester “I can only give you the …See moreReply1

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kirk-cameron-public-school-is-destroying-the-family-destroying-the-church-destroying-love-for-our-great-country?utm_medium=email&utm_source=cnemail&seyid=4329

Long-awaited Title IX rule changes may eliminate due process protections, open women’s spaces to biological men

Popular opposition may be delaying the Biden Education Department’s push to expand Title IX protections to transgender Americans, experts say.

A spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon that the department plans to release updated Title IX rules in June, after twice delaying the rollout. The rule change is expected to erase Trump-era due process protections for sexual misconduct investigations on college campuses. But it could also allow transgender individuals to access sex-segregated spaces, like bathrooms. Title IX stakeholders believe the unpopularity of the latter provision could explain the arrested rollout.

“The administration may be looking at the polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly do not support this radical redefinition of a law meant to provide basic civil rights protections to women and girls in educational institutions,” Independent Women’s Forum senior policy analyst Inez Stepman told the Free Beacon. “This delay is an attempt to evade political responsibility for their unpopular policies.”

The delay could pose a political problem for the Biden administration. President Joe Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to bring to a “quick end” to the Trump-era rules. Critics say those rules prolonged investigations into sexual misconduct and delayed case resolutions. A coalition of activist groups has pressed Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to expedite the department’s Title IX overhaul.

As of this writing, the proposed rule changes are still under review by the Office of Management and Budget. Sarah Parshall Perry, who served under former president Donald Trump in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, said the extended review process is a “hopeful sign” that the office is pushing the Education Department for more information on the rule change, or else has “sent the Department back to the drawing board.”

Candice Jackson, another Trump Education Department alum, suggests that the delay could be political, with the White House “looking ahead to the fall election … and wanting to bury this Title IX explosion under other news.”

But a June release could suggest the opposite. In addition to being LGBT Pride Month, this June marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Expanding Title IX to cover transgender people in June would fit the Biden administration’s pattern of pegging policy to politically advantageous dates. The president demanded that all American troops be pulled out of Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. The White House announced “Independence from COVID” on July 4, 2021. And Biden this week signed an executive order on police reform to mark the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death.

The department’s refusal to publicize its delay shows the administration’s fear of being held accountable for postponing a change that Biden promised to bring early in his time in office, Perry said.

“The fact that Politico broke the story that the new Title IX is once again being delayed, rather than the Department of Education publicizing that delay itself, indicates to me that they’re not keen to be held accountable for the delay,” said Perry, now a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

A second period of public comment will come after the Education Department announces its rules. The department will then have a final opportunity to edit the rules before submitting the final change in the Federal Register.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/the-biden-administration-is-dragging-its-feet-on-transgender-focused-title-ix-overhaul-heres-why/

Auto and home insurance giant State Farm has encouraged hundreds of employees to donate books promoting transgenderism to young children to their local schools and libraries, according to an email leaked by a whistleblower.

The email, obtained by nonprofit organization Consumers’ Research, states that the company partnered with transgender youth advocacy group The GenderCool Project in a campaign “to help diversify classroom, community center, and library bookshelves” with a collection of books centered on the “national conversation about Being Transgender, Inclusive and Non-Binary.”

“The project’s goal is to increase representation of LGBTQ+ books and support our communities in having challenging, important and empowering conversations with children Age 5+,” Jose Soto, a corporate responsibility analyst for State Farm in Florida, wrote in the email dated Jan. 18.

One of the three books The GenderCool Project sought to promote is “A Kids Book About Being Transgender,” which encourages readers as young as 5 to “shake off whatever confusion, skepticism, concern, or biases you may have” about “transgender kids.” The book suggests that a child’s feeling that he or she is of a different gender should be validated rather than challenged, arguing that feelings sometimes “work more like our intuition or insight” that “allow us to understand something without having to think about it.”

“One day I look up ‘boy who feels like girl’ and found stories of people who were just like me,” the book reads. “That’s the first time I heard the word transgender. I realized I wasn’t alone. The feeling I had been a girl finally made sense.”

In the email, Soto asked for six State Farm insurance agents in Florida to volunteer to participate in the program by “receiving these books in March, then donating them to their community by the end of April.”

“Agents are key to the success of this program,” the email read. “Nationwide, approximately 550 State Farm agents and employees will have the opportunity to donate this 3-book bundle to their local teacher, community center or library of their choice.”

“Along with donating the books, we would encourage the agent to highlight our commitment to diversity on their social media pages,” it added. “This is a fantastic way to give back and an easy project that will help support the LGBTQ+ community and to make the world around us better.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, which first reported the matter, State Farm defended the voluntary program, saying that it is “strictly voluntary.”

“We embrace diversity and inclusion because it‘s the right thing to do. We work with a variety of organizations and causes that express their own unique views, and support civil and open dialogue on challenging topics,” the company said.

State Farm later announced it no longer supports the book donation program.

The GenderCool Project describes itself as “a youth-led movement bringing positive change to the world.” The organization’s website highlights a group of young transgender or gender non-conforming “Champions,” who are “helping replace misinformed opinions with positive experiences meeting transgender and non-binary youth who are thriving.”

GenderCool lists a number of high profile companies other than State Farm as its partners and supporters, including Adobe, Dell, Oracle, Intel, HP, Bayer, Nike, Bank of America, Capital One, Indeed, and NBC Universal. The group says it engages with partners in “six powerful ways,” such as speaking events, mentorship programs, DEI/HR consulting, and advising for parents of transgender children.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/state-farm-asked-employees-to-donate-transgender-books-aimed-at-young-children-watchdog-group-says_4484577.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-24&utm_medium=email&est=QNSVCe1uqzp6DKLC9QcZ21tWgGegjDeW2u8o0gauMVTyC0o3V2o%2BMuZF8tmfj3wsZQ%3D%3D

Two sexually explicit novels may soon be removed from Virginia public school libraries thanks to a circuit court decision that called the books “obscene.”

Judge Pamela Baskervill ruled Wednesday that Gender Queer: A Memoir and A Court of Mist and Fury are too “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors,” ABC 7 News reported. Virginia public schools may soon have to remove the novels and similarly graphic books from library shelves. The books’ publishers have three weeks to contest the ruling.

The Virginia Beach School Board voted prior to the decision to remove Gender Queer from libraries, after a district working group deemed it “pervasively vulgar.” Written by “nonbinary” author Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer is a graphic novel focused on the author’s sexual experiences.

The book contains illustrations of a male character performing oral sex on a dildo affixed to Kobabe with a harness and recounts Kobabe’s trip to a pornography production company. A Court of Mist and Fury contains several graphic sexual scenes, the Washington Free Beacon found.

Virginia state delegate Tim Anderson (R.) in April petitioned the court to pull the books from schools on behalf of Tommy Altman, a congressional candidate running against Rep. Elaine Luria (D., Va.). Altman and Anderson on Wednesday filed a separate motion to the court, seeking to extend the ruling to all Virginia libraries and booksellers. If a judge rules in their favor, public libraries and bookstores will be barred from sharing or selling the books to minors without parental permission.

Critics say that banning books from school libraries violates the First Amendment. But Anderson insists the court order doesn’t explicitly ban the books but helps parents control their children’s access to obscene content, according to ABC 7.

This is not the first time Gender Queer has caused a dustup in Virginia schools. Fairfax County Public Schools in October pulled the book from libraries but reversed its decision a month later. Loudoun County Public Schools removed Gender Queer from libraries after determining the book “ran counter to what is appropriate in school.”

https://freebeacon.com/campus/parental-advisory-court-rules-gender-queer-novel-too-sexually-explicit-for-schools/

About 9,000 transgender surgeries are performed a year in the United States as government and private insurance increasingly cover them. Globally, the sex reassignment surgery market is projected to be $1.5 billion by 2026. But how safe are the expensive procedures, like the popular genital or “bottom” surgeries whose costs starts at $25,000?

Male-to-female and female-to-male genital surgeries seek to create an “aesthetic genital organ, as well as to allow for their excretory and related functioning,” wrote researchers in Current Urology last year. For example, in addition to achieving the correct look, most female-to-male surgical patients want to “stand up” when they urinate. Unfortunately, the urological aspects of the surgeries are the most prone to complications for both men and women.

Urethrocutaneous fistulas, unwanted openings that allow urine leakage, and urethal strictures, narrowings that impede urine flow, are the most common complications of genital surgery for both men and women. Researchers in Current Urology write that the fistula and stricture complication rates may be as high as 75 percent in female-to-male surgery. A study last year in the Journal of Urology of male-to-female genital surgery (vaginoplasty) found a quarter of 869 patients in California experienced complications including strictures and fistulas.

While fistulas can cause urine dribbling or leaking, a uretha stricture can lead to kidney damage, says the website All Things Kidney. If the blockage is “left untreated over the years, it can cause urine retention with back-pressure on kidneys as a consequence. This can lead to a condition called ‘Hydronephrosis’” or kidney swelling.

Other Concerns

What do the genital surgeries entail? Penile inversion vaginoplasty includes removal of the testicles, penile disassembly, and creation of a vagina and clitoris from penile tissue. (The prostate is left in place to avoid incontinence and to keep erotic sensations.)

Female-to-male surgery involves hysterectomy, removal of fallopian tubes, the ovaries and vagina but not the clitoris and creation of a “penis” (which requires an implant for erections). Voice and face surgery are also performed in many cases.

Creating a vagina surgically can cause rectal and urethral injury, wrote researchers in Translational Andrology and Urology in 2019. Patients might want to choose a “limited depth” vagina for safety and less future maintenance. “Patients who are not interested in penetrative forms of sex, higher perioperative risk, or are not willing to commit to lifelong douching and dilating should be considered ideal candidates for limited depth vaginoplasty,” they write. “This leaves the patient with an externally feminine genitalia with a very short vaginal canal of just a few centimeters inadequate for penetrative intercourse. However, it mitigates the risk of rectal and urethral injury, obviates the need for supplemental grafts or flaps for additional vaginal length (and thus hair removal needs), and shortens the operative time.”

If male-to-female patients do not want to be consigned to such lifelong “douching and dilating,” tissue from the colon or small bowel can be used to line the vagina instead of penile says the University of California San Francisco website “Transgender Care.” While such a vagina is naturally “self-lubricating,” its secretions could be constant, undesirable, and the vagina is at risk for bowel-related diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, arterio-venous malformations (tangle blood vessels), and neoplasms. A vagina created from penile tissue can also pose disease risks, says the site. “The same skin cancers that occur on the penile and scrotal skin (squamous cell, basal cell, melanoma)” can occur.

Male-to-female patients may also experience vaginal prolapse—the top of the vagina collapses into the vaginal canal—says a 2021 article in Andrology. It is a rare complication but may increase over time, write the authors.

Regrets and Reversals

While a 2018 study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery  says most surgery patients report satisfaction with their surgery, seven male-to-female patients  “sought detransition” because of vaginal stenosis (stricture), fistulas, and chronic genital pain.

Two female-to-male patients sought detransition because of a fistula and stricture. Forty-five patients in the study were said to regret their genital surgery and 38 detransition procedures were performed, though the study doesn’t say that they were all genital surgeries. According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, “Reversal surgery in regretful male-to-female transsexuals after SRS [sex reassignment surgery] represents a complex, multistage procedure with satisfactory outcomes.”

The voice of regretful patients is downplayed, says Walt Heyer in an oped in USA Today in 2019. Heyer, who underwent genital reconfiguration at age 42, writes, “You will hear the media say, ‘Regret is rare.’ But they are not reading my inbox, which is full of messages from transgender individuals who want the life and body back that was taken from them by cross-sex hormones, surgery, and living under a new identity.”

Of course all surgery poses risks and more than half of plastic surgery patients have regrets, according to some reports. Still the considerable risks of male-to-female and female-to-male genital surgery are not often detailed by the press, perhaps to avoid appearing “transphobic.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/when-gender-surgery-goes-wrong_4452260.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-13-3&utm_medium=email&est=VRSma4qzl354TRY135%2FR2tgy1ySbmOnhDte16wzUjrhVyVe8%2BF9IGp1pIoTPbx8k6A%3D%3D

If Erin Lee had known what her 12-year-old daughter would be exposed to during an afterschool “art club” last May, she would have never allowed her to go.

It began innocently enough. Lee received a text from her daughter asking if she could stay late for an “art club” at Wellington Middle School near Fort Collins, Colorado.

What happened next, though, would change their lives forever.

The “art club” was actually a meeting of the school’s Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) club, a group dedicated to supporting homosexuality, transgenderism, and other nontraditional ideas about gender and sexuality.

When the leader told Amanda (name changed to protect the minor) she must be “queer” if she didn’t feel sexually attracted to anybody, and that she must be “transgender” if she didn’t feel fully comfortable in her own body, the shy little girl suspected something wasn’t right.

According to Amanda, that same leader told her not to tell her parents about what would be discussed that day.

The woman in charge, Kimberly Chambers, who works as a “health equity initiatives coordinator” for Larimer County and director of the pro-LGBT organization SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado, also handed out her personal contact information to the children and urged them to contact her anytime.

Chambers’ organization has boasted of teaching children ages 12 to 16 about “polyamory”—relationships with multiple sexual partners simultaneously—and other controversial ideas.

During the afterschool GSA club, according to Amanda, Chambers explained to the children that their family homes may not be a “safe space,” but that there were “resources” available. She also handed out transgender flags and stickers that Amanda understood were supposed to represent the children in the club.

As soon as Lee picked up her daughter at school, it was clear that something was “off,” the mother told The Epoch Times in a series of interviews about the incident.

Amanda, looking confused, showed her mother the transgender paraphernalia she had received from Chambers. The transgender flag represented her, Amanda told her mom.

“My heart started racing and my mind blacked out,” Lee recounted. “I was in so much shock that I struggled to get out any words.”

Even though the GSA leader at school had told Amanda it was OK to lie to her parents, Amanda knew better. Over the days that followed, she told her parents everything, Lee said.

Amanda’s parents could hardly believe what they were hearing. Lee, who has described herself as an “ally of the LGBTQ community” and said she has a history of voting “pretty progressively on social issues,” was appalled.

But that would be just the beginning of an ordeal that continues to haunt the family.

The Fallout 

Amanda never went back to the school after that. Instead, her parents put her in a local Christian school, even though it meant Lee would have to work nights to afford it. But as Lee and her husband saw it, there was no other choice.

Despite being pulled out of Wellington Middle School, the family’s difficulties grew.

After the lesson, Amanda began to wonder whether she might truly be queer and transgender. Her mental state began to rapidly deteriorate, her mother said.

Multiple family members confirmed to The Epoch Times that prior to what Lee describes as the “grooming” of her daughter at school, Amanda never showed any signs of “gender dysphoria,” the term used by psychiatrists to describe discomfort with one’s biological sex.

Afterward, though, it was hard for the girl to shake the idea.

Lee and her husband, who was outraged by the ordeal, struggled for months with how to talk to their daughter about what had happened.

“We didn’t want to say something that would push her further into this dark hole or further into this transgender label,” Lee said. “And we did exactly what the trusted adults who indoctrinated her told her we would do. We played right into their narrative.”

Weeks after the incident, as her mental state got worse, the parents decided to take Amanda to a therapist. The therapist also ended up being “queer,” and sought to affirm the young girl’s confusion about her gender.

By December, between the COVID isolation and the questions surrounding her gender, Amanda’s mental state was spiraling downward, Lee said.

The pediatrician immediately prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs for depression—medications that she has since been weaned from—in an attempt to deal with the crisis.

“I don’t know if that fear will ever go away,” Lee said about her own concerns. “I don’t expect to ever stop being struck with sadness about what happened.”

Fighting Back 

The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.

First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”

Next she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.

There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBTQ children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.

After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”

Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.

While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.

District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, Lee said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.

As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.

Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.

When Chambers was informed by the art teacher that Amanda’s parents had not been sending her to school since the incident, Chambers wrote back urging her to consider filing a report and have child-protection officials visit the home.

“If that persists, you’ll want to talk to admin about doing a well-child check or whatever is within the policies of the school,” Chambers wrote, describing upset parents as “barriers” and citing an “extreme case” in which a family did not allow their transgender child to leave the home unsupervised.

Lee was flabbergasted after receiving the documents.

“I knew this woman was evil, but I didn’t see this coming,” she said. “This teacher and Kimberly [Chambers] forced us to pull our child out of school by creating an unsafe environment, then discussed sending CPS into our home because we pulled her out, at our most vulnerable moment as a family—that they caused.”

“If my child had indicated that we were not affirming her pronouns and trans identity, I believe the authorities would’ve taken our child away,” Lee added. “And everyone involved knew this.”

District and LGBT Activists Respond 

The Epoch Times reached out to Chambers for comment, asking whether she considered non-affirmation of a child’s gender ideas to be abuse and seeking confirmation about the story details.

“Given the private nature of this specific youth and family’s needs, I’d like to share with you a couple of Colorado and National resources around gender identity to help inform your article rather than provide any comment,” she said before providing a number of links on transgenderism and legal issues.

Wellington Middle School referred inquiries to the district. A message left on the principal’s phone was not immediately returned.

Poudre School District Executive Director of Communications Madeline Noblett told The Epoch Times that the district couldn’t comment on “specific student matters.”

When asked about policies on getting child protection services involved in cases such as Amanda’s, Noblett noted that all district staff are “mandated reporters” under Colorado law. That means they are required to report suspected child abuse.

Noblett didn’t respond to follow-up questions about district policy on whether parents’ refusal to support their children transitioning to a new gender constitutes abuse.

“It is the role of the Department of Human Services to investigate the suspected/reported case; to determine whether the child is safe; to determine if abuse occurred; and to provide appropriate services to the family,” she said.

However, the district aims to “create and uphold equitable, inclusive, and rigorous educational opportunities, outcomes, and experiences for all students,” she said.

“As a district, we are committed to making our schools safe spaces in which all students can learn,” Noblett said, adding that the district has “a LGBTQIA+ coordinator who works to advance the resources, support, inclusion, and advocacy of LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and families.”

“Gay Straight Alliances were established as safe spaces for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and any individual to come together with the goals of ensuring inclusivity, safety, and support,” Noblett said.

When asked how GSA adult leaders were trained, the communications director said there were no training requirements to lead any club in the district. However, GSA leaders could use resources from the GSA network and from One Colorado, the network’s state affiliate.

Gillian Ford of One Colorado didn’t specifically address questions from The Epoch Times about how GSA adult leaders are trained, whether it’s standard practice to tell children not to talk to their parents about these issues, or whether the escalating parental outrage was appropriate.

“Schools are often places where LGBTQ+ young people don’t feel safe or included,” said Ford, whose pronouns are listed as “she, her, hers” in her email signature.

“Since 2011, One Colorado has worked with both statewide education associations, as well as local educators, parents, and students to create and sustain the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) Network to support and empower LGBTQ+ young people and their allies against the bullying, harassment, homophobia, and transphobia in their schools.”

National and State Trends 

What happened to the Lee family in Northern Colorado is hardly an isolated incident, experts told The Epoch Times.

“At first, we wanted to believe it was an isolated incident,” Lee said. “We didn’t want to believe that there could be such evil in our public school system, in our local government, in our community.”

What happened to Lee’s family is part of an accelerating national trend. Numerous European nations are witnessing similar phenomena.

The Epoch Times spoke with other families across the nation who had similar experiences, but almost none were willing to go on record due to fears of retaliation by government officials and activists.

While the American College of Pediatricians describes teaching children that it’s normal or healthy to impersonate the opposite sex as “child abuse,” larger and more established associations have taken a different approach.

A new “puberty guide” for children between 9 and 12 published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) claims that boys can menstruate and that girls can experience erections.

“Most babies who are born with a penis grow up feeling like a boy on the inside too. That’s called being cisgender (cis- means ‘same’),” the guide states. “But there are some babies born with a penis who grow up feeling like a girl on the inside. That’s called being transgender (trans- means ‘cross’ or ‘opposite’).”

According to a recent report published in the journal Pediatrics, almost one in ten children surveyed now identify as “gender diverse,” far more than traditionally believed.

Other surveys show even higher numbers. One from UCLA found over one-fourth of California teens were viewed by peers as “gender non-conforming.”

Those numbers are rising rapidly.

Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center at Colorado’s free-market think tank the Independence Institute, told The Epoch Times that she has heard numerous “disturbing stories” from parents across the state about their children coming home from school confused about their gender.

“I spoke with a dad who told me that without his knowledge, staff from his daughter’s middle school drafted a transition plan for his daughter to become a male,” Benigno said. “This is not uncommon. In fact, teachers have been ordered not to tell parents if students take on a new identity while at school.”

Districts across the state, under the guise of being “inclusive,” are “pushing a radical-left agenda on children” and have even “adopted the non-scientific theory that gender identity is fluid,” she said.

This includes hiring “queer” organizations to smash traditional notions of normalcy in the minds of students, she added.

A recently published paper by The Independence Institute aims at helping parents ensure transparency in school curricula. But parents must be vigilant and protect their children from “devastating emotional and sometimes physical harm,” Benigno said.

Conservative states are no exception to the trend. In Utah, state controlled-substance data revealed a 10,000 percent increase between 2015 and 2020 in the number of minor girls undergoing medical transitions.

In Ludlow, Massachusetts, a major lawsuit by parents against the school district is alleging that education officials encouraged children to experiment with alternate gender identities and hide it from their parents.

Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute who is involved in the case, is dealing with a surge in such cases in his state.

“We see the same aggressive attack on the integrity of the parent-child relationship here in Massachusetts,” he told The Epoch Times when asked about parallels between Lee’s story and what’s taking place there.

“Many of the LGBTQ activists want to brand traditional sexual morality as ‘child abuse,’ and their accomplices in child services terrorize families who won’t just go along with this agenda,” he said, calling these sorts of policies an “appalling and dangerous violation of the rights of parents.”

“What is happening in Ludlow is part of a larger national agenda to deliberately circumvent the authority of parents over the mental health and religious beliefs of their children,” Beckwith said. “School officials around the country are secretly affirming, or even promoting, discordant gender identities in young children.”

The Biden administration has started threatening legal action against local communities, schools, states, and other institutions that don’t submit to the transgender agenda.

Warning to Parents 

As a result of the ordeal, Lee has lost all trust in the media, the government, the medical profession, and the public school system.

“Now I don’t trust a single person in the public school system,” she told The Epoch Times. “Not a single one.”

Lee said she has been in contact with numerous attorneys about the case as she considers her legal options. She is still seeking counsel.

Today, Amanda is doing much better, her parents say.

But in an effort to help protect other families from similar situations, the family has decided to continue sounding the alarm while encouraging parents to become more aware and get more involved.

Among other suggestions, Lee is also urging parents to remove their children from public school.

“Get them into private schools if you can afford it,” she said. “Get them into homeschool co-ops or homeschool them yourself.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/as-parents-resisted-transgender-push-teacher-suggested-sending-in-child-services_4443600.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-11-4&utm_medium=email&est=DyuB6BTxn3WpIjqNWLitjYTLmP%2F3FPq1aP9%2BnpuGbOmHlGnRNVM3fMLrK6swxM5wVw%3D%3D

A transgender convicted child molester whose light sentence stoked anger at Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón was charged Tuesday with murder.

On Tuesday, Tubbs pleaded not guilty to the unrelated, April 21, 2019, murder of Michael Clark, whose body was found months later in the Kern River. Kern County Superior Court Judge David Zulfa referred to the defendant by his birth name, James Edward Tubbs, and ordered him held on $1 million bond in a men’s jail in Kern County.

Hannah Tubbs, trans child molester, pleads not guilty to murder, robbery chargeshttps://t.co/RHGortPVeO

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 11, 2022

In the earlier case, Gascón refused to prosecute Tubbs in adult court as part of his directive that minor offenders be tried in juvenile court, even for serious crimes. He claimed that since Tubbs was two weeks shy of his 18th birthday when he molested the girl, he belonged in a juvenile facility even though he is now 26. Gascón also refused to require Tubbs to register as a sex offender.

Fox News later obtained a recording of a phone call Tubbs made from jail in which he boasted to hs father about getting off easy.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tubbs said. “It’s a strike, but they’re gonna plead, I’m going to plead out to them and plead guilty.”

“You won’t have to register?” her father asked.

“I won’t have to do none of that,” Tubbs replied.

“So what are they going to do to you then?”

“Nothing,” Tubbs answered, then laughed.

Tubbs’ victim, who was 10 at the time of the attack, told Fox News that the handling of the case has been “insulting” and “unfair” to her.

“The things he did to me and made me do that day was beyond horrible for a ten-year-old girl to have to go through,” she told Fox. “I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.”

“I’ve also heard that my attacker goes by she/them pronouns now,” she added. “I see it also unfair to try him as a woman as well, seeing how he clearly didn’t act like one on January 1st of 2014.”

Gascón, who is facing a recall attempt, was humiliated by the case and said he would re-evaluate his sentencing policies.

“While for most people several years of jail time is adequate, it may not be for Ms. Tubbs,” he said. “If we knew about her disregard for the harm she caused, we would have handled this case differently.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/trans-child-molester-charged-with-murder-after-gascon-slap-on-wrist?utm_medium=email&utm_source=cnemail&seyid=925

Parents of teens who say they are transgender are keeping their eyes fixed on a court case that could lead to taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

One parent, who goes by the pseudonym Charlotte Jacobs to protect the identity of herself and her daughter, told The Epoch Times that she and other parents of teens suffering from gender dysphoria are paying close attention to the case.

“There are no studies that show that this surgery or any type of gender affirming surgery alleviates gender dysphoria … so it’s an elective surgery,” Jacobs said. “Why should taxpayers pay for this?”

Two plaintiffs, minor teenagers known as D.H. and John Doe, sued Arizona Medicaid because Medicaid does not pay for breast removal surgeries. The plaintiffs are seeking a court injunction to stop Arizona Medicaid from complying with its own rules against covering gender reassignment surgeries. Doe was 15 and D.H. was 17 when they filed the lawsuit.

“D.H. and John are unable to obtain the medical care that is a critical next step in their ongoing treatment for gender dysphoria,” states the lawsuit. “As long as the exclusion is enforced, they are barred from obtaining male chest reconstruction surgery.”

Jami Snyder, Director of The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System is listed as the defendant in the case.

D.H. has since turned 18 and has dropped out of the case.

A lower court denied an injunction, ruling the plaintiffs had not shown they were likely to succeed on their claim that their exclusion from coverage violates the Medicaid Act.

John Doe has appealed the case, which is scheduled to go before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 19 in Phoenix.

“These two kids have a history of mental illness, including suicide attempts,” Jacobs claimed. “And, of course, they’re going to conflate and say that these suicide attempts are because they’re not getting their gender affirming surgery.”

There are also no studies that show undergoing surgeries will prevent these children from committing suicide, Jacobs said.

“In fact, the opposite is true,” she said. “There’s a 19 percent increase in suicide post surgeries.”

An amici curae (friends of the court) brief submitted for teens who had double mastectomies, but now regret the surgeries states they “believed that removing their healthy breasts would resolve their gender dysphoria and permit them to live healthy, well-adjusted lives,” but later learned that surgery “did not resolve the psychological issues underlying their gender dysphoria, but only increased their distress as they realized they had irreversibly altered their bodies based upon ideology.”

One of the teens is Keira Bell, a 24-year-old woman who changed her mind and “detransitioned” after gender reassignment surgery in Britain. She sued Britain’s National Health Service’s clinic for transgender youth—which in three appointments led her into a “devastating experiment” using puberty blockers at 16, and later a double mastectomy. The court later ruled that it’s unlikely that children under 16 can give informed consent for such puberty-blocking drugs.

Jacobs blames transgender activists, the media, Hollywood, the medical community and public schools for promoting the indoctrination of susceptible teens often suffering from depression into believing they should permanently alter their bodies through surgery to be happier. She disagrees with “gender affirming” therapy, which she believes only further indoctrinates already confused kids.

“All this transgenderism is part of the bigger social contagion that is happening, where all over Tik Tok and YouTube you can find before-and-after pictures of young girls with big smiles … of absolute euphoria after they remove their breasts,” she said.

Jacobs said the growing trend among gender dysphoric teens to have their breasts removed, and then post images of their surgical scars on social media is shocking and similar to anorexic girls posting images and videos of themselves getting thinner and thinner.

“YouTube actually was required to take all of those down,” Jacobs said. “But this is the same thing. It’s a social contagion of girls thinking that they’re going to be happy and that their mental illness will be eradicated if they would only cut off their breasts.”

If the court rules in favor of taxpayer-funded surgeries in Arizona, Jacobs expects the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/parents-of-gender-dysphoric-teens-warn-against-taxpayer-funded-breast-removal-surgeries-for-minors_4113054.html

Buried in a Senate bill meant to increase U.S. competition with China is a measure that allocates $5 million in taxpayer funds for a “chief diversity officer” at the National Science Foundation.

The provision is part of the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), a sprawling bill that seeks to increase American manufacturing and shore up the United States’ supply lines to boost competition with China. Republicans object to several portions of the bill, including a passage that awards $5 million annually to the National Science Foundation for a chief diversity officer who would oversee directives such as “establishing a strategic plan for diverse participation” in federal science programs. The official would also collect and report demographic information, such as gender and race, for patent applicants and ensure that any state seeking science-related grants enacts a plan to address “inequity.” States can do that, the bill says, by giving subgrants to close “equity gaps” and boosting enrollment in computer science education coursework for students who face “systemic barriers.”

The diversity officer would be in charge of developing plans to ensure that “traditionally underrepresented populations,” such as native Hawaiians, Alaska natives, and Indians, get access to federal programs. This would also include “historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges or universities, [and] minority-serving institutions,” according to the legislation.

Senior Republican aides who are tracking the legislation said the addition of these measures into a critical national security bill is part of an effort by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank to mainstream their “woke agenda” and progressive priorities centered on race relations.

“This is a thinly veiled attempt to push a radical woke agenda in what the Democrats say is supposed to be a critical national security bill,” said one Republican official, speaking only on background.

A second senior congressional aide said it is “disappointing that Republican lawmakers are helping them” push this agenda by allowing the bill to go to conference, where it can be debated. Republicans, the source said, should unite in opposition to any form of the bill that is used by Democrats to forward far-left priorities, such as the diversity office.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) have been spearheading efforts to see USICA passed and sent to the White House for approval. Democrats attempted on Monday evening to add the legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense spending bill, but Senate Republicans blocked this effort due to lingering concerns about the USICA bill. The bill will be taken up by House and Senate leaders in a reconciliation process known as a conference committee, in which the two separate versions of the bill are merged into one bipartisan measure.

The National Science Foundation has long been seen as a bastion for what critics call “woke science.”

The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology stated in a November report on politicization in scientific funding that the National Science Foundation—which has an annual budget of around $8 billion dollars—routinely employs “highly politicized terms” in its documents.

“As of 2020, 30.4 percent of all grants had one of the following politicized terms: ‘equity,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘gender,’ ‘marginalize,’ ‘underrepresented,’ or ‘disparity,'” the report stated. “This is up from 2.9 percent in 1990.”

“The results imply that there has been a politicization of scientific funding in the U.S. in recent years and a decrease in the diversity of ideas supported, indicating a possible decline in the quality of research and the potential for decreased trust towards scientific institutions among the general public,” the report concludes.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/democrats-allocate-5-million-for-national-science-foundation-diversity-officer/

The public school system has become a major battlefield in the war for the hearts and minds of our children.

It began decades ago, with leftists achieving such lofty goals as eliminating God from the classroom and denigrating America and its founding in the minds of generations of students.

Now they’re out to undermine parental rights and authority in the most fundamental way — by complying with the wishes of gender-confused children against their parents’ will.

In the euphemistic name of “affirmative care,” many schools are using the preferred pronouns and names of these troubled kids over objections from parents.

That’s exactly what happened in Wisconsin, where parents are now suing the Kettle Moraine School District for insisting on their 12-year-old daughter’s “transition” without their consent, NBC News reported.

Camera Catches Video Conversion Software ‘Handbrake’ and ‘Format Factory’ on Prosecution’s Laptop

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Waukesha County Circuit Court on behalf of two sets of parents by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom.

According to legal filings, the girl was experiencing anxiety and depression and “began questioning her gender” in December 2020, prompting her parents to withdraw her from school and send her to a mental health facility for treatment.

Rather than helping her sort out her confusion, the facility convinced the girl that she was a boy and should begin living as a male.

Her parents were concerned about this and communicated as much to the school as they hashed out the details of her return to the classroom in mid-January.

Are public schools indoctrinating children in leftist orthodoxy?

But instead of honoring the parents’ wishes to put the brakes on their daughter’s “transition,” administrators at Kettle Moraine Middle School informed them that they would use the girl’s chosen male name and pronouns as per the district’s policy.

Given no other choice, the parents withdrew their daughter from school again and kept her home for a few weeks, a decision that would prove fruitful.

“During that time, her demeanor quickly began to change, and about two weeks later, she changed her mind about wanting to transition to a male identity, deciding instead that she wanted to continue using her birth name and female pronouns,” the lawsuit said.

It’s difficult to imagine that she would have so easily discarded her new identity if the school and district had had their way.

WILL said in a statement that the school system denied this family the chance to take the “cautious approach” many doctors recommend, instead pushing the transition process that “can become self-reinforcing and even do long-term harm” to a child.

Doctor Clinically Diagnoses Patient with ‘Climate Change’ Because Her Asthma Got Worse During Heat Wave

“The Kettle Moraine School District’s policy disregards these medical professionals and instead takes this life-altering decision out of parents’ hands and places it with educators,” the statement continued.

“By enabling minor students to transition at school over their parents’ objection, the district is effectively making a treatment decision without the legal authority to do so and without informed consent from the parents. This policy violates the constitutionally recognized rights of parents to raise their children.”

Public schools have no problem usurping the rightful authority of parents on this issue or any other because they’re true believers in the power of social engineering.

Children who are physically separated from their parents all day in government buildings are easily manipulated by the adults in charge.

Rather than acknowledging that they work for the taxpayers, teachers and administrators often see parents as obstacles to what is best for their children.

While that may be true in rare instances, the vast majority of children are better served by family members who love them and know them best.

The good news is that transgender ideology is so damaging, so absurd, that parents of all political stripes are taking notice and pushing back.

“You think the parents must be right-wingers or crazy,” Abigail Shrier, who literally wrote the book on the issue, tweeted last week.

“Then, gender ideology comes for your kid and you learn how many forces are stacked against parents. And these parents start to look more like heroes.”

You think the parents must be right-wingers or crazy.

Then, gender ideology comes for your kid and you learn how many forces are stacked against parents.

And these parents start to look more like heroes. https://t.co/DMzc5Eizrz

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) November 12, 2021

Shrier’s tweet came in response to footage of a protest at Stanford University, where pediatric psychiatrist and New York Times contributor Dr. Jack Turban is employed — just the kind of “expert” who supports this insanity.

America’s public school system has been a cesspool of the worst ideas and practices for years, but parents are only beginning to see how truly toxic their children’s schools can be.

The lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District is exactly the kind of battle we need to fight to put a stop to the madness.

Allyn Walker – a transgender person – has been pushing “dignity” for pedophiles upon students.

A transgender professor from Old Dominion University has been placed on leave after a video of them advocating in support of people sexually attracted to children went viral on social media.

In the video, Professor Allyn Walker provided a positive stance on people termed “MAP” or Minor Attracted People. In an interview with Prostasia Foundation, Walker argued that stigma surrounding pedophilia “can lead to harm.”

The interview also led to Walker defending the term MAP because “the group want other to use” this term for their sexual attraction and inclination towards children. Despite having worked with victims of sexual violence, Walker went on to argue that the criminal processing system of pedophiles/MAPs cultivates institutional harms.

Prostasia is a California-based organization that has campaigned nationally and internationally to end bans on child-like sex dolls, artwork depicting pedophilia and sexual imagery of children, and called out companies like Tumblr for banning inappropriate language involving children.

Walker has studied non-offending MAPs, leading to the release of a book urging for “dignity” for pedophiles. After an outcry regarding Walker’s beliefs and behaviors, Old Dominion University placed the professor on leave “for their safety.”

The university also released the following statement:

“Old Dominion University has placed Dr. Allyn Walker on administrative leave, effective immediately, from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice.”

Reactions to Dr. Walker’s research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus.

Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker’s research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution’s mission of teaching and learning.

“I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society,” said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D. “This is a challenging time for our University, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.”

The actions we are taking today are motivated by our obligation to maintain a safe and conducive learning environment for our students, faculty, and staff.”

Dr. Allyn Walker has released the following statement:

“I want to be clear: child sexual abuse is morally wrong and inexcusable crime. As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime. My work is informed by my past experience and advocacy as a social worker counseling victims. I embarked on this research in hopes of gaining understanding of a group that, previously, has not been studied in order to identify ways to protect children.”

A New Hampshire student is suing his high school for violating his right to free speech and religious beliefs after being disciplined for stating there are only two genders.

The freshman and football player for the school, identified as “M.P.” in the lawsuit, received a one-game suspension for violating the school district’s transgender student policy.

The student made the comments on a school bus and then later in a text exchange with another student off school grounds.

The student’s attorney, Ian Huyett of the Manchester-based Cornerstone Policy Research, said his client is seeking permanent relief from the school policy under protections for free speech and religious belief in the state constitution.

Huyett said the student is a practicing Catholic and has the constitutional right to hold the belief that there are only two genders.

“As the United States Supreme Court has said, students do not check their First Amendment Rights at the schoolhouse gate,” said Huyett.

“In New Hampshire,” he added, “we have a strong tradition of our state supreme court holding that our state constitutional protections are more protective of individual liberties than the corresponding federal right.”

District Superintendent Dave Ryan released a statement on the matter noting that the district had only just learned of the lawsuit on Nov. 9 and is in the process of reviewing it with legal counsel.

“We will be able to share a statement once we have completed that review,” Ryan said.

Calls made by The Epoch Times to the Exeter Regional Cooperative School Board, which enacted the gender policy, were not returned.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed on Nov. 4, the matter originated from a conversation the teenager was having with another student on a school bus.

It was about a request a female classmate made during their Spanish class that they use only non-binary pronouns in Spanish to address her.

It was another female student, said Huyett, who took offense to comments she overheard his client make in a conversation he was having with another student on a school bus ride home. They included the Spanish language not having non-binary pronouns.

According to Huyett, that student obtained his client’s phone number and initiated a texting debate over the issue. That student took screenshots of the texts and gave them to the school.

The following morning Huyette said his client was pulled out of class and told he was being disciplined for violating the school’s gender policy.

In another pending lawsuit against a New Hampshire school’s gender identity policy, a parent of a Gilford School District student was angered to learn the district’s policy permits and encourages school officials to hide disclosures students make about their sexual orientation from their parents.

The parent’s attorney, Rick Lehmann of the Concord law firm Lehmann Major List, said his client is also challenging the district’s policy for officials to issue no-trespass letters to anyone who doesn’t use non-gender pronouns on school grounds.

Huyett says he expects there will be more lawsuits to come in New Hampshire on the issue because so many public schools have adopted policies similar to the one being challenged.

Huyett’s legal fees in the case are being fully funded by the Cornerstone Policy Research, a nonprofit organization founded by 2020, and now 2022, New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Testerman.

Testerman said she founded Cornerstone because too many New Hampshire residents with Christian values were underrepresented in legal and political matters.  She said what happened to Huyett’s client is a prime example.

“It’s disturbing to have schools trying to control people’s thoughts by instituting this propaganda through alphabet policies,” she said.

The New Hampshire cases are the latest in a steady stream of lawsuits around the U.S. on school policies on the use of preferred pronouns.

Earlier in March, Virginia gym teacher Tanner Cross was suspended after refusing to use preferred pronouns of students over pronouns consistent with their original biological gender.

A judge later lifted the suspension and the Virginia Supreme Court, in ruling on an appeal of the court decision, ruled that the suspension violated the teacher’s First Amendment rights.

Also in March, an appeals court in Ohio sided with a college professor who claimed his right to religious beliefs were violated when he was disciplined by the Shawnee State University where he taught for refusing to call a transgender student by her preferred pronouns.

In the recent U.S. landmark case The United States vs. Varner, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the courts have no authority to compel the use of preferred pronouns because no federal statute gives them that authority.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/teen-sues-new-hampshire-school-over-punishment-for-only-two-genders-comment_4105865.html

A group of Virginia parents say they have secured enough signatures on petitions to remove the school board chair they say has endangered their children and placed woke politics ahead of education.

The action is the latest round in a battle between parents in the Loudoun County School District and the board.

Fight for Schools filed the recall documents in Loudoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.

The filing said board President Brenda Sheridan broke open meetings laws by using closed Facebook groups as a way to discuss school business without the public being aware. Sheridan is also accused of violating the First Amendment rights of parents by limiting public comment at meetings.

The board chair is also accused of mishandling a sexual assault case in the schools in which a student who was accused of a sexual assault was shunted from one school to another, where he has been accused of another sexual assault.

Most 2020 Ballot Images from 56 Georgia Counties Have Been Destroyed

Parents and protesters, including self-described Democrats, gather to oppose the Loudoun County School Board tonight: pic.twitter.com/pBBa4hs1Y1

— Elle Reynolds (@_etreynolds) October 26, 2021

“Today, we just filed 1200 signatures to remove the chairwoman of Loudoun County School Board, Brenda Sheridan,” Fight for Schools Executive Director Ian Prior told Fox News. “We decided that for the chairwoman and the vice-chairwoman, the buck stops with them, that we were going to draft new petitions … We were able to finish those off in 13 days.”

The group says it also has petitions to remove Board Vice-Chair Atoosa Reaser and board members Ian Serotkin and Denise Corbo, all with more than enough signatures to meet the legal requirement to trigger a recall. In Virginia, elected officials can be recalled if a petition to remove them receives a number of signatures equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the previous election, Fox reported.

Have school boards become rubber stamps for liberals?

The intent to recall all of the board members was expressed during a public comment period at Tuesday’s board meeting.

“By the way, Denise, Brenda, Ian, Atoosa, we are well over 100% of required signatures for the petitions,” Megan Jenkins said, according to Fox News. “So I’m not going to encourage any of you to resign because when you are recalled and removed from office, it will be much more satisfying. See you in court.”

“I have the privilege of telling you that we are finished collecting signatures for your removal,” parent Jessica Mendez said during the meeting.

“I used to think that there was no point in speaking at these meetings,” Mendez said. “There was no point in trying to have a voice because you never seem to listen, anyway. But I had it all wrong. It wasn’t you who needed to hear our voices. It was all those parents, grandparents and neighbors listening at home, horrified at your actions or inactions. They were the ones who needed to hear us, and they were the ones who sign petitions, see you in court.”

Prior said the petitions required a monumental effort.

No Evidence That Closing the Schools Reduced the Spread of COVID-19

“For six months, Fight for Schools has been out collecting signatures in the heat, the cold, the rain and even hail,” Prior said on Monday. “To get 20,000 signatures during that time is a testament to the dedication of our volunteers and an engaged community that wants to see a change on its school board.”

“We are looking forward to the next steps and replacing school board members that are political servants with non-partisan public servants who will put the focus back on excellence in education,” he said.

Sheridan issued a statement in reply.

“My election was a mandate from those who came to the polls — three times — to choose me as their representative. Tuesday’s filing is the result of a fraction of those citizens signing a petition, whether they voted or not,” she said, according to the Post.

But Prior said change is necessary.

“From violating open meetings law to ignoring the school board’s code of conduct to neglecting to keep our children safe, all for her activist causes, Sheridan has been nothing short of a disaster,” Prior said, the Post reported.

“Let this serve as a message to the rest of the board and Superintendent Ziegler,” he said. “We’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

Procedurally, if recall cases go to trial, a judge or a jury rules on the removal of a board member. The board then gets 45 days to appoint an interim replacement and 15 days to schedule a special election, according to Fox.

In addition to issues over student safety, parents have objected to the district embracing Critical Race Theory, as explained Tuesday night by parent Erin Dunbar, who accused the board of using tax dollars to teach “critical theory of the Marxist philosophy,” Fox reported.

“You have activist teachers using to indoctrinate their kids who are at the mercy of their authority,” she said. “That is child abuse. And you have no right to brainwash children into believing that their skin color determines their purpose.”

Civil liberties advocates oppose President Joe Biden’s proposed rescission of a Trump-era broadening of a regulatory exemption protecting religious employers against being forced to hire individuals who don’t share the organization’s faith views or practices.

In a proposed rule posted Nov. 9 on the Federal Register for official public comment, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) said it had proposed in 2019 a revision that is now viewed as going too far in broadening the definition of “religious freedom” in hiring by federal contractors and subcontractors.

The 2019 proposal was amended in 2020 and became law in January 2021 just before then-President Donald Trump left office. Now, according to OFCCP under Biden, the previous broadening required that religious freedom “must be construed in favor of the broadest protection of religious exercise ‘permitted by the U.S. Constitution and law.’”

Prior to the Trump revision, federal officials usually recognized the right of religious organizations to hire individuals who shared a particular group’s faith principles and practices.

But when the Supreme Court expanded the definition of “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include homosexual and transgender individuals, a conflict was created with the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and religious freedom in hiring practices.

The Trump rule was intended to make clear that an individual could not be fired because of a religious-based objection to being required to participate in actions or pronouncements favoring homosexual or transgender practices.. In addition, an employer could legally decline to hire an individual whose sexual practices or claimed gender conflicted with a clearly stated religious belief.

Atheist groups are lauding Biden’s action, with American Atheists Vice President for Legal and Policy Alison Gill saying in a statement that her group applauds “the Biden administration for restoring workers’ freedom of religion. The government should never fund businesses that justify discrimination based on religious beliefs. And American taxpayers should never be forced to be complicit in discrimination.”

But public interest law firms specializing in litigation on behalf of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom of practice and assembly said the Biden administration’s attempt to repeal the Trump-era regulation indicates an anti-religion prejudice.

“Religious liberty means that the government cannot force religious organizations and businesses to abandon their religious identity in order to partner with the government. The pattern of hostility toward religion that we’re seeing from the Biden administration is disturbing,” said Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation and communications for the Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute. 

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Orlando, Florida-based Liberty Counsel  told The Epoch Times he is not surprised by the Biden proposal. “This has been Biden’s practice all along, including when he was part of the Obamacare campaign. He’s anti-religious freedom and anti-Christian,” he said.

Both First Liberty Institute and Liberty Counsel are representing hundreds of employees of the U.S. military and the federal civilian workforce, as well as corporations, health care organizations and private businesses in seeking to force the Biden administration to recognize religious exemptions to the president’s recent orders requiring workers to receive the vaccination against the CCP Virus.

Biden’s OFCCP proposal creates an unusual situation in which a change in presidential administrations leads in less than one year to a single agency completely reversing itself on an important major policy issue.

The OFCCP’s rescission notice explained that “the 2020 rule’s departures from Title VII principles and case law are likely to increase rather than decrease confusion about the application of the Executive Order 11246 religious exemption.

“Furthermore, to the extent the 2020 rule reflects the previous administration’s policy judgments regarding deviating from Title VII case law and principles, the present administration has evaluated the range of permissible policy options and determined that a return to its traditional approach of applying Title VII case law and principles will promote clarity and consistency in the application of the exemption.”

The same agency just 11 months ago described the Trump policy now being revised by Biden as being to “ensure that OFCCP respects religious employers’ free exercise rights, protects workers from prohibited discrimination, and defends the values of a pluralistic society … This rule is intended to correct any misperception that religious organizations are disfavored in government contracting by setting forth appropriate protections for their autonomy to hire employees who will further their religious missions, thereby providing clarity that may expand the eligible pool of federal contractors and subcontractors.”

An estimated one-quarter of all employers in the United States receive federal contracts or are sub-contractors on such agreements between the government and private businesses.

Comments on the Biden proposal are open until Dec. 9, 2021, and may submitted at http://www.regulations.gov.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/religious-freedom-groups-oppose-biden-proposal-to-rescind-trump-era-exemption_4095038.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

America has had it and the cracks in the veneer are showing. The expression of our outrage is heard in the chants of “Let’s Go Brandon!” at public events, seen among parents pushing back on radical educational agendas which insert trans ideology into curriculum in places like the Loudoun County school district where a trans identified male student sexually assaulted two young girls, and most recently, is explicit in the defense of Dave Chappelle by comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan of Chappelle’s latest Netflix special, “The Closer” after transactivists joined Netflix employees demanding Netflix pull his comedy special.

What do, “Let’s go Brandon!” and Dave Chappelle have in common? The catchphrase and the comedian have become targets by radical activists who seek to silence opposition, demonize detractors, and sideline anyone who threatens their radical agendas. People are done being pushed around and bullied into sitting down and shutting up.

As Gary Powell says in my latest film, “Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?”, “One thing that is particularly striking is that as soon as anybody expresses any kind of mild criticism of extreme gender ideology or any type of considered criticism or raises any doubts, they are denigrated as transphobes and as haters.”

That is what is happening today. Parents are being labeled as domestic terrorists and Dave Chappelle is being labeled as a transphobe and charged with hate speech. Fortunately, freedom of speech is a two-way street, and main street has had enough.

Signs of hope? I see plenty. Joe Rogan immediately threw his support to Chappelle, saying, “He’s not a homophobic or transphobic person. He makes fun of himself. Look, it’s fun. It’s just making jokes. That doesn’t mean hate.”

Other high-profile celebrities have voiced their support too. Piers Morgan expressed how refreshing it was that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos didn’t cave to the activists request to cancel “The Closer” and even trans-female identified Caitlyn Jenner, said on twitter, “Dave Chappelle is 100 percent right.”

“This isn’t about the LGBTQ movement,” Jenner said. “It’s about woke cancel culture run amok, trying to silence free speech. We must never yield or bow to those who wish to stop us from speaking our minds.”

Not only are people with influence coming to the defense of free speech, biological reality, and even comedy, but the public is also weighing in with their support and their wallets. Most recently, Chappelle, joined by his pal Joe Rogan, played to a sold-out audience in New Orleans, telling the audience, “In the middle of me being canceled, we broke the attendance record.”

Jennifer Bilek said it best, writing, “Chappelle has given everyone permission to say the unsayable, and they are saying it, and they are laughing. They are laughing because this agenda is comedy gold, and no one has been tapping it, for fear of the very ridicule some are slinging at Chappelle. This time it isn’t sticking, and Chappelle has doubled down. He is not only too big to cancel, he understands the subtext and has called it out.”

As Chappelle says in “The Closer,” “All this talk about how people feel inside. Since when has America given [expletive deleted] about how any of us feel inside? And I cannot shake the suspicion that the only reason everybody is talking about transgenders is because white men want to do it. . . .No one asked you how you felt. Come on everybody, we have strawberries to pick. It reeks of white privilege. You never asked yourself why it is easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than it was for Cassius Clay to change his [expletive deleted] name?”

President Biden campaigned and promised in his first 100 days in office, he’d pass the “Equality Act,” but signed an Executive Order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” on day one of his presidency. The Equality Act seeks to obliterate biological realities, allowing anyone to self-identify into whatever sex they wish to be, and force the rest of us to just go along and be polite lest we be called haters and transphobes. But people aren’t having it. Let’s Go Brandon! Let’s Go Joe! And Let’s Go Dave!

https://www.theepochtimes.com/has-america-had-enough-of-radical-transgender-ideology_4089154.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

New allegations come to light after explosive bathroom rape case

Virginia’s Loudoun County school district is being rocked by sexual misconduct allegations, with three cases surfacing in recent days.

Loudoun County police on Thursday charged high school counselor Ann Barrett, who allegedly had an inappropriate relationship with an underage student from 2013 to 2015. Loudoun County Public Schools placed Barrett on leave in May after the case surfaced. The counselor turned herself in and was later released on bond.

Police are also investigating a boy at Harmony Middle School who allegedly groped male classmates last week in a hallway.

And on Tuesday, the Daily Mail reported that the 15-year-old “gender-fluid” high schooler who last month was found guilty of raping a classmate in a school bathroom sent nude photos of himself to a girl when he was in the fifth grade. The girl’s parents decided not to seek charges against the boy as long as the school district separated him from their daughter.

Sex crimes in Loudoun County Public Schools gained national attention last month when the Daily Wire reported on that 15-year-old’s two sexual assault cases. In May, the student raped a female peer in a bathroom. District superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed he was not aware of any sexual assault allegations during a June school board meeting, but internal emails showed that he knew of the rape the day it occurred. The perpetrator was transferred to another district high school while investigators processed DNA evidence against him. Last month, he allegedly sexually assaulted another student in a classroom at that high school.

Sexual assaults and other incidents in schools have driven concerns among parents that their children’s safety is being jeopardized by school officials who play politics, Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Free Beacon.

“I think there’s a real sense among parents right now that districts are neglecting basic things like student safety in favor of advancing a political agenda,” Neily said. “And you don’t have to have a letter by your name to be upset by that. It’s a really bad look for people, and voters are unhappy.”

Education issues turned out Virginia voters for Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who on Tuesday defeated Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin campaigned on greater parental involvement in public education, and McAuliffe tumbled in the polls late in the race after a gaffe during a debate in which he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The Republican won by a 2-point margin, just one year after President Joe Biden took the state by 10 points.

Students from at least 20 Loudoun County high schools staged a walkout last week to protest the district’s handling of sexual assault cases. More than 2,500 students participated, the Washington Post reported, and some students in nearby Arlington Public Schools participated in solidarity.

Neily said it should not be the responsibility of students to hold school officials accountable for their safety.

“It shouldn’t be incumbent on students to flag this,” Neily said. “What are the priorities of the Loudoun County School Board? What are you spending your time and finite resources on? Because if it’s not keeping children safe, people need to be held accountable.”

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/sex-crime-allegations-rock-loudoun-county-schools/

Speaking at a Loudoun County Public Schools Board Meeting, a mother claimed, in a now-viral video, that her young daughter “somberly” asked her whether “she was born evil because she was a white person.”

The mother, whose identity is not clear, claimed in a one-minute speech: “My children now are in private school and are thriving. We had specifically moved into LCPS district because of its great reputation, yet we’ve been chased out of LCPS due to the swift and uncompromising political agenda of Superintendents Williams, Ziegler and the school board that have forced upon us. First it was in early Spring of 2020 when my six-year-old somberly came to me and asked me if she was born evil because she was a white person, something she learned in a history lesson at school.”

She added, “I wish I could return my kids to LCPS; private school’s expensive and I want my kids to be able to walk home from schools with their friends in their own community. I refuse to allow you to destroy our schools. They are not your schools; they are our schools. You all should be ashamed and you should have the moral courage to admit you are wrong and step down.”

The next speaker stated that she was concerned about her 14-year-old daughter, who would be “walking the halls of Broad Run High School, and unfortunately I don’t trust you with her care.” After referencing the case of the male student accused of sexually assaulting a female student at a Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, she added, “I couldn’t but help notice the rules for this meeting; which state there will be no public access to bathrooms or other facilities inside the LCPS administrative offices. I guess you wanted to make absolutely certain that your restrooms were safe. Resign or be removed.”

Last week, a Virginia court ruled there was enough evidence to find that the teen accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student in a Loudoun County high school bathroom in May “engaged in non-consensual sex.” The Daily Wire reported on October 25:

The teen who appeared in court on Monday is standing trial on two separate cases: one involving a female student at Stone Bridge High School and a different incident in a classroom at Broad Run High School, both in the Loudoun County school district. The teen, who reportedly identifies as “gender fluid” is alleged to have assaulted Scott Smith’s daughter in a girl’s restroom at Stone Bridge while wearing a skirt. Despite indications that he had committed a serious crime, the boy was transferred.

A father of four young daughters spoke later saying, “Your policies are contributing to creating an unsafe environment in the schools. I do not want boys in my daughters’ bathrooms; I do not want boys on my daughters’ sports teams. How can I as a father, trust you as a superintendent and you as a school board to keep my daughter safe at school? Why would I want to entrust you with all of our daughters once they become school age? The answer is I can’t.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-mom-to-school-board-my-6-year-old-daughter-asked-me-if-she-was-born-evil-because-she-was-a-white-person?itm_source=parsely-api&utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email

As of this writing, the school board associations of at least 11 states have withdrawn from the National School Boards Association.

I hope the number will rise to 50.

As many readers will know, the NSBA, a left-wing lobbying group, made headlines a couple of weeks ago.

Merrick Garland, attorney general of the United States, cited a letter from the group to the White House complaining about parents who had the temerity to vigorously criticize their local school boards for attempting to insinuate the Marxist teachings of “critical race theory” into schools, foisting virtue-signaling mask mandates on students, and injecting noisome gender-identity politics into primary and secondary schools.

The vocal criticism of those parents, the NSBA letter said, was “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

In response, Garland quickly issued a memorandum instructing the FBI and other DOJ entities to create a “Partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”

What threats?

The NSBA cites a score of incidents, but almost all involve nothing more than parents loudly criticizing members of their school board. A good example is this splendid performance by a parent called Simon Campbell, a Brit who understands the American Constitution much better than many Americans.

One example where there was violence involved Scott Smith, who was tackled by police, arrested, and found guilty of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Smith claimed that his daughter had been raped by a “gender fluid” boy who entered the girl’s bathroom wearing a skirt.

At first the school denied that anything happened.

We now know that Smith was right and that the boy in question not only raped his daughter but then, having been quietly sent to another school, went on to sexually assault another girl.

The NSBA, panicked by the criticism and defections, issued an apology.

They didn’t really think “or at least they are no longer prepared to say” that parents who criticize school board members are “domestic terrorists” who are guilty of “hate crimes.”

But I suspect that this effort at damage control will fail. It is too little, too late.

Garland’s breathtaking memorandum was subject to instant and scathing criticism.

And remember, Merrick Garland was supposed to be a “moderate.”

When Barack Obama toward the end of his second term proposed him for the Supreme Court (for the seat that eventually went to Neil Gorsuch), even many conservatives rallied round to tout his credentials, talents, and impartiality.

It turns out that the Republicans who kept him off the Court were right: he was a left-winger masquerading as a moderate.

We got to witness exactly what sort of partisan operative he is during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s sometimes blistering cross examination of Garland last week.

Especially noteworthy were the exchanges between Garland and Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton.

Among other things, Senator Cruz pushed the Attorney General on the interesting fact that his son-in-law is the founder and president of Panorama, a multimillion-dollar company that sells critical race theory and related ESG (environmental, social, and governance) materials to schools around the country.

Was Garland’s son-in-law, Senator Cruz wondered, likely to be enriched by more schools hopping on the critical race theory bandwagon, a predictable result of the Department of Justice’s threat to sic the FBI on parents who objected to the prospect of their children being indoctrinated.

All concluded their remarks calling on him to resign.

Tom Cotton found a silver lining, “Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court.”

Far from repudiating his memorandum, the Attorney General repeatedly reaffirmed it. He himself worked on it. He said, “It reflects my view. I stand behind it.”

Which leaves us where?

I very much doubt that Merrick Garland will resign, at least not until Republicans retake the House and the Senate in fifteen months.

In the meantime, we are left with an Attorney General who is happy to mobilize the police power of the state to quash dissent.

Sure, he says he is in favor of the First Amendment, and he repeatedly stressed that he was only trying to protect school officials against violence.

But the “violence” at school boards is parents yelling ridicule at the board members, behavior they are entitled to engage in.

The journalist Chris Bray put his finger on our predicament in a thoughtful article at his substack about (in part) what is happening at school boards.

“The trap in our own moment,” he writes, “is that, first, governments have in many cases entirely stopped listening, as officials signal with growing clarity that they regard all grievances to their right as inherently without merit.”

Bray continues: “You express a grievance, and the school board orders the police to clear the room (and the police, incredibly, always do). But, second, resistance is coded as domestic terrorism at the first sign of raised voices, even if Merrick Garland pretends to be coy about the maneuver.”

Bottom line: “If you don’t resist, you won’t be heard; if you do resist, you’re a terrorist and a criminal and FBI SEARCH WARRANT—GET ON THE GROUND.”

You can ask Mr. Smith about how that works.

Bray concluded: “The game is that everyone takes their turn and then, whatever moves any players make, you lose.”

Maybe there is a silver lining here, too.

Despite the best efforts of the regime media to bury stories like the Attorney General’s police state memorandum, the word is getting out and people are angry and getting angrier.

The Obama administration was able to paint the Tea Party as a bunch of Bible-thumping rednecks and “deplorables.”

In fact, the vast majority were ordinary citizens: business men and women, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, doctors, even some teachers and lawyers.

But the campaign of vilification worked. The Tea Party was declawed, rendered irrelevant.

The strategy backfired, though, because those millions of people did not go way. They voted en masse for Donald Trump in 2016.

That is something that the agents of the administrative state might wish to keep in mind.

With every passing day, legitimacy drains from the Biden administration.

Terry McAuliffe will lose the Virginia Governor’s race on Tuesday.

Republicans will retake the House and the Senate in 2022.

You know what will happen in 2024.

It won’t necessarily be Trump, but it might be.

And if it isn’t it will be someone equally obnoxious to the Left.

Hold on, it is going to be a wild ride.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/garland-attempts-to-silence-opponents-but-they-will-vote_4080672.html

My three boys were in Virginia public schools from the beginning of their education. But no more. At the end of last year, after seeing exactly what was being taught and how little my schools prioritized education, I pulled them out. It is a sacrifice: I now have to pay tuition for my two younger children and am homeschooling my oldest child. It’s worth it.

More and more, parents are waking up to the reality that the public school system is broken. They aren’t just failing to teach kids basic skills; the public schools are misusing the trust that is placed in them. What’s worse, school boards and administrators are pushing political agendas and harming children in the process.

Many citizens still don’t know what’s going on. There is a reason why: Schools lock the public out, and the media supports it. They’ve even colluded with social media mobs to torment parents who try to speak up. Informing the public is an uphill battle.

Consider this: It recently came to light that numerous Virginia high school libraries stock a graphic novel (a genre geared to preteens) that includes extreme and violent sexual content. Parents understandably objected.

But this isn’t a case of parents trying to prevent their child from learning the facts of life or griping about the depiction of routine romantic or sexual situations. This is pornography.

Study: Americans with J&J COVID Vaccine 3.7 Times More Likely to Develop Blood Clots Than Average Person

A parent brought the existence of this book to the attention of the Fairfax County school board and read sections of the book out loud, revealing the obviously inappropriate content. The school board pulled the book from the libraries and is reviewing whether it should continue to be carried.

It’s nice that they have temporarily removed these books, but parents deserve more answers. Who included this book in the library in the first place? Are they reviewing what else is being featured in libraries? Is anyone being held accountable for exercising such poor judgment?

Independent Women’s Voice created an advertisement to raise awareness about this issue, which included images from the book. The ad was rejected as too explicit to run during the 11 p.m. hour on television in Virginia. Think about everything you see on TV and imagine what it takes for a television station to decline to run an ad that late at night.

Parents and citizens should be asking one question: Why are our schools so much less protective about what high school students as young as 14 are exposed to than TV stations catering to adults?

Will more parents start pulling their children from public schools?

This isn’t the only problem with Virginia schools. Students routinely endure race-obsessed classes, are given surveys that ask intimate questions about their sex lives, are treated to absurd lessons that tell them a British accent is a microaggression and form of racism, and are forced to watch misleading videos about Christopher Columbus in anticipation of “Indigenous People’s Day.”

Many parents woke up to the fact that something is very wrong with our schools last year when classes went virtual. Parents logged their kids into class and were surprised by what was being taught. As private schools quickly and safely resumed in-person learning, the public schools remained closed for most of the year.

We now know that our kids suffered tremendous learning losses during virtual learning, as well as from mental health issues due to the isolation and long hours spent staring at screens.

Since in-person classes resumed, safety has arisen as a major concern. For example, Loudoun County parents just found that school officials failed to report a violent sexual assault that occurred in a school bathroom, and that the student assailant was placed in another Virginia public school and went on to attack another girl.

Why was this student back in school just a few months after this first attack? Why weren’t parents alerted of the first attack? How many other incidents have Loudoun County school officials failed to report? Disturbing footage of violence in other schools has also been posted on social media. Are Virginia schools committed to actually providing students with a safe environment, even if it is at odds with their political narratives?

Young Not Stupid: While McAuliffe Brought in Dem Heavyweights, Youngkin Unleashed Ingenious Secret Weapon

Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAulliffe recently said he doesn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” and as governor, he actually vetoed a bill that would have required schools to give parents more information about sexually explicit content covered in schools. Now administration officials in Washington are seeking to label concerned parents domestic terrorists.

What’s going on here? Why is the left demonizing parents and suggesting that we somehow aren’t supposed to be our children’s chief advocate responsible for ensuring that they grow to be healthy and responsible adults?

Public school officials need to remember that they work for parents and that their top priority should be to provide kids a safe environment in which to learn. That’s not happening in Virginia schools. Until that happens, parents will continue to do as I did — pull their children out of the public schools. And it will be worth it.

Way back in 1967, in that brief window of time between the media’s notice of the sexual revolution and its dawning awareness of second wave feminism, Hollywood made a movie called “A Guide for the Married Man,” which celebrated the joys of (male) adultery. Nowadays Tinseltown may practice it but doesn’t (usually) preach it; then it did both.

In one segment the mentor of a prospective adulterer answers the question of what to do if you are caught in the act by your wife by saying: “Deny, deny, deny.” There follows a vignette in which a man so caught does just that—until his partner in sin gets up, dresses and leaves.

“What woman?” says the husband.

“The one who just left,” says the wife.

“When?” says the husband.

“But, Charlie …” says the wife.

“What?”

“Aren’t you even ashamed of yourself?”

“Why?”

“Because of … Charlie?”

“What?”

“What would you like for dinner?”

Deplorable as the whole idea of such a movie is, there is a deep wisdom in this scene, which is this: when it ceases to be possible to catch someone in a lie, it also becomes impossible for that person to lie.

So long as the liar, like Charlie, holds the whip hand and therefore is powerful enough that it is impossible for anyone else to require him to admit to his lie, it’s not a lie.

The principle is basically the same as that expressed by the 16th century poet Sir John Harington:

“Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?

“For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

I tried to make a similar point, as you may remember, two weeks ago in this space, when I wrote that a lie that everybody knows to be a lie is no longer a lie but a kind of functional truth, since our knowledge that it’s a lie can reveal to us the truth.

It’s at that point, anyway, where those of us without the power to force an admission of lying can only shrug our shoulders and say of the liar, “Well, I guess he’s only expressing his truth.”

The examples I gave in that earlier column were taken from the collected works of President Joe Biden—most egregiously the obvious lies that the American evacuation of Afghanistan was “an extraordinary success” and that a $3.5 trillion spending bill would actually cost “zero.”

Of course, the power of the president to lie with impunity is not a constitutional one but is conferred upon him by the media, whose own greatest power is the power to ignore.

Applied to presidential lying, this power to ignore and therefore not to expose the lies means that, even if everybody knows they are lies, they can continue to function as truth—the president’s truth.

Despotisms have always functioned in this way, but usually through the despot’s direct control of the media. In America today the situation is somewhat different. The media’s power to ignore or to promote as truth the lies of the ostensible autocrat is assumed voluntarily and without constraint or fear of punishment.

Why should that be? I don’t know, but it suggests to me that it is not, under the Biden-style of despotism, the executive which is in control of the media but the media which is in control of the executive.

That would fit, too, with the sense that many of us have that, nasty as the old Joe Biden could be at times, the nastiness of his administration is no more all his own work than anything else that’s happened over the last nine months.

We caught a glimpse this week of how the process of collaboration between the media and Democrats in power to set the administration’s agenda works. The notorious letter from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI, as reported in this space three weeks ago, setting up a task force to investigate as potential “domestic terrorism” any complaints by parents about left-wing curricular or other changes to public schools affecting their children turns out to have been not quite what it seemed at the time.

It was a result of collaboration between Garland and a few left wingers at the National School Boards Association, from which numerous state boards have since dissociated themselves, and was based at least in part on an incident in Loudoun County, Virginia, last June.

Then an aggrieved father, Scott Smith, was tackled by police and arrested at a school board meeting after complaining that his 15-year-old daughter had been raped in a girls’ restroom at Stone Bridge High School by a boy taking advantage of current left-wing orthodoxy to pose as a “transgender” girl.

On that occasion, Scott Ziegler, the Loudoun County school superintendent proclaimed that, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” adding on the authority of Time magazine that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”

This was a lie on both counts. The Daily Wire reported two weeks ago that numerous allegations of sexual assault at the school had not been reported, as state law requires school authorities to do.

That, apparently was why “we don’t have any record” of such assaults. They didn’t trouble themselves to make one.

Then, on Monday, the “transgender” predator was convicted of assaulting not only Smith’s daughter but another girl at another school to which he had been transferred later as a potential embarrassment to Stone Bridge’s transgender restroom policy.

At this writing, Superintendent Ziegler still has his job. Deny, deny, deny certainly seems to have worked for him.

And, although the National Association of School Boards has since repudiated its own letter calling for investigation into “domestic terrorism,” Attorney General Garland still has his FBI task force to investigate it, as he informed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 27.

Joe Biden still has his job too, though now we have a better idea than we did nine months ago what that job is. It’s to cover up left-wing lies by playing the role of doddering old Uncle Joe who doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time anyway. You could call it type-casting.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/political-lies-that-cant-be-refuted_4080255.html

Does your child have issues with gender dysphoria? Are they identifying as a different gender at school and asking teachers to use their preferred pronouns? Do you think this is something you, as their mother or father, should have some control over?

Check your parental privilege, say school administrators in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

In a letter to parents on Oct. 22, the Oshkosh Area School District — saying it was “committed to doing what is best for students and fostering a safe, supportive and inclusive learning environment for all” as well as “partnering with families to support the unique needs of every student” — announced it would no longer ask for parental consent if their child changed their gender pronouns or name in the classroom environment.

“The District recently changed a section of administrative guideline 2260E that required parental consent in order for district staff to use a student’s preferred name or gender pronouns if they differed from the student’s biological sex assigned at birth,” read the letter from Matthew Kaemmerer, the district’s director of pupil services.

“District staff members are no longer required to seek parental consent prior to honoring student requests to be called by their preferred name and/or pronouns.”

Biden Tries to Explain Driving Cross-Country in an Electric Car, It Goes Horribly Wrong

“While we understand that there are varying perspectives related to gender identity, we know that in order to put students first we must acknowledge and support each student’s unique needs,” the letter continued.

“In making this change our goal is to empower students to advocate for themselves, while ensuring that our classrooms and schools are places where all students are able to be their true selves. It is our hope that by providing students with the support they need at school they will be able to have those same conversations at home and with those around them if they haven’t already.”

Three days earlier, Kaemmerer sent a similar letter to district employees regarding the new transgender student policies.

Notice that just went out to all school district employees in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Parents are an afterthought, even for issues as serious as a child changing their gender identity. pic.twitter.com/mPbOc15v2t

— Parents Defending Education (@DefendingEd) October 29, 2021

“That’s something that we’ve reviewed and have found some difficulty with sometimes with staff engaging with students,” OASD superintendent Bryan Davis said, according to WLUK-TV. “We really want to make sure that we’re advocating for our students and with our students.”

Information wasn’t sent to parents until the change was fully implemented — three days after the notice was sent to district employees about the change to the transgender student policy.

“It was sent to the staff and it was not sent to the parents, and I guess I would ask myself, ‘Why would you not inform the parents?’” Oshkosh resident Chad Radtke told WLUK. “That seems like the first thing I would do!”

“It was just another sign that things are going in the wrong direction,” Radtke said. “From my perspective, and it’s hard to see it any other way, almost as if they’re deliberately riling up the parents to see how far they can push things; how many things they can kinda sneak past.”

Oshkosh city councilman Aaron Wojciechowski, however, said not allowing parents prior knowledge or input regarding what their minor children were doing in regard to their gender identity in public schools that their tax dollars pay for was important for the “comfort” and “safety” of their kids.

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“Someone’s identity and their expression is so important to their core values and who they are, and I think this is important because now they have that comfort, that safety that they wouldn’t have otherwise,” Wojciechowski said.

School officials tried to make clear that this didn’t mean they wouldn’t inform parents of their child’s decision to start using different pronouns or changing their gender identity. Not at all, Superintendent Davis told WLUK.

“It’s actually just the opposite of that,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for our kids to feel valued and to open up in conversations and for our staff to be able to validate that, and many students need support in these difficult conversations, being able to engage with their parents and family members.”

Do you support this school district’s decision?

The parents would be told. They just had no say in it anymore, that’s all. See? No big deal! The school would do the right thing and open up conversations with their parents to explain why they shouldn’t have objections anymore.

Erika Sanzi, outreach director for Parents Defending Education, pointed out the hypocrisy of the policy when speaking to the Daily Caller.

“Oshkosh Schools likely require parental consent to give a Tylenol to a student at school. What school officials fail to understand, it seems, is that parental rights do not disappear when parents send their children to school — the very reason the school has authority over the child is because of parental consent,” Sanzi said.

“Concealing information from parents, or worse, deceiving them, is entirely at odds with that delegation of authority.”

Meg Kilgannon of the Family Research Council also noted the acetaminophen paradox.

“Deliberately concealing this information from parents, when those same parents would be consulted over the administration of Tylenol or permission to go on a field trip, is beyond outrageous,” Kilgannon said.

“This one of the many reasons we are seeing sustained pushback at school board meetings across the country.”

And make no mistake: This is is deliberately concealing information from parents. They may or may not eventually be told — the policy was only implemented less than two weeks ago, after all, and we haven’t seen how it will play out — but the assumption is that parental guidance for their child is unwarranted, unnecessary and problematic.

Once the student discloses it to school, the school will be there for “support in these difficult conversations” — and after all, the parents don’t get to have the final say.

These policies are of questionable constitutionality and again raise questions regarding recognizing cases that might constitute rapid-onset gender dysphoria without professional psychological or medical intervention.

More importantly, however, it’s a school board unequivocally saying that parental value judgments about gender identity not only don’t matter, they’re wrong and any decisions regarding them are being taken out of parents’ hands. This is the madness of transgender ideology: The school knows best. It’ll not only teach your kids, it’ll teach you, dear hidebound parent.

Thank heavens they’re around, no?

“General Garland, you have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. Your U.S. attorneys are now collecting and cataloging all the ways that they might prosecute parents … because they want to be involved in their children’s education.”

That’s how Sen. Josh Hawley challenged Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday as Garland testified before a Senate committee regarding the Justice Department’s interest in parents protesting against school boards.

“It’s wrong,” Hawley said. “It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign.”

There may be headaches around the country today for the people who repeatedly facepalmed during Garland’s testimony.

Hawley zeroed in on Garland in front of a large photograph of police arresting Scott Smith, the angry father whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a school restroom in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Former CNN Cameraman Exposed as Alleged Congressional Hitman – ‘I’m Coming for Him’

The Republican senator grilled Garland on a letter from the U.S. attorney for Montana that he said called for the prosecution of parents speaking out against school boards.

The letter followed an Oct. 4 memo from Garland calling upon federal law enforcement officials to develop plans to respond to “threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” That memo had come days after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Joe Biden comparing school board protesters to domestic terrorists.

“Now, you testified last week before the House that you didn’t know anything about [the Smith] case,” Hawley said.

“I find that extraordinary because the [NSBA] letter that you put so much weight on — the letter that’s now been retracted — it cites this case. … There’s a news article cited in the letter. It’s discussed in the letter, but you testified you just couldn’t remember it.”

Do you think Garland should resign?

Hawley had Garland backed into a corner. Either he hadn’t done his due diligence before signing off on the Oct. 4 memo, or he had lied to Congress about being unaware of the Loudoun County incident.

“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” Hawley continued. “Do you think people like Scott Smith — do you think parents who show up to complain about their children being assaulted ought to be treated like this man right here?” Hawley asked, pointing to the picture of Smith being pinned to the floor by police.

Garland countered by saying that parents who show up at school board meetings are protected by the First Amendment.

“Do you think that they ought to be prosecuted in the different ways that your U.S. attorneys are identifying?” Hawley shot back.

Garland answered, “If what they’re doing is complaining about what the school board is doing — policies, curriculum, anything else that they want to — as long as they’re not committing threats of violence, then they should not be prosecuted, and they can’t be.”

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But Hawley said some of his Democratic colleagues at the hearing had repeatedly compared parents protesting at school board meetings to “criminal rioters,” a charge Garland denied.

“Oh, really?” Hawley replied, picking up a piece of paper and apparently reading a quote from it. “‘These people are just like the folks who came here on Jan. 6 and [were involved in] the riot at the Capitol’?”

Garland, perhaps suddenly recalling comments by Democrats, replied, “I don’t think that they were referring to the picture that you’re showing there”

“Well, I certainly would hope not. They were referring to parents who go to school board meetings. Mr. Smith is a parent who went to a school board meeting.

“I’ll leave it at this. General Garland, you have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. Your U.S. attorneys are now collecting and cataloging all the ways that they might prosecute parents like Mr. Smith because they want to be involved in their children’s education and they want to have a say in their elected officials.

“It’s wrong. It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, in the history of this country, and I call on you to resign.”

Despite challenges from Hawley and other Republicans, Garland said Wednesday that he will continue to mobilize federal officials against threats to school boards, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“True threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment. Those are the things we are worried about here. Those are the only things we are worried about here,” Garland said.

“We are not investigating peaceful protests or parent involvement in school board meetings. There is no precedent for doing that and we would never do that. We are only concerned about violence and threats of violence against school administrators, teachers, staff.”

Of course, violence is increasingly becoming whatever leftists say it is (as in the “silence is violence” line from Black Lives Matter).

Hawley is right — Garland should resign.

And here’s a suggestion: Think about sending the video of Hawley grilling Garland to your representative or senator as a primer on what many of us expect of those representing us in Congress.

Thank you, Sen. Hawley.

The parents of a Leon County school student have filed a lawsuit against school officials for violation of parental rights in an effort to stop enforcement of the district’s transgender-affirming “guidance” for their minor-aged daughter that was kept secret from the parents.

The Plan

As reported by The Epoch Times in August, January Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Florida, was horrified to discover that school officials held a secret meeting with her 13-year-old daughter to discuss how the school would accommodate her decision to be acknowledged as non-binary and use an alternate name at school. The plan made it clear to staff that the parents were not “aware and supportive of their child’s gender transition.” Therefore, while the school psychologist/social worker, principal, assistant principal, counselor, student teachers, substitute teachers, and the child’s peer group were allowed to know what was going on, the use of “privacy when speaking to parents” was listed as one of the “considerations” that “must be accounted for in implementing this plan.”

According to the Leon County School District’s Transgender/Gender-Nonconforming Student Support Plan—filled out during a Sept. 8, 2020, private meeting and first obtained by The Epoch Times—a “checklist” was used to record the child’s new non-binary status, “preferred name,” and “preferred pronouns.” The child also determined which bathroom she preferred using and that she would “be comfortable rooming w/either sex” on overnight school trips. This opened the door to having the 13-year-old girl rooming with teenage boys without her parents’ knowledge.

Through the series of emails and meetings between January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, their attorney and Leon County Schools Superintendent Rocky Hanna—which followed the discovery of the secret meeting—Hanna eventually conceded in a May 24, 2021 letter addressed to Mary McAlister—lead counsel for the Littlejohns—that “there was no basis to exclude” the parents from the private meeting. In the letter—also obtained by The Epoch Times—Hanna also said “a revised Q&A specific to the Littlejohn’s concern was provided to the administrators reiterating the directive to promptly contact parents of students who identify as LGBTQ+.” In conversations with the Littlejohns, Hanna further admitted the passage of H.B. 241, the Florida Parents’ Bill of Rights, “changed everything” in this matter.

Leon County Schools Equity Officer Kathleen Rodgers also told The Epoch Times in August that the district was “working to put together a more detailed policy to be more inclusive of the Parent Bill of Rights” and that “a committee” would meet “in the next few weeks to tweak policies and begin the process to present them to the School Board for adoption.”

The Broken Promises

“We have been meeting with the district for over a year and we were holding faith in what the superintendent was telling us,” January Littlejohn told The Epoch Times the day after the lawsuit was filed, “They said ‘you’re absolutely right, you should have been included,’ and ‘from here on out parents will be included.’ We thought that hiring attorneys would let them know we were serious and that passing the Parents’ Bill of Rights and having that signed into law would be enough.”

However, while the Littlejohns believed their July 1 meeting with school officials and their attorney went well—just after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Parents’ Bill of Rights into law—the passage of time found nothing had changed.

While the Littlejohns requested to see the promised revised policy from the Leon County School District, all they found was that the school had pulled the old guide from the internet.

Despite Hanna’s assurance that parents will be included in important decisions being made for their child, it has become very clear that Leon County school officials are maintaining their policy of keeping everything secret.

“That was a huge red flag for me that they weren’t adhering to what was promised at the meeting,” Littlejohn said “and I became very concerned that we were being dragged along and they were not going to make good on their word. So we filed the lawsuit.”

The Lawsuit

According to Littlejohn, school officials continue to insist that they are following school guidelines, which are to protect the privacy of the children. However, their lawyer insists school officials are twisting the definition of the word “privacy” to push their own agenda.

“When we say ‘private,’ these school officials are taking the position of ‘keeping things private from parents,” Vernadette Broyles, president and general counsel at Child & Parental Rights Campaign Inc. in John’s Creek, Georgia, told The Epoch Times. Broyles is one of the attorneys representing the Littlejons in their lawsuit.

“We have no quarrel in protecting children’s privacy from a third party,” Broyles explained. What they do have a problem with is when school officials take the position that the decisions they make that affect the mental health and well-being of someone else’s child—like the decision to identify as something other than their sex, what bathrooms the child will use, and where they sleep on a field trip—should be kept secret from parents.

“Those are profoundly impactful decisions and they’re taking a position of saying they cannot share it with parents,” Broyles asserted “and that is a distortion of the concept of privacy of a child to keep such information from the child’s parents.”

According to Broyles, the individuals named in the complaint filed on Oct. 18 are Hanna and Rodgers. Broyles said the Leon County School Board was also named in the suit because they have reason to believe the board had “some complicity and knowledge of what was going on.”

The complaint alleges that the Defendants “violated Plaintiffs’ fundamental rights by implementing a protocol and training district staff to conceal from parents information regarding their children’s assertion of a discordant gender identity,” and “violated Plaintiffs’ fundamental rights by directing staff to deceive parents by using the children’s birth name and corresponding pronouns in the presence of or communication with the parents while using the children’s new chosen name and pronouns at all other times.”

‘Common Sense Things’

According to Broyles, they are asking for “some very common sense things.” They want the school to formally rescind the old guidance they had on the website, specifically the directives to “intentionally deceive parents by using the child’s given name and pronouns when the parents were around or when speaking to parents” and to “revert to using the assumed identity of the child” once the “parents were out of the way.”

“That is unconscionable,” Broyles said.

They also want a new policy drafted that makes it clear, “whenever a child expresses confusion about their gender identity or their sex that parents would be immediately notified because it is a health issue.”

In addition, “no meetings will be held and no actions will be taken until school staff and/or officials have first spoken to the parents and obtained their permission and their participation in these decisions.” They also demand that “any new policies be implemented through school board notification and voting.”

“That’s a big issue,” Littlejohn noted, explaining that many schools are able to keep parents in the dark about what is going on in their children’s schools by calling these procedures “guidance” rather than “policies.”

“We’re seeing around the country where these kinds of “guidance” are being implemented through back channels, decided somewhere in private conversations and then put in place not through the public school boards, which are accountable to parents and the community,” Littlejohn explained.

Asked if they believe the implementation of “guidance” through “private conversations” suggests there is an intentional violation of Florida’s Sunshine Laws, Broyles said the possibility is obvious.

“We suspect there is but we decided not to focus on that because those types of violations typically have a short statute of limitations and limited remedies,” Broyles explained. “This is a bigger picture. This lawsuit is about protecting the fundamental rights of parents to raise their children without the interference of government officials so we have focused on the guarantees under the Unites States Constitution, the Florida State Constitution, the protections of the Florida Parents’ Bill of Rights, and other Florida statutes.

“This is not just a Florida thing,” Broyles insisted. “This is a national agenda to drive a wedge between parents and their children because somehow public school officials have taken the position and have somehow come to believe that they know better than parents and that children are nothing more than the mere creatures of the state. This case is to establish that children belong to families and that parents are the rightful adults to be making these decisions about what’s in their child’s best interest.

“I want to be very clear about something,” Broyles added, “affirming a child’s discordant gender identity is a significant mental health and medical decision that affects the well-being of children with potentially life-long consequences. To affirm a child’s discordant identity is a treatment decision to a complex mental health issue that schools are not qualified to make. Parents must immediately be involved in such decisions. So this case is about establishing the rightful place of parents to make those decisions and that’s what protects children.”

The Secret Game of ‘Guidance’ Versus ‘Policy’

“This issue of ‘guidance’ versus ‘policy’ is really significant,” Littlejohn reiterated, sharing that she had watched a conference hosted by Equality Florida “that specifically told the schools, administrators, guidance counselors, and all of the attendees to implement guidance, not policy because you don’t have to have any input to do that.”

When they call it “guidance” rather than “policy” Littlejohn said school officials “can effectively train teachers, put on seminars, webinars and implement these procedures without ever having to go through the school board to get public comment.”

“It’s all done very much in secret from parents,” Littlejohn said, explaining how she had found “these same exact LGBTQ non-conforming guides” in many other Florida school districts including Broward, Dade, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Orange, Pasco, Hillsborough, and Alachua.

“And these were just the ones I researched,” Littlejohn noted. “I didn’t have time to research all the counties in Florida yet but it’s very easy to find these guides and it specifically states to keep this information from parents because outing a child to the parents could result in abuse or homelessness.”

Quisha King, the mother whose speech opposing critical race theory before the Duval County School Board went viral, produced a video warning parents that what happened in secret with the Littlejohns could also be happening to their children in Duval County.  In the video, King reads directly from the Duval County Public Schools’ “Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender & Questioning LGBTQ+” Support Guide (pdf), which instructs any teacher or school administrator who is asked about a child’s chosen status by a child’s parent to provide the following “appropriate response”:Based on policy and federal guidelines, I cannot divulge whether your child and I have had any such confidential conversations, as even students are legally afforded rights of privacy.

The guide further instructs that “upon notification of a transgender or gender non-conforming student’s status,” school staff should complete a support plan, just like the one filled out by the Littlejohn’s daughter in secret meeting with school officials, “in collaboration with the student and parent/guardian (if aware) to provide guidance to school staff on how to support the child at school.” The guide also provides a “reminder,” that “a student’s gender identity should never be disclosed without their consent even to a parent or guardian.” As it reads on the booklet cover, this guidance is to be practiced in “every school, every classroom,” with “every student, every day.”

“That’s devotion, honey,” King told The Epoch Times, clarifying that this means it applies to all Duval County children in kindergarten through twelfth grade. “They even have in the guide how to talk to kindergartners about this.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/fYbeqhTYvTA?wmode=transparent&wmode=opaque

“They put this out there under the umbrella of civil rights, privacy, and anti-bullying,” King explained. “But I don’t understand why we have to cater to one specific group. Nobody should be bullied. No one should be harassed. Why do we have to have LGBTQ signs everywhere as if they’re a special group? It should just be ‘we don’t tolerate bullying or harassment of anyone,’ period.”

The ‘Mishandling of This Situation’

“While we seldom comment on pending litigation, we have seen that the district openly acknowledged their mishandling of this situation and apologized for the matter,” Christina Pushaw, press secretary for DeSantis told The Epoch Times.

This is not the first time Leon County has been in the legal hot seat. On Oct. 12, Leon County was slapped with a $3.57 million fine for violation of state law prohibiting vaccine mandates for government employees and for firing 14 who refused to comply. They have until Nov. 5 to pay the penalty.

“The district should take every step necessary to get a firm grip on its school operations and hold accountable all those who permitted this ridiculous situation to occur,” Pushaw stated further. “Governor DeSantis has always stood strong for parents’ rights and will continue fighting to protect parents’ rights to make health and education decisions for their own children.”

“The Leon County School Board has admitted their mishandling of the situation and apologized to the family,” Brett Tubbs from the communications office for Florida Department of Education Director Richard Corcoran, told The Epoch Times, “however we must hold those who permitted this situation to occur accountable. The Leon County School District must take every step necessary to fix this situation. Governor DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) have fought for the rights of parents and will continue to do so when making health and education decisions for their students. FDOE has been extremely clear that elected officials cannot pick and choose what laws they follow and that parents have the right to make personal and private health care and education decisions for their families.”

The Epoch Times reached out twice to Hanna for comment. He did not respond.

The Epoch Times also reached out to Rodgers.

“We do not comment on open litigation,” Chris Petley in the communications office replied.

The Epoch Times also reached out twice to Leon County School Board Chair Georgia “Joy” Bowen (District 5). She did not respond.

For parents who want more information on their rights regarding transgender indoctrination in Florida schools, Broyles suggests: Navigating the Transgender Landscape School Resource Guide.

“A group of four attorneys and three educators created this guide to be an antidote to the propaganda with which activists have flooded our schools,” Broyles said. “It is filled with medically accurate information that was reviewed and endorsed by fourteen medical professionals. ”

“They are really pinning the child against the parent and that’s what was so profound to me,” Littlejohn said. “There was not just one person in the meeting with my daughter but three school officials had her in a room, by herself, completing this guide with her and this is being done, not only in our state but all over America. This is a really significant issue happening that parents are in the dark about. Parents need to find a voice and stand up for parental rights before they’re completely gone.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/florida-parents-file-lawsuit-for-violation-of-parental-rights-to-stop-secret-transgender-affirming-guidance_4061814.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-27-2&mktids=8fad7d3c419cbc705c54928a13445e7d&est=mR7%2FgqUJckBC0Sm04dfAOxjruxWCH97pdvLTENDkU6VHLJS6VjTB%2ByTpwMkHQbrohA%3D%3D

Loudoun County, Virginia, continues to find itself at the center of controversy.

The county’s school board is already in hot water after recent reports revealed its members had seemingly covered up a rape allegation. A boy has since been found guilty of sexually assaulting a female student in one of the school district’s girls’ restrooms. The board falsely said it had no knowledge of such a case before voting in August to allow males to use girls’ restrooms.

Concerned parents say progressive ideas have entered Loudoun County school curricula and are currently being taught to children enrolled in the district. They continue to protest at school board meetings in hopes of pressuring the district to remove the controversial teachings from classrooms.

Now, it appears that parents in Loudoun County are required to sign non-disclosure agreement-style documents in order to see exactly what their children are being taught, including a curriculum called Second Step Programs.

According to documents reportedly obtained by the Daily Caller, parents who wish to review the program must sign a form agreeing not to “broadcast, download, photograph, or record” the curriculum “in any manner whatsoever.”

Bombshell: Judge Makes Swift Ruling in Controversial Loudoun County School Bathroom Sexual Assault Case

Additionally, the district’s agreement with Second Step says the curriculum is “not subject to traditional Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws,” according to the Daily Caller.

The Second Step Programs utilize a teaching style known as social-emotional learning and are promoted by the left-leaning non-profit Committee for Children. According to the organization’s website, SEL is “fundamental to achieving social justice.”

Many of the controversial ideas found in critical race theory and left-wing gender theories appear central to the Committee for Children’s agenda.

Speaking with The Western Journal on Tuesday, James Lindsay — a leading expert on, and critic of, CRT and other far-left academic philosophies — broke down what exactly SEL is.

“Social-Emotional Learning started off trying to help emotionally troubled kids learn to deal with those issues so they could have better educational attainment, and it worked. It’s basically a psychological intervention that can work in the right cases and right circumstances,” Lindsay told The Western Journal via email.

Should school districts be allowed to hide what they’re teaching children?

However, problems with SEL began to arise when organizations like the Committee for Children started utilizing its practices “in uncontrolled, non-therapeutic environments (classrooms) by underqualified teachers without licenses to practice psychology,” Lindsay wrote.

In his view, this should be criminal.

These novel forms of SEL are referred to as “transformative SEL,” Lindsay said.

“These programs mirror the educational programs put in place by Mao in China during the Cultural Revolution and are wholly damaging to children. They’ve also adopted Marxian themes and methods, hence ‘transformative,’ and are used to groom children into Marxian views on sexuality and also Critical Race Theory,” Lindsay wrote.

Teachers Union Pres Backing McAuliffe Promotes Article Claiming Parents Have No Right to ‘Shape’ What Kids Are Taught

Scott Mineo, leader of Loudoun County’s Parents Against Critical Theory group, told the Daily Caller he found the district’s lack of transparency about the SEL program suspicious.

“LCPS is partners with Southern Poverty Law Center, Racial Equity Tools, and Learning for Justice (SPLC), all of which have copyrighted material, however, LCPS freely provides access to these materials,” Mineo wrote in an email to Loudoun County Public Schools.

“Why is there such a double standard when parents want to review Second Step SEL material in its entirety?”

Remember when Kamala Harris was supposed to be so ready to take over the Oval Office that she might as well just set up her desk in there?

It seems like just yesterday Joe Biden and Harris were getting sworn in as the president and the next president — an office formerly known as the vice presidency, which has now been sold as a trainee program for Harris, so she’s fully prepared for whenever Biden finally makes a whirring noise and shuts down.

In fact, Biden touted Harris’ readiness vigorously when he introduced her as his running mate in August of 2020, a not-so-subtle hint for Americans who were worried about Uncle Joe’s continued seaworthiness. “Kamala knows how to govern,” he said, according to a Rev.com transcript. “She knows how to make the hard calls. She’s ready to do this job on day one, and we’re both ready to get to work, rebuilding this nation and building it better.”

He would, on other occasions, make it clear he was talking about Harris being ready for the presidency on day one — meaning she was just as ready for the job as he was. (Not that this was a particularly reassuring promise, but Joe sure thought it was.)

According to Joe, he says Kamala is ready to be President on day 1. Which tells me, if he won, he would transfer his power to her on day 1. pic.twitter.com/xJXWVTo9ia

— Litlrox (@Litlrox) October 9, 2020

‘Identifiable Harm’: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

The numbers don’t lie, however. The Los Angeles Times recently compiled a trove of information regarding Vice President Harris’ calendar, and the U.K. Daily Mail went through it. Not only is Harris drifting further apart from President Biden, the data show she’s missed 206 presidential daily briefs in person since the Biden-Harris administration took over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

In January, Biden made it clear Harris was to be included in these meetings. Biden is “returning to the practice of having his vice president join for the briefing when they’re both in Washington,” officials said, according to NBC News. A vice presidential aid further commented, saying Harris had attended Oval Office briefings Biden’s first week as president, “and that is the plan going forward.”

Of the 275 presidential daily briefs — many of which were in person — between Jan. 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration, and Oct. 22, the last day the Los Angeles Times published her calendar data, Harris only attended 69.

Is Kamala Harris ready to be president?

And let’s be clear: The presidential daily brief isn’t just the Oval Office’s version of that endless morning meeting where Paul can’t stop talking about the grandchildren while he updates everyone on project progress and Anna makes sure to remind everyone to CC her on the expense reports.

As the Intelligence Community’s website notes: “The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) is a daily summary of high-level, all-source information and analysis on national security issues produced for the president and key cabinet members and advisers.”

The daily brief “has been presented in some form to the president since 1946, when President Harry S. Truman received the Daily Summary. Over the years, the PDB has evolved to meet the needs and preferences of each president and has expanded to include more information.”

Harris’ attendance at the presidential daily briefs has also been slipping as time has gone on.

In February, she attended 15 and in March, 17. As of Oct. 22, she’d only attended two this month. In September, she attended five, and in August, Harris appeared at just two. All in all, 39 of the 69 briefings she attended were in the first three months of the administration.

White House Divorce? Biden, Harris Staged Only 2 Events Together in the Last 55 Days

To a certain extent, this mirrors the increased political distancing between Biden and Harris as the first year of the new administration has moved into autumn.

In February, for instance, Harris did 18 open press events with the president. That fell to just one in September and one in October. (In September, she appeared with the president for the commemoration of September 11; in October, it was for the anniversary of the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.)

A former Harris adviser says the president and vice president still don’t fully trust each other and Harris isn’t happy that “she hasn’t been given any all-star portfolio” assignments, according to the Daily Mail.

The White House disputed the claims to the Daily Mail, arguing the schedule didn’t tell the full story: “The vice president keeps a busy schedule doing the work of the administration and always in support of the president,” said Harris spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.

“Sometimes those events are together, other times apart, sometimes she is on the road amplifying the agenda of the administration and highlighting the importance of Build Back Better.”

However, this wasn’t the bill of goods the Biden campaign was selling. It’s not even the bill of goods the administration’s been peddling, either.

The White House has made a big deal of calling this the “Biden-Harris administration,” a double-billing no president in memory has applied to itself. They were supposed to be so close they were co-presidents, with Kamala being ready to take over on day one. That was the message.

The reality appears to be quite different, and looking at how often she attends the president’s daily brief there is one question to ask: Feeling confident, America?

A 15-year-old boy at the center of a controversy surrounding transgender school bathroom accommodations in Loudoun County, Virginia, was found guilty on Monday of sexually assaulting a girl in the girls’ bathroom in May — a decision sure to bring new attention to the hot-button topic.

“I found the facts sufficient to support the charges,” ruled Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court Chief Judge Pamela Brooks after a two-hour hearing, according to WTOP-TV. The teen had been charged with one felony count of forcible sodomy and one felony count of forcible fellatio.

In court, the victim said the two were “just friends,” but that she had “hooked up with him” — engaged in sexual acts — two times in the weeks before the attack took place.

On May 28, the boy — then 14 — texted the victim, asking her to meet him in the girls’ bathroom. The Washington Post reported she told the court that when she got there, he threw her to the floor and forced himself upon her.

She would report the assault to the school and was questioned by investigators from the sheriff’s office the same day. However, the defense tried to argue the encounter was consensual and noted the girl hadn’t told investigators about her two previous encounters with the boy.

‘Identifiable Harm’: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

However, the victim maintained she “never” gave permission or consent for the May 28 encounter.

“He flipped me over,” the victim told the court, according to the Post. “I was on the ground and couldn’t move and he sexually assaulted me.”

The incident ignited a firestorm over transgender policy after the father of the girl who was assaulted, Scott Smith, was arrested at a June 22 Loudoun County School Board meeting after progressive activist called his daughter a liar, according to a report last month by the Daily Wire. Smith had said the boy in the case identified as “gender fluid” and was wearing a skirt at the time of the attack.

After a shouting match ensued, a deputy grabbed Smith’s shoulder. When Smith pulled away, a tussle began and the father was arrested. Loudoun County lead prosecutor Buta Biberaj — who also assisted the prosecutor in the sexual assault case involving Smith’s daughter — was seeking jail time for Smith over a disorderly conduct misdemeanor charge stemming from the meeting.

Are transgender policies making schools more dangerous?

While that’s a controversy in its own right, the case became a flash point over new Virginia Department of Education transgender policies that require, among other things, that “Access to facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to a student’s gender identity shall be available to all students.”

“All students are entitled to have access to restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities that are sanitary, safe, and adequate, so that they can comfortably and fully engage in their school programs and activities. Schools frequently maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms or other facilities for males and females,” the policy reads.

“Students should be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their consistently asserted gender identity. While some transgender students will want that access, others may want alternatives that afford more privacy. Taking into account existing school facilities, administrators should take steps to designate gender-inclusive or single-user restrooms commensurate with the size of the school.”

Loudoun County had adopted a similar policy, although it wasn’t in place at the time of the May 28 assault. A statement from the family, however, noted that the district had “formalized the policy regarding restroom use that was easily exploitable by a potential sexual assailant,” according to WUSA-TV.

While the Smiths say the perpetrator of the rape defined himself as gender-fluid, mainstream media accounts didn’t confirm this and referred to the defendant as male. However, the Post’s report confirmed the boy was wearing a skirt at the time of the assault.

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“The defendant did not testify during the trial, but prosecutors played interviews he gave detectives investigating the case during which he acknowledged ‘messing up’ and said he did not intend to perform one sex act with the victim and said he stopped once he realized he was hurting the girl,” they reported.

“The defendant initially told detectives the second sexual act did not occur, but later said it may have happened briefly and accidentally when a knee-length skirt he was wearing got caught on his watch as the pair were fumbling around in the bathroom stall.”

The controversies don’t end there. The boy, now 15, is accused of allegedly assaulting a girl in a different school on Oct. 6, where he was being electronically monitored. A hearing to determine the boy’s guilt or innocence in that case is scheduled for Nov. 15, WTOP reported.

It later emerged the superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools had been notified of the first attack on the day it happened.

According to an Oct. 15 WTOP report, Scott Ziegler, the superintendent, said that while the school system “complied with our obligations” under Title IX regarding the sexual assault of students, he said the district’s processes were “insufficient.”

Bill Stanley, a Republican state senator and an attorney for the Smith family, hailed the court’s judgment in a statement.

“We are greatly relieved that justice was served today,” he said, according to WTOP. “No one should have to endure what this family has endured, and now their focus is completely upon their daughter’s health and safety as she progresses forward with her life.”

The family, which is suing the school district, said in a statement they “stand stronger than ever in moving forward to ensure that those responsible in the Loudoun County School system are held accountable, so that this may never happen again to anyone else’s child.”

And yet, so many facts about this case indicate it very well might. Neither the Virginia Department of Education nor Loudoun County Public Schools appear willing to take a second look at their transgender bathroom policies.

If another culturally and politically inconvenient attack, they’re likely to be just as loath to learn from it. Parents who vent their anger at school board meetings will arguably be treated with greater venom than Smith.

The verdict may bring justice. Wisdom, however, remains a long way off.

Not exactly America’s priority.

The White House has released a fact sheet detailing their National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality as part of the ‘Gender Strategy Report’. The document comes as part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, and is broken down into ten interconnected priorities.

The report comes during a time of multiple national crises as supply chain failures are forcing the price of goods to soar, disproportionately impacting women and children. Coupled with the ignorance and downplaying of inflation, it would appear that the White House is leaning on the prevarication of buzz-word friendly rhetoric, instead of focusing on issues that are drastically altering the lives of all Americans.

Their areas of “intersectional” focus include:

1. economic security;
2. gender-based violence;
3. health;
4. education;
5. justice and immigration;
6. human rights and equality under the law
7. security and humanitarian relief
8. climate change
9. science and technology; and
10. democracy, participation, and leadership.  

Despite the term “human trafficking” being mentioned twenty-one (21) times in the report, the term “border” only receives two mentions.

Reports found 125,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the southern U.S. border since President Joe Biden took office in January, the highest number since records began. There are still no official plans for Biden to visit the U.S. southern border, or do anything to mitigate the vast numbers of women and children being trafficked into the country for slave- and sexual-labor purposes.

Many priorities in the Gender Strategy Report fall in harsh opposition to laws in Democratic-run states like California.

CA state leadership classifies domestic violence, rape of an unconscious or drugged person, and various other assaults against women as “non-violent.” Under Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 57 in California, individuals who have committed such acts are eligible for early release. New offenders are to receive relaxed sentences, with many unable to be arrested or tried for such crimes in the state.

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The White House has not commented on whether their gender manifesto will override the rulings of California’s legislature.

Kay Smythe contributed to this report.

A Virginia judge on Monday found a teenage boy guilty of sexually assaulting a schoolmate.

The crime took place at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn on May 28.

The boy, 15, was convicted on one count of forcible sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio, both felonies, local media reported.

“I found the facts sufficient to support the charges,” Pamela Brooks, the chief judge of the county’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, said during the hearing, according to WTOP.

The victim said she and the boy had consensual sexual encounters before the assault but that she did not consent to what he did in May.

A defense attorney for the boy tried arguing that his client reasonably believed he had permission because of the previous encounters.

Neither the girl nor the boy are being named because they are juveniles.

Sentencing was put off until another case is adjudicated involving the male. He was charged with sexually assaulting another student at Broad Run High School, authorities have said. That assault took place on Oct. 6.

Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to Stone Bridge at approximately 1:30 p.m. on May 28, according to dispatch notes obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Officers were briefed by an assistant principal that a student alleged they were “possibly raped or touched unwanted by another student” a couple of hours prior. The family of the victim was notified.

An FBI agent with the bureau’s Washington Field Office later that day called the sheriff’s office and inquired about the incident, according to the notes. The agent was advised that a sexual assault investigation was taking place. He said the incident would not require the FBI’s help.

The investigation led to the arrest of the male on July 8 and the case was turned over to the Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, which helped prosecute the boy.

The Broad Run incident involved a male student sexually assaulting a female student, according to dispatch notes obtained by The Epoch Times.

The sheriff’s office said no 911 calls were made and declined to provide body camera footage, citing state law. It also declined to immediately provide records on all reported sexual assaults at Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) dating back to Jan. 1, 2018.

LCPS failed to follow state law in reporting several sexual assaults from its schools to state authorities, Superintendent Scott Ziegler said earlier this month. He also recanted his claim that no sexual assaults had taken place in school bathrooms.

Ziegler made the claim during a school board meeting on a pro-transgender policy that lets students who claim to be a different gender than their biological sex use different bathrooms. The school board later approved the policy proposal.

LCPS did not respond to a request for comment on the guilty verdict.

Bill Stanley of the Stanley Law Group, who is representing the family of the victim, said in a statement that “We are relieved that justice was served today for the Smith’s daughter.”

“No one should have to endure what this family has endured, and now their focus is completely upon their daughter’s health and safety as she progresses forward with her life,” he said, adding that the family “stands stronger than ever in moving forward to ensure that those responsible in the Loudoun County School system are held accountable, so that this may never happen again to anyone else’s child.”

Scott Smith, a county resident, identified himself in early October as the father of the victim.

The family has filed a lawsuit against LCPS for allegedly violating Title IX in its handling of the case.

LCPS has told The Epoch Times that it couldn’t investigate what happened until law enforcement concluded its investigation, and that it was cooperating with the sheriff’s office and other authorities. It also said it was barred from disciplining any students without following the grievance process outlined in Title IX.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/judge-finds-teenager-guilty-in-loudoun-county-bathroom-assault_4069308.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-26-1&mktids=d65951cacdfebbe1f51163e3e9d61d95&est=OBEDBc%2F%2BAsXF4ND5IUh0qpccNzUnV6d7vaK5NHLTC%2FChu4B1PEhzLgtjzCfQAAEu8w%3D%3D

Law excusing school officials from reporting crimes becomes political liability ahead of elections

A law passed by Virginia Democrats last year that exempts public school officials from reporting certain sexual crimes to the police has become a political liability ahead of November’s statewide elections.

In the wake of two high-profile sexual assault cases in Loudoun County Public Schools, one concerning an alleged rape in a high school bathroom, Republican candidates are hammering Democratic incumbents, including Gov. Ralph Northam, for passing and signing House Bill 257. The law excuses school officials from reporting instances of sexual battery and other violent offenses that do not meet the threshold of a felony to the police.

Republican Nick Clemente is running to unseat Democratic state delegate Wendy Gooditis, who cast the tie-breaking vote on House Bill 257. Clemente called Gooditis’s vote “reckless” and said he hoped voters will hold Democrats responsible for fostering an unsafe school environment.

“While the attacks that occurred in Loudoun County Public Schools were felonies that still required reporting, Gooditis’s reckless vote sent a message to victims that their being groped, molested, or abused isn’t as important as it was a couple years ago and tells potential predators that consequences have diminished,” Clemente told the Washington Free Beacon. “They are trying to deny, deflect, and hide from this dangerous bill, but voters are intelligent and will hold them accountable.”

Education-related issues, from pandemic school closures to progressive racial and gender ideology in the classroom, became a top priority for candidates this election cycle. The rape and assault cases in Loudoun County further ignited Republican candidates just weeks before the November elections, where they hope to take back control of the Virginia General Assembly and governorship.

Mike Mullin, the bill’s sponsor, and six of his Democratic colleagues who cosponsored the bill did not respond to requests for comment regarding the law and the cases in Loudoun County schools.

Jordan Gray, a Republican who’s running against Mullin, called on the delegate to resign in a statement on Oct. 20.

“As a teacher, I’m shocked and horrified by the news coming from the Loudoun County school system. This form of abuse must not go unchecked, which is why I am calling on Delegate Mullin’s resignation for his sponsorship of H.B. 257,” Gray said. “He must answer for his failures and resign immediately.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin called for an investigation into the Loudoun County school board. At a rally on Tuesday, Youngkin also blamed Virginia’s Democratic attorney general Mark Herring for failing to launch his own investigation into the district.

House Bill 257 was thrown back into the spotlight after the Daily Wire broke the story on the Loudoun County assaults on Oct. 11. The Daily Wire initially reported that officials at Stone Bridge High School, where the first victim was allegedly raped, called police not to investigate the allegations but to handle the alleged victim’s father, who made a scene at the school.

Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office records reported by Jesse Singal, however, revealed that the police were initially dispatched to investigate the assault. Those reports align with district superintendent Scott Ziegler’s email to school board members on the day of the assault, which noted that the school called for additional officers after the victim’s father “caused a disruption by using threatening and profane language.”

The father was arrested during a school board meeting in June after speaking out against the district’s transgender bathroom policies. Those policies were approved in August.

The boy accused of rape was arrested in July, according to NBC 4 Washington, but was released while investigators processed a DNA rape kit. He was transferred to Broad Run High School, where he allegedly sexually assaulted another student in a classroom. In a statement to the Free Beacon, Loudoun County school officials said they would not comment further on the case.

Indignation keeps growing over the Loudoun County Public School system’s response to two sexual assaults that have happened in the last six months. Now, many are calling for resignations after discovering the superintendent and school board knew about the initial assault and did very little.

On May 28 a female student claimed that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom, according to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

The police investigated, arrested the boy in July, slapped an ankle monitor on him and told him to go to a different school. But the assault and its details were not made public.

The boy began this school year at different school. Then on Oct. 6, he was arrested again for allegedly assaulting another girl at his new school.

This second assault brought the May 28 incident to public attention. Outrage ensued.

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Two sexual assaults perpetrated by the same student naturally raises the question: What were the school board and superintendent doing to stop this?

The answer is, nothing. What makes this worse is, Superintendent Scott Ziegler knew what happened. It was recently discovered that he even sent an email informing the school board on the day of the first allegation, according to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

ONLY ON WTOP: Loudoun County’s superintendent notified the school board the same day a female student was sexually assaulted at Stone Bridge High School, according to an email obtained by WTOP. https://t.co/Re4vkD7H60

— WTOP (@WTOP) October 22, 2021

“This afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom,” Ziegler wrote on May 28.

Should superintendent Ziegler resign?

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Still, the school board did nothing.

The family of the May 28 victim is now pursuing legal action against the Loudoun County Public School system.

While there is plenty of blame to go around, the root of the problem actually lies with the school’s policy over restroom use.

“All students are entitled to have access to restrooms and locker rooms that are sanitary, safe and adequate, so that they can comfortably and fully engage in their school programs and activities. Students should be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their gender identity,” the policy says.

In the name of “safety” the LCPS allows students to use what restroom they want. Yet, it was in the restroom that a female student’s safety was compromised.

Sick Discovery in Loudoun County ‘Cover-Up’: Boy Who Allegedly Raped Girl in School Bathroom Had History of Sex Assault

The May 28 victim’s family has been clear that they largely blame this policy for the assault their daughter suffered.

“The sexual assault on our daughter and the subsequent sexual assault by the same individual were both predictable and preventable,” a statement from the family read. “Subsequent to the sexual assault on our daughter, Loudoun County Public Schools formalized the policy regarding restroom use that was easily exploitable by a potential sexual assailant. Because of poor planning and misguided policies, Loudoun Schools failed to institute even minimal safeguards to protect students from sexual assaults.”

So, not only did the school board do nothing in reaction to the initial assault, but the policy they passed enabled it.

Yet, Ziegler continues to say that the problem lies in insufficient procedures.

He proposes that there be a change in how the school system and the sheriff’s department act together and communicate “to ensure school discipline and criminal investigations can happen simultaneously … This includes notification from the sheriff’s office to the superintendent and principal when students are charged with serious offenses,” WTOP News reported on Oct. 15.

Sure, the sheriff’s department probably shouldn’t have let the kid simply go back to school. The school should have actually disciplined and expelled the student. But that still would not have fixed the essence of the problem.

The problem is that the school is allowing students to use whatever restroom they want. So if a boy wants to rape a girl, the female restroom is an excellent place to do it.

Can’t go into the female restroom as a straight boy? No problem. Just say you are gender-fluid or in transition. Then the door is wide open — literally.

After the May 28 assault became public due to the Oct. 6 assault, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported that local residents began calling for the resignations of Ziegler and other school board members.

Resignations are certainly in order. Ziegler and board members knowingly put students in danger by letting a sexual assailant in school. But the real problem is the policy.

Removing the superintendent and board members would be like only fixing the symptoms of a disease instead of treating the disease itself. If the cause is not fixed, then easily preventable situations of sexual assault and rape will keep happening.

A century ago, American women fought for the right to participate in our country’s representative democracy alongside men.

Today, American women are fighting for the right to simply be recognized as distinct from men.

Let’s pray that this second movement is as successful as the first.

Two Republican members of Congress found themselves censored on Twitter last week for stating a simple biological fact about Dr. Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender nominee to be confirmed by the Senate to a federal position as President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary and, now, the first openly transgender four-star officer to serve in any of the nation’s uniformed services.

Biden announced last week that Levine had been appointed a four-star admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the United States’ “first-ever female four-star admiral.”

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The Biden administration announces that Rachel Levine, a biological man, is now the “first-ever female four-star admiral” in the public health corps pic.twitter.com/1JIa5Eh0vZ

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) October 19, 2021

As you may have pieced it together by now (and if not, don’t feel bad, it’s sheer confusion all around), Levine is transgender, which means that he — yes, he — is a man, and thus, not the first female anything, much less the first female admiral in the USPHSCC.

Levine lived the first 40 years of his life as a man, and while he has long hair, a preferred pronoun, and, according to Reuters, has undergone “sex reassignment surgery” to convince his body to align with his inner “gender identity.” The legal world, the mainstream media, and contemporary American culture might pretend he’s a woman, but the pesky Y chromosome written into his DNA when he was hand-crafted in his mother’s womb by the creator of the universe certainly indicates otherwise.

Should Americans be able to speak the truth about gender?

So while anyone can agree that, as a man trying to live his life as a woman he certainly qualifies as the first transgender four-star admiral of a branch of the uniformed services that hardly anyone ever thinks about, it is no doubt wildly offensive to all the actual women in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who might qualify for this decorated office that he’s being called the “first-ever female four-star admiral.”

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Banks of Indiana agreed.

Of course, it is dangerous to agree that a man simply cannot be a woman these days, and while Greene and Banks are certainly perfectly accustomed to controversy and censorship, this earned them quick retribution on social media.

Banks’ offending tweet read, “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man,” which The Post Millennial noted, was considered a violation of Twitter’s policy that users may not “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

Banks was suspended from his account, as The Associated Press reported.

Rep. Gaetz Says Hit Man ‘Trying To Kill’ Him: Makes Second Claim That Has Dems Furious

NEW: Twitter has censored @RepJimBanks for calling HHS’ Rachel Levine a man. He will be locked out of his account until he deletes the tweet, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” pic.twitter.com/6wdDqJ36kH

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 23, 2021

A notice under the tweet on Banks’ account reads “This tweet is no longer available.” However, another Twitter post commenting on Levine’s promotion Wednesday remains up, and gets the same point across.

Calling someone that was born and lived as a man for 54 years the first “female” four-star officer is an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day. https://t.co/bHKmJbE6cA

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) October 19, 2021

Greene was smacked for a similar offense, writing, “A dude who lived the first 50 years of his life as a man isn’t the first female anything.”

A dude who lived the first 50 years of his life as a man isn’t the first female anything.

China is laughing at us. pic.twitter.com/aevoytoOHf

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) October 20, 2021

The congresswoman was informed that her tweet “violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Greene has not been suspended. The Post Millennial notes that the tweet remained up due to Twitter’s policy on accounts belonging to public officials.

However, her tweet had sharing restrictions placed on it, as Newsbusters reported. It’s a less severe form of censorship than Banks’ suspension, but it’s censorship nonetheless.

Let’s get down to brass tacks here — these elected members of Congress were censored because gender theory is predicated on a lie, and nothing is more dangerous to a fallacious philosophy than those who speak the truth.

Nothing about the leftists’ philosophy today makes sense. They claim to be the party of women, but they only seem to consider women’s empowerment to be empowering them to do anything men traditionally do — as though the traditional work of making a home and raising a family, one of the most important vocations in the world, is somehow inferior.

They claim to support feminism, but all the efforts over the last century to provide spaces for women in sports have gone completely out the window now that more men who claim to be women want to compete against women.

They claim to care about “equal rights” for all, yet don’t even protect the equal rights of humans in the womb and constantly clamor to force Americans into an intersectional caste system in which dissidents are inferior, second-class citizens.

The refrain of the fictional dictatorial regime in George Orwell’s 1984, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” has never been more representative of the real-life powers that be in today’s twisted world.

I earnestly sympathize with those who struggle with gender dysphoria, and I think it is an egregious failure on the part of society as a whole that these individuals have been weaponized in one of the most bizarre and twisted cultural movements the world has ever known, rather than presented with compassionate care that doesn’t involve dramatic medical alterations of the bodies God gave them.

This isn’t about them — this is about the very nature of truth and the ability to speak it.

It is significantly more dangerous to state a simple fact — “Rachel Levine is not female” — than it is to go along with the lie — that “Rachel Levine is a woman.”

It doesn’t matter if you believe that Levine is made in the image of God and deserving of his most fundamental human rights. If you believe that his most fundamental human rights don’t include the right to be regarded as something he’s not by all other members of society — no matter what their personal convictions are — you’re a thought criminal and must be silenced.

And that, ultimately, is the scariest part. It is one thing for others to dismiss us as bigots — it is quite another to insist we do not have a right to speak this dangerous truth.

Their demand for our silence speaks volumes.

Not long before the pandemic, the Irish state television, RTE, contacted me to ask whether I was prepared to speak about a different kind of epidemic, that of gender dysphoria and sex-change. I was reluctant to do so because the subject, though undoubtedly socially important and very topical, was not one that interested me particularly. In fact, I tended to avert my mind from it.

The people from the RTE persuaded me that it was my public duty to appear on the programme that they were making. They had found many professors of paediatrics, medicine, psychiatry, and psychology who did not think that the Trans Movement was a force for good, to put it mildly, but none was willing to speak out in public against it. They did not want to ruin their own careers or be the object of mass obloquy: the thirst for martyrdom is not common.

I recognized that my reluctance was tinged with fear (and therefore also with cowardice). It was with trepidation that I agreed, and I was reasonably circumspect in what I said in front of the camera.

If you wanted to understand the sudden increase in the phenomenon, I said, you were better off studying the history of fashion—Chanel, say, or Balenciaga—than anything else.

There were fashions in psychiatric conditions that come and go. Hysterical paralyses of limbs were once very common but are now rare (though they still did occur).

In the 1990s, multiple personalities were fashionable, so much so that the fifth edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” of the American Psychiatric Association quoted a survey suggesting that multiple personality affected up to 1.5 per cent of the population—a figure I found intrinsically absurd. As the Duke of Wellington said to the man who approached him and said “Mr Jones, I believe?”, “If you can believe that you can believe anything.”

The point is that patterns of behavior to which psychiatric labels are fixed wax and wane over time. I expected that the present craze would eventually evaporate—though it would probably be replaced by another.

I have no idea whether or not my contribution was used (I have sometimes given lengthy interviews only to find that they were not broadcast, or cut to ten seconds), but the most important or significant question about the whole episode, however, was not whether I was right or wrong in my characterization and prognosis of the Trans Movement, but the state of fear that the RTE people had described, which led to them scraping the barrel to find someone, in this case me, to say something even mildly critical of the movement. What they described, in effect, was the development of a totalitarian atmosphere in intellectual life.

Of course, we should not exaggerate. We do not yet fear the midnight knock on the door, and no one (as far as I know) has been killed for expressing unorthodox ideas on this subject.

People nevertheless fear for their careers and even their livelihoods. Followers of movements like the Trans Movement have no hesitation in calling for the dismissal of people who attract their wrath by disagreeing publicly with them. So-called transphobia is not irrational fear of people who want to change their sex, but fear of retribution by the movement that makes such people their cause (who may not be the same people).

Trans-sexualism is not the only subject on which it is now dangerous for one’s career or livelihood to express ideas that dissent from the current “progressive” moral orthodoxy. This explains the view of the journalist, Douglas Murray, that only those with no institutional affiliation, private or public, who are able independently to earn their livings, can now speak their minds on many subjects.

There are several asymmetrical wars currently going on in the intellectual sphere. On the one side are guerrilla monomaniacs with a cause, for whom the subject of their monomania is all-important, and the promotion of which is the meaning of their lives; on the other, normal people for whom that particular subject is merely one thing among many others.

In this situation, the monomaniacs have the advantage of fanaticism. Like Batista’s army in Cuba, normal people melt away in the face of fanatical attack, because they do not care enough, or are not prescient enough, to defend their position—though they may later come to regret not having done so.

What is particularly alarming about the totalitarian temper that is developing in western society is that it does not originate from the government but is a genuine expression of the thirst for power of a portion of the population, that part of it—the intelligentsia—that seemingly would have most to lose if the drive to totalitarianism were successful.

Individuals may have discovered to their cost that even merely intellectual revolutions tend to devour their young, today’s radicals often becoming tomorrow’s reactionaries hated in the eyes of a new generation of radicals that is ever on the lookout for new worlds to destroy, but young radicals never think that they will grow old: they always think that theirs is the last word in truth and justice.

Tolerance—a word that in the mouth of such radicals comes to mean the forced or coerced approval of what was formerly transgressive—is not natural to mankind. It is far more natural to want to suppress what one finds disgusting or does not want to hear. Our instinct is to turn away from views that are not our own, from evidence that might undermine our most cherished opinions, and even to dislike those who cite such evidence.

In other words, tolerance is an intellectual and moral achievement, an act of self-control rather than the expression of an instinct. No doubt some people by temperament find such self-control easier than others (I don’t find it easy myself), but there is a dictator lurking in many, perhaps most, of us, at least in those of us who take an interest in public affairs.

Suffice it to say that we are not living in a golden age of the kind of self-control necessary for a tolerant society in which diversity of opinion is taken in good spirit. And the so-called social media, which allow us to pour out our bile incontinently the moment we feel the inclination to do so, only compounds the problem.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-trans-movement-and-the-dictator-lurking-within-us_4065936.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

There are two ways to be subjected to the preposterous awkwardness of elementary sex education: sitting through it and then sitting through the school meetings at which it’s discussed.

I’ve managed to experience both. Between fifth and 12th grades, I wasted hours of my life watching laughable videos on human sexuality and listening to teachers preach the gospel of permissiveness: As long as it was consensual and legal, it was OK and you were perfectly fine. Seriously. Don’t judge and don’t consider yourself judged, either by your parents or by any higher power. You’re doing great, really.

Then, for a brief period in high school, I attended some of the meetings where this curriculum was discussed. Parents, you may not be surprised to learn, weren’t thrilled about this. On perhaps the most sensitive topic a parent has to deal with, liberal value judgments were being imparted by educators who decided they got to act in the place of parents because kids might not otherwise get this message at home. This being the pre-YouTube days, things didn’t get performatively shouty, but the mood was tense — for good reason.

Those were different times, though, and the permissiveness being discussed — the mechanics of the coital act, how to get birth control, homosexuality — seems positively quaint nowadays, at least by the standards of the school that podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly sends her kids to. There, 8-year-old boys get to discuss taking puberty blockers, getting castrated and becoming women.

On Wednesday’s show, Kelly had middle school teacher Ramona Bessinger on. The Providence, Rhode Island, teacher was suspended earlier this month over an alleged lapse in safety protocol on her part, according to Legal Insurrection.

However, given the fact Bessinger has been an ardent critic of critical race theory and other left-wing pedagogy in Providence’s curriculum, this seemed like little more than a flimsy pretext to remove a fly in the ointment.

The Providence School District is calling me in Wednesday for my show-trial. “Pre-disciplinary hearing”. They do not like teachers that expose them. ⁦@Renny920⁩ ⁦@AInfanteGreen⁩ ⁦@Nicoletta0602⁩ ⁦@re_schools⁩ ⁦@CBHeresy⁩ pic.twitter.com/X88MXB2DPE

— Ramona Bessinger (@RamonaBessinger) October 11, 2021

During her interview with Kelly, Bessinger said Providence had gotten caught up in “this whole push to embrace any child who wants to be pansexual, transsexual, multisexual, who the heck knows?”

Do children need to be taught this in sex education programs?

“As a teacher, I’m not interested in talking to children about their sexual preference, especially at the age of 12,” Bessinger said, adding she felt the school was encouraging impressionable children to take on identities they wouldn’t otherwise consider.

“Developmentally, middle school children want to fit in — more so than probably elementary or secondary” school children, Bessinger said.

“And so they’re preying on that psychological phase that kids go through. They want to fit in, and if they feel it’s going to please an adult, they may even pick a pronoun so that that adult applauds them.”

If you think things are bad in Providence, though, wait until you hear what’s apparently happening in Kelly’s kids’ school — which she said “was one of the top all-boys schools … one of the top schools in the country” and which she chose “because it was … more traditional, it wasn’t this far left.”

Kelly said her third-graders were subjected to an “experimental transgender education program,” which they found out about after she and her husband “went to parent-teacher night.”

Popular Shoe Brand Apologizes for ‘Appropriating’ Native American Culture, Using the Word ‘Moccasin’

“And we were sitting there, and one of our fellow parents — a man — raised his hand and said, ‘Why did my son come home’ — these are third-graders, 8- and 9-year-olds — ‘my son come home and ask if it’s true that he can take a pill to prevent puberty, and then, when he turns 18, can have his penis chopped off if he wants to become a woman?’”

“We were all like, ‘What? Say what?’” Kelly said.

“Trust me, we were angry, and the teacher acknowledged it. She didn’t deny it. She said, ‘Because we take the conversation where the boys want to take it’ — and of course, we were like, that’s bull, no 8-year-old was asking that question.”

Kelly added that discussing these topics with children just hopelessly confuses them — and she’s right. Are we to be shocked, though? That’s not a bug in the system. It’s a feature.

We live in the era of Drag Queen Story Time. In Washington state, an elementary school featured a book for LGBT pride month this year in which an underage character who received “top surgery” — the removal of breast tissue from women who identify as men to appear more masculine — appeared on the cover.

And if your public school district doesn’t play along, expect to pay. In a back-to-school message in August, the Biden administration’s Kristen Clarke, the Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, told transgender students they could file a lawsuit if their school was (among other things) stopping them from “receiving the supportive and life-saving care you may need.”

Talking to 8-year-olds about castration is supposedly part of the new awkwardness students and parents have to navigate, all thanks to educators with an agenda who think their values are better than yours — and want to make a mark on impressionable children. If you don’t believe the slippery slope is real, wake up.

In the United States, a sharp rise in the number of children identifying as transgender has alarmed some parents. As these numbers rapidly grow, three mothers share the warning signs of transgender indoctrination.

The Child Transgender Numbers Explosion

A study conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics released in May 2020 showed nearly 10 percent of high school students in just one school district identified as gender-diverse. That 10 percent figure is far higher than past estimates, such as a 2017 government survey of U.S. high school students, in which only 1.8 percent said they identified as transgender. While some studies suggest the higher rate of suicide and attempted suicide among transgender children is related to non-affirmation, other research shows that the higher rate of suicide and attempted suicide among adolescents with gender dysphoria is more related to their know history of other psychiatric diagnoses and self-reported emotional and behavioral problems. While the study called The Trevor Project—widely cited by those who push the affirmation-only approach to avoid self-harm—does show that a significant number of transgender youth admit the heavy use of drugs and alcohol, the study did not explore or provide any statistics regarding the preexistence of other psychiatric diagnoses or self-reported emotional and behavioral problems among the participants.

The Social/Mental Vulnerabilities 

While each of the three families in this story come from different backgrounds and live in different states, each of their newly self-identified transgender children have some things very much in common. They are all in the same age group, they are all socially awkward, and all have been diagnosed with some form of social or psychological disorder.

Vera Lindner of Los Angeles, California, told The Epoch Times “the trans bomb was dropped,” into her world a year ago when her daughter was 14 years old. Her daughter, now 15, had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder. She suffers from depression, anxiety, insulin resistance, and obesity. Her daughter was also diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

Dee, of Clover, South Carolina has a 17-year-old daughter who was indoctrinated at the age of 15. Her daughter has been diagnosed with pre-adoption trauma.

A concerned mom in Augusta, Georgia, who is a single parent, spoke to The Epoch Times under the condition of anonymity using the pseudonym Mary. She said her son made his transgender announcement in November 2020. While not formally diagnosed with any specific disorder, she “had him tested when he was younger for being on the [autism] spectrum and he fell in the gray zone.”

“They could not say yes or no,” Mary added. “He has always been a bit socially awkward and quirky.”

How it Began

Another commonality is the way each child was drawn down the transgender path. It all began with online connections who introduced them to the transgender world through various social media groups.

The trans-transformation of Vera’s daughter started when she began identifying as a lesbian and started watching a lot of YouTube videos like “What do lesbians look like?” and “Who is the ‘most lesbian’ from among this line-up?” Then came the “unrequited love for a butch-lesbian girl who was the first one to self-identify as a ‘trans-boy.’”

“This individual was the ring-leader, very aggressive,” Vera explained. “Also, very tech-savvy.” The “trans-boy” set up multiple Discord groups for the group her daughter had been introduced to, with channels such as “vent,” “general,” “art,” “LGBT” and specifically, “NSFW” where they were posting male nudes and pornography for each other to watch.

According to the Urban Dictionary, “NSFW” is “internet slang” for “Not Safe For Work” or “Not Safe For Wife” and is “used for a fandom of some sort when people want to discuss and share the sexual and porno side of the fandom.”

“At the same time,” Vera added, “they all got into TikTok and Instagram and started watching trans-related content—vile, stupid narcissistic young adults posting rotten material on these platforms.”

The subject matter of these posts centered around such things as, “you are trans if you…,” “you have been playing a role of a girl all along but you are not a girl,” and posed questions like “do you feel like a girl?”

For Dee’s daughter, everything started when “a friend who had decided she was trans a year before took her down the proverbial hole and taught her what to wear” and exposed her to lesbian pornography.

Through the social media platforms Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok, her daughter watched videos  about “trans-men” and “how to get testosterone.”

As with Vera’s and Dee’s daughters, Mary’s son spent hours on social media sites consuming hard-core, graphic pornography sent to him by his new, online trans peer group that evades parental controls by classifying the content “cartoons.”

The Drastic Transformation

By the time Vera’s daughter was in eighth grade she “was so hyper-fixated on LGBT that she was incapable of speaking about anything else besides LGBT” and she “cycled through orientations of lesbian, pan, queer, until finally she dropped the trans bomb shortly after turning 14.” Soon after, she “cut her hair, started wearing boys’ clothes, bought men’s underwear” and “demanded a binder.” She also wanted to get a “supplement from Amazon for increasing testosterone,” which she refused to purchase for her, and to see a “gender doctor,” which she refused to take her to.

Where Dee’s daughter had once been a “happy, seemingly well-adjusted and mature,” child who “excelled academically, she quickly became “disobedient, contentious, contemptuous and untruthful.”

Where she once appeared as a normal teen-aged girl, she now “presents as a boy wearing dark colors, hoodies, and occasionally wears a binder” and she has “Cut off her beautiful hair and tries to pass with a man bun.”

Mary said she was shocked at her son’s trans declaration as there was “no prior behavior that would indicate any of this.”

As with Vera’s daughter, Mary’s son became “obsessed with talking about trans issues.” She said “all talks revolved around it,” and “he demanded puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.”

Mary said the transformation of her son started after he “found friends who were also declaring non-binary and transgender status and they began providing him with “their old girl clothes.” He quickly went from “cautiously” wearing a skirt to “full-on cross-dressing” and he “became noticeably irritable and rude,” a characteristic she said was “extremely out of character” for her son. During one manic episode, she said her son began screaming at her to look at him to recognize that he is “a girl now.”

“It was very disturbing and frightening,” she said.

The Fight to Reclaim Their Children

Because her daughter was “going through a mental breakdown upon dropping the trans bomb,” Vera and her husband decided not to take away her electronic devices. To mitigate the destructive influence of social media, they did purge her accounts of all transgendered contacts. They also stopped sending their daughter to her therapist, who had started “casually talking about testosterone and encouraging transition.”

Her daughter’s PCOS is being managed with meds and she has a daily regimen of light exercise. She has started tenth grade in a charter school and is making new friends. Still, the therapy that has had the most positive impact on her daughter has been volunteering on family farms.

“She adores animals,” Vera said, “so we adopted two kittens in addition to the dog we brought with us. Being around animals and kind people has helped her rebuild her self-esteem. We also go for walks daily. Her depression is much better, definitely in remission. So is the eating disorder. Here, she is connecting with real humans and hearing their real-life stories.”

For Dee—because “there’s too much being shared at high school at lunch and during breaks”—parental monitoring of her social media accounts, a summer job, increased volunteer work to get her off social media, and new social circles has had only marginal improvements on her daughter’s behavior. But she isn’t giving up.

Fearful and overwhelmed by the sudden changes in her son, the decision was made by Mary to send her son to stay with his father. During those next three weeks, she began to dig into his online history and many changes have been made. Since her son’s return from his father’s home, she has taken away his electronic devices and has three layers of parental control on his phone. She uses Circle and Bark apps to monitor the phone’s screen-time and frequently checks with her internet provider for controls they provide. Despite her efforts, she said her son still manages to find “a lot of gender-bending in obscure corners of the internet.”

“His attitude is slightly better,” she said. “I have taken him to a new therapist that is not affirming. I am not sure how much that has helped so far though. The previous therapist was terrible and made things go from bad to violent with the blind affirmation model.

Their Greatest Fears

Vera fears that her daughter will be taken by Child Protective Services because she is “not affirming,” She also fears that her daughter will be influenced by her friends to take hormones or worse, to have irrevocable surgeries. “She has made tremendous progress in healing her mental illnesses and I don’t want her to slip back,” Vera said.

Dee also fears that her daughter will “medicalize and embark on a course of surgery that will cause irreparable damage to her body.”

“And I fear she will latch onto her ‘glitter’ family and become estranged from us,” she confessed.

Mary in Georgia also fears that her son “will begin medicalization when he turns 18” and that “he will ruin his body and his life in search for happiness that is promised to him” but “will only result in his ruination mentally and physically.”

“He will become a forever patient of the pharmaceutical and medical industry and dwindle his dating pool down to nothing and he will be alone,” she grieved.

Who’s to Blame?

Although a self-described “lifelong” liberal Democrat, Vera blames former President Barack Obama “who got bought with the millionaire transvestites’ money” and the liberals “who parrot trans slogans” and “allowed this ideology to infiltrate so deeply the American society and families.”

She blames the “friends who dragged” her daughter into the trans world, and the school lockdowns that left home-bound, isolated children “hanging on their phones all day long to be immersed into this cult.”

“And I blame myself,” she confessed, “for not doing deep reading on this whole trans-thing years ago. I immersed myself only after she dropped on us the trans-bomb, unexpectedly.”

Dee also blames “the friend who dragged” her daughter into this, “and social media, which uses algorithms to shove the trans-agenda into her online world.” She also blames her daughter’s three therapists, “all of whom affirmed her and treated her like a special unicorn.”

Primarily, Mary blames the tech industry.

“They know the danger this technology poses to our mental health and the influence it has especially on young vulnerable people,” she said. “I blame them for not having stronger walls against pornography when kids can easily click an ‘over 18’ button.”

She also blames the pharmaceutical and medical industry who “blindly affirm this and push drugs and surgeries on kids” and therapists who use suicide statistics to pressure them into affirming their child’s irrational decisions yet give no thought to the idea that the child may deeply regret those choices and “take their life after the transition.”

New Paths Require Wise Feet

“To all despondent parents who just got blindsided by this,” two mothers offer some advice.

Vera: “Read as much literature as possible, both affirmative and also trans-critical. Be familiar with the propaganda and lies so you can rebuff them. Nothing substitutes for knowledge and information.”

Mary: “Cut off electronics/online activity, be vigilant about parental controls and monitoring. Be cautious and not confrontational and keep communication lines open and encourage critical thinking.  Give them as much love as possible but also be firm as the parent. Get them outdoors and back in nature and into the world like through volunteering, extracurricular activities, if they’re old enough getting a job.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/parents-warn-of-their-children-being-subjected-to-transgender-indoctrination_4055029.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-23-3&mktids=e434c7c98af422b7709077803a056f47&est=dqfEsyY6Ou52zv1D2KXyHsDCd42jJ9ZMBz%2BGy%2FSy3hYY%2FYGSswoNrXhs1Pk4lGBd%2Fg%3D%3D

Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton introduced a bill on Thursday that would prevent schools from aiding and concealing a student’s “gender transition” from parents.

The bill, called the Empower Parents to Protect Their Kids Act, seeks to stop federally funded K-12 schools from facilitating a student’s “gender transition” without parental knowledge.

“Schools should never be allowed to impose radical, harmful ideologies on children — especially without parents’ knowledge and consent,” Cotton said in a news release announcing the legislation.

“My bill will protect students and ensure that parents are in control of their children’s education. Schools must remain institutions of education, not indoctrination camps where minors are manipulated and brainwashed,” he added.

Schools shouldn’t impose radical, harmful ideologies on children—especially without parents’ knowledge and consent. My bill will protect students and ensure that parents are in control of their children’s education.https://t.co/xfhbrTTiEz

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) October 21, 2021

NIH Confirms It Funded Wuhan Gain-of-Function Research, Now Fauci Could Spend 5 Years in Jail

“Without parental knowledge or consent, schools are facilitating ‘social gender transitions’ by changing the names and pronouns of children in school, or even allowing children to change which sex-segregated facilities they use, such as dormitories for overnight field trips,” the bill reads.

The legislation would require schools to receive parental consent before affirming a student’s “gender transition.”Should schools be allowed to conceal a student’s “gender transition” from parents?

In addition, schools could not “facilitate, encourage, or coerce students to withhold information from their parents regarding the student’s gender transition or the student’s purported gender identity, where the student’s purported gender identity is incongruous with biological sex.”

The bill would also make it illegal for schools to “pressure or coerce the parents of students, or students themselves, to proceed with any treatment or intervention to affirm the student’s purported gender identity.”

In New Jersey, state policy regarding students’ “gender identity” excludes parental consent.

“A school district shall accept a student’s asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required,” the state’s guidance on transgender students reads.

“Further, a student need not meet any threshold diagnosis or treatment requirements to have his or her gender identity recognized and respected by the district, school or school personnel.

“Nor is a legal or court-ordered name change required. There is no affirmative duty for any school district personnel to notify a student’s parent or guardian of the student’s gender identity or expression.”

Christian Employers Sue Biden Administration Over Rule that Would Force Them to Pay for Sex Changes

A similar policy was enacted in Madison, Wisconsin, before being changed following a lawsuit.

“It should go without saying that school district staff should be honest with parents, especially when it comes to critical matters concerning their children, but we are pleased that the court has issued an order now requiring it,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Roger Brooks said in a statement last year.

“As this case moves forward, we will continue to argue for our clients’ legitimate concern over the Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy of deceiving parents and excluding them from profound decisions involving the wellbeing of their own children.”

The first-ever “female” four-star admiral in the public health corps is actually a man.

Yes, you heard that right.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Biden administration lauded the appointment of Rachel Levine to the aforementioned position, saying “Admiral Levine now serves as the highest ranking official in the USPHS Commissioned Corps and its first-ever female four-star admiral.”

The Biden administration announces that Rachel Levine, a biological man, is now the “first-ever female four-star admiral” in the public health corps pic.twitter.com/1JIa5Eh0vZ

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) October 19, 2021

This is the same group that claims to be the “party of science,” mind you.

The same party that is allowing men like Levine to take over women’s athletics and invade female-only spaces, all in the name of inclusivity.

It’s funny, really: The Democratic party has so many groups to please, so many “oppressed” peoples to rescue, that those groups are starting to come into conflict with one another.

Now, the left is sacrificing its commitment to women’s empowerment and feminism so that it can promote the transgender agenda.

Just think about this: What is so special about a woman, if any man can simply identify as a woman, take her place and be equally celebrated?

At that point, why are women special at all?

Conservatives know the answer to this — women, due to their biological and social differences, are incredibly unique and complement men perfectly, just as men complement them.

Women can create and nurture life, for example. It’s hard to name a male attribute that is equally powerful.

Nevertheless, the left is set on claiming that any biological man — if he feels like it — can be just as much of a woman as anyone else.

Soros Helped Elect Loudoun Prosecutor Who Wanted Jail Time for Dad Whose Daughter Was Allegedly Raped

Even if Levine was a woman, the whole idea that his position should be celebrated as the first female appointment is based on a lie.

The lie is that every occupation, at every level, should be equal parts male and female.

The left wants you to believe that, if equal representation is not achieved, that must be a sign that society is morally corrupt and discriminatory.

In truth, different people make different choices.

When it comes to important government positions such as this, “diversity, equity and inclusion” shouldn’t be the goal.

The best possible candidate should be hired for every role, regardless of their identity.

Nevertheless, Biden has made it clear he doesn’t care about qualifications or competency; he doesn’t care about truth or morality.

Rather, Biden and his cronies simply care about checking off all their diversity boxes.

No wonder his first year in office has been such an utter catastrophe.

Dispatch records from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office suggest that a school administrator and school resource officer (SRO) did not act urgently to involve police specialists in a reported rape on May 28 at Stone Bridge High School.

At 1:33 pm, the SRO — who works full-time at the school handling routine matters but officially works for the sheriff’s office — radioed that he “was briefed by assistant principal of a student that has made allegations of being possibly raped or touched unwanted by another student a couple of hours ago. Investigating at this time and parents are and have been notified at this time by admin.”

It is unclear whether the assistant principal learned of the rape “a couple of hours ago,” or whether the alleged rape occurred then and the administrator did not learn of it until some later time period.

The SRO then “investigated” for nearly an hour without calling for outside police officers.

At 2:21, 2:28, and 2:30, three calls for police are finally placed — one requesting a supervisor, one requesting “another unit,” and one noted as “upset parent.” Given that these calls came in a nine-minute window well after officials first learned of the rape, it seems likely that the impetus for all three was the “upset parent.

That is, after all, what Principal Tim Flynn told the community in an email at 4:48 pm:

Good evening Stone Bridge families this [sic] is Stone Bridge Principal Tim Flynn. There was an incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office to dispatch deputies to Stone Bridge. The incident was confined to the main office and the entrance area to the school. There was no threat to the safety of the student body. The incident was witnessed by a small number of students who were meeting with staff adjacent to the main office. Counseling services and the services of our Unified Mental Health Team are available for any student who may need to talk about today’s incident. Students might have noticed Sheriff’s Office personnel on campus and I wanted to let you know that something out of the ordinary happened at school today. The safety of our students and staff is the top priority of Loudoun County Public Schools.

Scott Smith, the parent of the victim, previously told The Daily Wire that he was aghast to find the incident being handled only by people who worked at the school full-time — with the SRO seeming to take direction from the principal — rather than a team of police officers one would expect to find processing a major crime scene. There were no outside police or medics at the scene when he arrived, he said. He became irate.

He said that police responded to deal with complaints about him making a scene in the office, not to the rape allegations. Once on the scene, he said, the team of police eventually became persuaded that what had occurred was a serious incident that required their attention, and escorted his family to the hospital where a rape kit was administered.

Smith said he did not believe a rape kit would have been administered based on the laid-back way administrators and the SRO appeared to be handling it on their own. The county’s prosecutor later said that the case relied on DNA evidence, suggesting that if a rape kit had not been conducted that day, no substantiated rape would have likely been added to Stone Bridge’s books.

Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office dispatch logs

In addition to Principal Flynn’s email which made no mention of a rape, Loudoun’s superintendent, Scott Zeigler, went on to tell the school board at a June 22 board meeting that he had no record of sexual assaults in bathrooms. The school system also reported on required statistics to the state of Virginia that it had zero sexual assault incidents in the school that year.

Zeigler later said he misunderstood the question in the school board meeting, and apologized for an “error” in reporting to the state.

The sheriff’s office previously told The Daily Wire there were no 911 calls from the school, but has now produced “dispatch” logs that include radio calls.

The calls also show that at 7:21 pm, the FBI called and “asked about the incident at Stone Bridge HS,” which was “found through prior calls.” Once the agent was advised that “it was a sexual assault investigation,” the agent said it “would not require their help.”

Smith was arrested at a June 22 school board meeting where he became angry again after Zeigler’s misleading statement. That arrest led to Smith being included in a letter, by the National School Boards Association, that talked about angry attendees at school board meetings, as well as a response by Attorney General Merrick Garland that suggested the FBI could have a hand in dealing with such matters.

The suspect in the alleged rape was transferred to a different school, where he was arrested for an alleged in-classroom sexual assault on another girl October 6.

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https://www.dailywire.com/news/records-suggest-loudoun-sent-team-of-police-to-deal-with-upset-parent-not-alleged-rape-of-student?itm_source=parsely-api&utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email

On June 22, Scott Smith was charged with disorderly conduct at Loudoun County’s school board meeting. Smith had attended the meeting in hopes of sharing the story of his daughter’s alleged rape, which he said happened when a boy wearing a skirt entered the girls’ locker room in a Loudoun County school.

When an LGBT activist told Smith his daughter was a liar, a shouting match ensued. Then, an officer grabbed his shoulder, Smith pulled away and a physical altercation took place ending with the father’s arrest.

All of this happened before he could tell his daughter’s story to the school board as they deliberated over transgender inclusion in women’s bathrooms.

The motion was later passed.

Smith’s attorney wasn’t worried about the charges; she even told The Daily Wire (subscription required) she was “sure the charges would be dropped.”

Woman Endures Horror on Philadelphia Train as Bystanders Watched and Did Nothing, Police Say

Enter Loudoun County’s lead prosecutor, Buta Biberaj.

Despite the unremarkable nature of Smith’s case, Biberaj showed up personally to prosecute him. She sought jail time against Smith.

“It is incredibly unusual for a disorderly conduct case to even go forward. The idea that they would actually be seeking jail time, I’d guess in my 15 years the number of times I’ve seen that happen would be zero,” Smith’s attorney told The Daily Wire.

“It would be completely unheard of for the prosecutor to handle a misdemeanor.”

Is the left destroying America’s legal system?

In fact, Biberaj appears to be a member of what one Heritage Foundation report refers to as the “rogue prosecutors movement,” a campaign made up of progressive prosecutors across the country — funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros — aimed at “promoting the fundamental transformation of our criminal justice system.”

“They brazenly usurp the constitutional role of the legislative branch by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crime, abuse the role of the county prosecutor, fail to protect victims of crime, and ignore the rising crime rates that flow from their radical policies,” the authors of the report wrote.

The Loudoun County lead prosecutor has certainly received funding from Soros.

Biberaj won the office in a 2019 election, after she received $845,000 in campaign funds from Soros, according to The Daily Wire.

Soros Behind Activists Who Followed Sinema Into Bathroom, Harassed Her for Betraying Biden

Her Republican opponent spent a total of $113,000, The Daily Wire reported.

So, again, why would Biberaj go against her usual agenda of leniency when it came to Smith?

She’s a Soros-funded political operative with the goal of using her position not to punish criminals, but rather to forward left-wing politics.

Internal communications show staffers privately complaining about overtures from Catholic school officials

The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) shut out religious groups from a controversial curriculum development process, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The original draft of the agency’s sex education standards included plans to teach elementary school students about gender identity and transgender hormone therapy. Internal emails obtained by a concerned parent show the NDE added a Planned Parenthood ally to the 28-member advisory team for the standards, while it excluded input from religious education groups. The documents show NDE employees were privately aggravated that Jeremy Ekeler, the associate director of education policy at the Nebraska Catholic Conference, wanted to be included in the curriculum process because they suspected he would be critical of their approach.

“Jeremy is coming on pretty strong,” one NDE employee emailed with a frowning face symbol.

“I know. I really think they want to advocate for abstinence only education as well as gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.; but that is only my assumption,” another employee responded.

Ekeler, a former principal at a Nebraska Catholic school, was able to schedule a Zoom meeting with the NDE after inquiring three times about the development process. Ekeler said the NDE told him in August 2020 that the advisory team was already full—a claim he said in hindsight feels like a cop-out.

“To know that a tax-funded state entity boxed out the beliefs of such a huge portion of our population is sadly ironic,” Ekeler told the Free Beacon. “The NDE has preached inclusion and diversity through this whole thing and then they excluded anybody who doesn’t fit with their agenda.”

Ekeler vouched for three Catholic experts with relevant experience to be on the advisory team, which the NDE told him was handpicked with no formal application process. Two told the Free Beacon the NDE never reached out. The third did not respond. Planned Parenthood activists, however, had no trouble getting access to policymakers.

Internal emails show that Deborah Neary, a state board of education member, pressured the NDE to include Lisa Schulze, a Friends of Planned Parenthood board member and former Planned Parenthood employee, in the curriculum draft process. “I am very disappointed that none of the folks that I recommended to participate in the Nebraska Department of Education Standard Writing Team were selected,” Neary said in an email. Schulze and two other activists—the executive director of OutNebraska and a local professor dedicated to the “intersection of sexuality and social justice”—requested by Neary were eventually added to the advisory team, which provided feedback on the standards to the writing team.

The NDE did not respond to questions on how it selected the advisory team. The agency has denied any influence from activists in drawing up the standards.

The first draft of the health standards, published in March, detailed a curriculum to teach gender identity in first grade, transgender hormone therapy in fifth grade, oral and anal sex in seventh grade, and abortion in eighth grade. Fr. Sean Kilcawley is a Nebraska priest who is certified as a Pastoral Sexual Addiction Practitioner Supervisor. Ekeler recommended him to be on the standards advisory team, but Kilcawley never heard from the NDE. Kilcawley said the radical nature of the sex education standards can be attributed at least in part to the fact that there was no Christian representation in the drafting process.

“Young people are going to be googling the content they are learning in class,” he told the Free Beacon. “So if they’re teaching about overt sexual actions in class it can lead to more pornography exposure, which leads to compulsive sexual behavior, which has led to an uptick on child to child sexual abuse.”

The original Nebraska sex education curriculum proposed in March was nearly identical to the 2020 National Sexuality Education Standards. These national standards are a collaboration between three deep-pocketed progressive advocacy groups: the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. SIECUS and Advocates for Youth have raked millions annually from the CDC and abortion-focused nonprofits for decades, a Free Beacon review of 990 forms found.

All three of the national sex education groups have ties to the Nebraska curriculum process. Schulze worked for Answer at the University of Rutgers. Emails show Neary scheduled a meeting between NDE members and a policy director at SIECUS. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation has given $20 million to Advocates for Youth since 2008. Warren Buffett, the billionaire progressive philanthropist who heads the foundation, is an Omaha native. The Women’s Fund for Omaha, where Schulze works as an education and training manager, owns $12 million worth of stock in Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Neither Schulze nor Neary responded to requests for comment.

The state’s board of education in September suspended the health standards after months of pushback from parents. Ekeler compared the dispute between parents and the school system to the battle of David and Goliath.

“Two things happen before David casts the stone with the sling,” Ekeler told the Free Beacon. “First he’s made aware of the battle and then, in one of my favorite Bible verses, he ran to the giant. Our parents, once they were made aware, ran to the battle—and I don’t think they’re going anywhere.”

https://freebeacon.com/campus/nebraska-department-of-education-excluded-religious-groups-from-sex-ed-curriculum-team/

A North Carolina parent cited state law in pointing the Wake County School Board to possible felonious, sexually explicit material found in one of its libraries.

Chad Slotta told the board in its Oct. 5 meeting that one of his children found the book, “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison in the school’s library.

The book, Slotta said, describes illicit sex between minors, a 10-year-old who engages in a sex act during a church youth group behind a church parsonage, sexually explicit language, and allusions to bestiality.

“Now I feel grieved and embarrassed to even discuss this issue in a public forum, but in the defense of innocence and decency of not only my child but the classmates, I can’t remain silent,” Slotta told the board during public comment.

It’s unacceptable that an adult trusted to educate children, “either knowingly or through ignorance,” would permit the dissemination of objectively obscene material to children, Slotta said.

Slotta later read from NC General Statute 14-190.1, which states that it’s a class-one felony for a “person, firm, or corporation to intentionally disseminate obscenity” that depicts or describes in a “patently offensive way” sexual conduct that could be directed at children as a potential audience.

‘At Best, Broken; At Worst, Corrupt’

Slotta asked the board to initiate a “thorough and transparent” review of the books currently available and the process by which they are chosen.

“The process by which books and material are added to our school libraries is at best broken, and at worst, corrupt,” Slotta said. “It’s broken if an elected or unelected person or committee failed to properly vet this book and others like it from coming into the school. The process is corrupt if an elected or unelected official or committee vetted the book and others like it and thought, ‘Hey, this would add value to our children,’ then sourced them intentionally in our schools.”

Slotta later told The Epoch Times that as he’s watched the brewing controversy of sexualized material being found in K-12 school systems across the country, he’s identified several other titles in his child’s online school library.

“I didn’t want to transfer a national narrative on our local situation unless those things were actually happening here,” Slotta said. “Unfortunately, we discovered that in fact books we saw being reported on and others, which in our opinion are more obscene and more graphic, were in the library where our child attends school.”

Other books he named were “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Perez, in which he said there are multiple sexual descriptions, one of which being a group of boys fantasizing about group sex; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson, in which he said there are vivid details about sexual acts.

Slotta didn’t name the specific school his child attends because, he said, his goal is not to get anyone fired, but to effect change by initiating the review that would question the legality of the material within the context of a K-12 scholastic setting.

In response to Slotta’s concerns, a Wake County board member forwarded Slotta a written policy by which parents can request a review and removal of certain material.

“What the board member didn’t get back to me on was the process by which these are added to the media center,” he said. “I suspect that’s going to be more of a challenge for them to respond to just given the nature of those materials, but that will be a major emphasis of our inquiry going forward.”

Appropriate Discernment

Within the school setting, Slotta said “sexuality” and “biology” should be discerned.

“We send our kids to school to be taught science and mathematics, and a part of that discipline of science includes anatomy and biology, but when it comes to human sexuality, which to me is a very different discipline, I think that belongs at home with the parents, not in the schools with the teachers,” Slotta said.

When reached for comment, the Wake County Public School System’s (WCPS) communication director sent The Epoch Times the WCPS’ policy on the parent’s right to inspect materials and submit an objection.

“If the committee determines that any material violates constitutional or other legal rights of the parent or student, the principal or the committee shall either remove the material from instructional use or accommodate the student or parent,” the policy states.

F.A.C.T.S. Task Force

Earlier this year, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, had enacted the F.A.C.T.S. (Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students) task force to provide an online portal through which teachers and students can submit examples of critical race theory (CRT) in the North Carolina school systems.

CRT is based on the Marxist philosophy that describes society as a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed; it labels white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed.

In the report, themes of race shaming, sexualization of children, allusions to surgical castration in children’s literature, and accusations of xenophobia against political figures surfaced.

Democrats, including Gov. Roy Cooper, have said that the allegations of CRT being taught in schools is “conspiracy-laden politics.”

Cooper later vetoed a bill that would have prohibited teachings that promote concepts that are contrary to “equality and rights of all persons.”

This week, Robinson faced criticism over comments he made in a church while being filmed.

The video was posted on Twitter by a group called Right Wing Watch.

In referring to homosexuality and transgenderism, Robinson said these issues “have no place in school.”

“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling a child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth, and yes I called it filth,” Robinson said.

The White House and North Carolina politicians, including Gov. Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, condemned Robinson, and various LGBT groups called for his resignation, to which Robinson later said he wouldn’t “back down.”

In a press conference on Oct. 12, Robinson said that by “filth,” he was referring to the material, not the LGBT community.

“The narrative that’s been driven that I have something against the LGBT community is absolutely false,” Robinson said.

American is not a theocracy, he added.

“I don’t have the right to tell anyone how they live their personal lives,” Robinson said.

Though he may disagree with one’s lifestyle on a “personal and spiritual level,” he said it’s his job to protect people’s rights.

Robinson then said the question around the material being found in schools is a legal issue.

“You can look at this and clearly see that this is quite possibly, probably is child pornography being presented to our children,” he said, referencing images he had displayed beside him from the book “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe, which depicted explicit sexual acts.

Both “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy” were pulled from The Fairfax Public School system in Virginia after a parent spoke out against the books at a school board meeting.

When asked in what school systems the book was found, Robinson’s director of communication said it “came to our office’s attention from Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough, North Carolina. However, we know that it is in at least six counties: Buncombe, Durham, Gaston, Mecklenburg, Orange, and Wake.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/parent-challenges-north-carolina-school-board-to-investigate-sexually-explicit-material-found-in-school-library_4050934.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

During a Loudoun County school board meeting in June, Scott Smith was arrested, hit in the face and dragged out before he could tell the board what had happened to his daughter.

According to Smith, she had been raped in a school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt.

Smith’s attorney confirmed the account and said the boy had been charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio, all in connection with the May 28 attack.

The local sheriff’s office confirmed that a report of “forcible sodomy and sexual battery” matching the date and location of Smith’s story did indeed exist.

At the time of the June 22 meeting, the school board was deciding whether or not to move forward with a new policy allowing “transgender” students — in practice, any students who claim to identify as the opposite sex — to use the bathrooms of their choice.

Lawmakers: CDC May Be Manipulating COVID Data, Underreporting Vaccine Side Effects by Factor of 5

School superintendent Scott Ziegler assured parents at the meeting that there was no cause for concern, saying, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”

New reports indicate this was a flat-out lie — the school knew of the May 28 assault and chose to cover it up while officials conducted public discussions about potentially allowing males into female locker rooms and bathrooms.

Wayne Byard, Loudoun County Public Schools public information officer, said it was actually the school that contacted the sheriff’s department “within minutes of receiving the initial report on May 28,” according to WTOP-TV.

In a Wednesday statement, the Loudoun County school board claimed it had chosen to remain silent “in order not to interfere with the police investigation,” Newsweek reported.

But the school board didn’t simply remain silent. It seemingly lied when Ziegler claimed “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring” in the district’s restrooms.

What’s more, the 15-year-old boy who allegedly raped Smith’s daughter had been charged with sexually assaulting another student on school property five months earlier, according to Newsweek.

This is a massive scandal. Every media outlet should be reporting on Loudoun County’s apparent cover-up.

That being the case, it’s no surprise that the establishment media is completely ignoring this story.

After all, it debunks one of the left’s most precious narratives: that allowing men into female spaces poses no danger to women.

Mom Who Survived Mao’s Purge in China Horrified to See What’s Happening in American School Board Meetings

As Ziegler was trying to convince Loudoun County parents of this idea, he even quoted a left-wing source, saying, “Time Magazine in 2016 called that a red herring, that the data was simply not playing out that transgender students were more likely to assault cisgender students in restrooms than were other students.”

This media spin totally misses the point.

Parents aren’t primarily worried about transgender individuals turning out to be predators. Rather, they share the reasonable concern that predators may attempt to take advantage of transgender policies.

After all, there’s no way to verify whether someone is actually suffering from gender dysphoria or if they’re simply saying so to gain access to gender-specific areas.

When any man or woman can say they’re of the opposite sex, knowing they’ll be taken at their word, predators are given a free pass to potential victims in places where they’re at their most vulnerable.

School officials, establishment media outlets and left-wing activists will do everything they can to keep that truth from getting out.

Thankfully, their efforts won’t be enough, for one simple reason: Parents aren’t going to stop until their children are safe.

YouTube suspended Steven Crowder’s channel for one week on Wednesday, claiming the conservative pundit and comedian violated the platform’s rules against hate speech.

YouTube’s counsel sent an email to Crowder’s attorney, William Richmond, informing him of the strike against Crowder’s account and explaining that a September 30 video uploaded to Crowder’s channel “targets the transgender community in an offensive manner,” according to a copy of the email. YouTube has blocked Crowder from posting videos to his main and auxiliary accounts for one week. The email said in part:

We write again on YouTube’s behalf regarding your client, Steven Crowder. YouTube has repeatedly instructed Mr. Crowder regarding its hate speech policy and warned him against continuing violations of that policy through content he uploaded to YouTube. YouTube specifically warned Mr. Crowder that videos he uploaded showed a pattern of recklessly targeting the LGBTQ+ community for abuse and insults. It warned that further uploading of content that targets, insults, and/or abuses the LGBTQ+ community would result in additional penalties.

On September 30, Mr. Crowder uploaded another video that YouTube has determined continues his prior conduct. The video entitled ““Special Guest ALEX JONES on ‘Great Reset’ & Joe Rogan TRIGGERS Leftists AGAIN!” contains a segment that targets the transgender community in an offensive manner, for example, by indicating that trans people pose a rape threat to women. Consistent with the recklessness provisions of its hate speech policy, YouTube has removed this video from the service and assessed a strike against the Steven Crowder channel. Per YouTube’s strikes policy, this results in a one-week upload freeze for the channel. Further violation of YouTube’s hate speech policy will result in additional penalties.

Crowder’s team is unsure of the exact reason for the strike and has requested time stamps from YouTube on the September 30 video earning the channel another strike. According to Crowder’s website:

“During the September 30 show, we discussed a news article entitled ‘Female inmate now pregnant after California pro-trans policy forces women’s prisons to house biological men despite prisoners’ pleas, warnings: report,’ and there was a short comedy sketch after that. The news article was a report on female prisoners becoming impregnated when they were forced to share cells with biological men.”

YouTube told The Daily Wire in a statement: “We removed content from and issued a strike to the StevenCrowder channel for violating our hate speech policy, through repeated targeting of the LGBTQ+ community. Hate speech is not allowed on YouTube, and in some cases, we remove content or issue other penalties–such as a strike–when a creator repeatedly targets, insults and abuses a protected group based on attributes such as sexual orientation or gender identity and expression across multiple uploads.”

Crowder responded on Twitter Wednesday: “A hard strike from YouTube and Wow… this is terrifying. We covered SPECIFIC, documented instances of rape. @YouTube says not allowed. All parents should take note. If you believe in the insane notion of biological sex, you will be silenced.”

YouTube’s latest strike against Crowder is at least the third of this year. In response to YouTube cracking down on his content, Crowder sued the platform in May. As The Daily Wire reported:

“As of last Thursday, May 14, my lawyer Bill Richmond and I have filed a notice of a lawsuit against YouTube and are seeking an injunction to prevent them, to stop them from currently deplatforming us,” Crowder said. “We’ve officially sent a notice of a lawsuit. Very different level – this is the big one, boys and girls.”

Crowder’s account was locked, demonetized, and given a strike warning in March for allegedly spreading misinformation about the 2020 election. Crowder denied ever making any false claims on Monday’s show and noted that YouTube’s justification lacked a specific charge against Crowder.

Crowder said the first and second hard strikes against his channel were similarly vague, leaving the host and his attorney guessing at what could have triggered YouTube’s actions. The first strike came over an anniversary video of “15 days to slow the spread.” YouTube claimed that Crowder violated its policy against spreading COVID misinformation.

This article has been updated with comments from a YouTube spokesperson.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-is-terrifying-youtube-suspends-steven-crowder-for-hate-speech-covering-transgender-community-in-an-offensive-manner?itm_source=parsely-api&utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email

Loudoun County parents used the public comment portion of Tuesday’s school board meeting to call for the resignation of the district’s superintendent over an alleged sexual assault cover-up.

Angry parents demanded Superintendent Scott Ziegler and other school board members resign over allegations that the Loudoun County School District and leadership covered up two sexual assaults on two separate school campuses, the Daily Wire originally reported.

Over 60 concerned parents spoke at the meeting, including many who carried signs encouraging Ziegler’s resignation.

“This is not China, this is the United States of America, and we will not be silenced,” one mother said, according to Fox News.

“Remove the superintendent immediately and then resign for your negligence and duplicity. End this nightmare!”

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The father of the first alleged sexual assault victim was arrested at a Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22 for “unlawful assembly” after attending the meeting to oppose a transgender student policy that allowed students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

Smith said his ninth-grade daughter was sexually assaulted by a boy wearing a skirt who entered a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28.

At the same board meeting where Scott was arrested, during the hearing on the transgender student policy, Beth Barts, a school board member, said “our students do not need to be protected, and they are not in danger.”

Barts continued, asking Ziegler, “do we have assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly?”

“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Ziegler responded.

“Have we had any issues involving transgender students in our bathrooms or locker rooms?” school board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan asked.

“I think it’s important to keep our perspective on this, we’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers, but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” Ziegler responded.

Juvenile court prosecutors told Smith that the suspect was under house arrest at his mother’s townhouse, but on Oct. 6, a 15-year-old boy was charged with sexual battery and abduction for forcing a girl into a classroom, where he inappropriately touched her, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

Smith’s attorney said the suspect is the same boy who attacked Smith’s daughter at a different school months earlier, the Daily Wire reported.

Tennessee Bill That Places Restrictions on Boys’ Use of Girls’ Restrooms Faces a Legal Challenge

On Aug. 11, the school board voted on and approved Policy 8040, which requires teachers to call students by their “chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence” and allows transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms that correspond to their chosen gender identity.

“The 8040 policy was rushed through to a vote without consideration for the safety of all students, simply to satisfy a liberal agenda — a policy that you knew full well would allow our children to be abused inside our schools,” one mother said at the Tuesday school board meeting, Fox News reported.

“At least two young women are recent victims of sexual assaults in our high schools, one of them in a restroom.”

“What is worse than a child being raped at school? The coverup by those who are trusted with the safety and well-being of children,” another mother said.

“Today, Scott Ziegler must resign for the unconscionable act of allowing an alleged rapist back into school to rape again, and for that coverup.”

One 14-year-old LCPS student, Katie Young, said “8040 and many policies that are being proposed are not to make people more comfortable or to accept others but instead to change the way my peers and I think, so that we will become the next generation of social justice warriors.”

“I am 14 years old, the fact that I have to be here defending my rights to not have your radical agenda shoved down my throat in school is not only concerning, it’s upsetting,” she added.

“My peers and I are not tools to further your political agenda.”

Content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of the DCNF’s original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

A version of this article appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation website.

A Virginia father says his daughter was sexually assaulted by a male student at school earlier this year, setting off a series of events that saw his outburst at a school board meeting included in a controversial letter that compared some parents to domestic terrorists.

Scott Smith’s daughter, 15, is a freshman at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County. On May 28, Smith says, a boy raped her in a bathroom at the school.

Smith told The Daily Wire he was called and told there had been a physical altercation. When he arrived, he learned that there had actually been a sexual assault. Smith said he became furious. Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene.

Smith avoided arrest and he and the family’s lawyer say a rape kit and other tests showed a sexual assault had occurred.

A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office told The Epoch Times via email she could confirm that an incident on May 28 is still being investigated. No documents can be provided because the case is pending, she said.

The same boy allegedly, after transferring to another school, was charged with sexual battery after being accused of inappropriately touching a 15-year-old in Ashburn. The sheriff’s office declined to confirm whether it’s the same male.

Juvenile records aren’t publicly available. Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told the Wire that the boy was charged with multiple counts, including forcible sodomy. Lancaster didn’t return a request for comment.

Smith’s saga continued when he and his wife attended their first school board meeting on June 22, where a discussion on a proposal to protect transgender students was set to be discussed.

“My wife and I are gay- and lesbian-friendly,” Smith told the Wire. “We’re not into this children transgender stuff. The person that attacked our daughter is apparently bisexual and occasionally wears dresses because he likes them. So this kid is technically not what the school board was fighting about. The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.”

During the meeting, Beth Barts, a school board member, asked if there were assaults happening in bathrooms or locker rooms—a key concern for opponents of letting biological males in girl’s facilities.

“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Superintendent Scott Ziegler said, adding later that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”

Smith said he was accosted by an activist who insisted his daughter was not assaulted. An officer came over because of the tense situation.

“The next thing I know, I’m getting touched from all over the place. I didn’t know who was touching me, who was grabbing me. I turn around, the police are grabbing me and next thing I know, I’m tackled to the ground. I’m just shocked and horrified,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday.

The arrest was widely reported and was cited by the National School Boards Association in its recent letter to President Joe Biden urging him to take action to combat incidents the board likened to domestic terrorism.

Several days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced federal officials would be targeting people who harass, intimidate, or threaten school board members and others who work with or at public schools.

A Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that it is aware of reports concerning the alleged sexual assaults at two high schools in the district and declined to provide details. However, the district said the sheriff’s office was contacted within minutes of the earlier assault.

“Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS that it has completed the criminal investigation. To maintain the integrity of the criminal investigation, law enforcement requested that LCPS not interview students until their investigation is concluded,” the spokesman said.

“LCPS has cooperated and continues to cooperate with law enforcement. Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault. LCPS does impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of the investigation and resolution process. LCPS has complied and continues to comply with its obligations under Title IX,” it added.

The district also said that members of the school board were not aware of the assaults until this week.

The board approved the transgender-friendly policy in August.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/father-says-rape-of-daughter-in-school-bathroom-led-to-inclusion-on-school-boards-domestic-terrorism-letter_4047580.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-13-3&mktids=381f95c0b65b8613e8978cdf520da268&est=X8MCqTLiXu67BkTdlzE831rmLaqkWzQdAmdAszgzHXKzr1b6luCeVOEEcCAzbRIZAg%3D%3D

School used to be the place where you would send your children to get a proper education.

It was a place where they could learn basic sciences and critical thinking skills.

Today, however, public schools are nothing more than propaganda centers indoctrinating children into the latest far-left ideologies.

Nowhere has this been made more evident than in the sexual education standards currently being disseminated to schools nationwide.

Developed by a coalition of left-wing nonprofit groups, the second edition of the National Sex Education Standards aspires to teach school children about various ideas many parents would likely object to, according to The Federalist.

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For instance, the standards require kindergarteners through second graders to learn about ideas related to transgenderism, including “gender” and “gender identity.”

Third graders are taught about “the role of hormone blockers” for transgender minors, an often irreversible procedure many consider to be tantamount to child abuse.

Starting in sixth grade — an age group of 11 and 12-year-olds — and by the end of eighth grade at age 13, students “should be able to” define oral, anal and vaginal sex.

This age group is also required to learn about the withdrawal method as a form of contraception.

What is quite possibly the worst aspect of these standards is their promotion of killing unborn children.

Starting in sixth grade, students are taught about abortion — not as the horror that it is, but rather as a common option when faced with pregnancy.

Even worse, teachers are forced to provide information about local abortion clinics to students in ninth grade and up.

When it comes to standards on gender identity, the standards go as far as to subvert parental authority.

“No one else is qualified to label or judge another person’s sexual identity, including their sexual orientation or gender identity, and it is important that the language and terms young people use to identify themselves is respected by the adults in their lives,” the standards state.

Loudoun County Dad Says His Daughter Was Raped by Boy in Girls’ Bathroom and School Tried to Cover It Up

These ideas may soon be taught at a public school near you — that is, if they aren’t being taught there already.

The group’s previous standards — the National Sexuality Education Standards — were used by roughly 41.3 percent of school districts, according to a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If these new standards are followed by a similar percentage of schools, it may be time to pull your child out of public school.

When Scott Smith went to the Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22, he says he had one intention — to tell the story of his daughter’s rape.

One of the items to be discussed at the meeting was a proposed school district policy that would allow students to enter their bathroom of choice based on their “gender identity.”

A number of protesting parents had gathered to voice their opinions. Others supported the policy, denouncing their more conservative peers as bigots.

School superintendent Scott Ziegler assured parents that there is no reason to be concerned over the inclusion of transgender students in bathrooms and locker rooms.

When Beth Barts, a member of the school board, asked at the meeting if the school district had “assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly,” Ziegler said that wasn’t a problem.

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“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” he said, according to The Daily Wire (subscription required).

“Have we had any issues involving transgender students in our bathrooms or locker rooms?” Barts asked, according to The Daily Wire.

Ziegler was unequivocal.

“Time Magazine in 2016 called that a red herring, that the data was simply not playing out that transgender students were more likely to assault cisgender students in restrooms than were other students,” he said, according to The Daily Wire. “In fact, regardless of the gender identity of the student, if a crime or violation of the rules were committed, that would be investigated and dealt with to the full extent of the rules or the law …”

“I think it’s important to keep our perspective on this, we’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers, but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”

But, according to The Daily Wire, Smith knew these words to be beside the point. He said his child, a ninth-grade girl, had been raped in a girls’ bathroom by a “bisexual” boy.

“The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms,” he told the outlet.

As Smith was getting ready to say his piece at the meeting, he told The Daily Wire, a left-wing community activist approached and told him that she did not believe his daughter. Strange how quickly the left’s “believe all women” motto has turned into “believe only the women who further our political agenda.”

A shouting match between the two then ensued. This led to a police officer pulling on Smith’s arm. He yanked away, was then hit in the face, handcuffed and dragged out of the meeting, The Daily Wire reported.

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Video of the arrest was posted to YouTube by WTTG-TV, Fox 5 in Washington:

On Aug. 11, the school board finalized its vote to approve the new transgender policy without having heard Smith’s testimony. Following his arrest, Smith had been banned from entering the school board building, according to The Daily Wire.

So, the school board never heard the following account:

On May 28, Smith maintains, a boy wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School, where he assaulted Smith’s daughter. Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told The Daily Wire that the boy had been charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy and one county of forcible fellatio, all in regards to the incident.

When Smith was called to the school that day, he’d just been told that his daughter had been assaulted. But after he arrived, The Daily Wire reported, “he determined that what had happened was not a case of his daughter being beaten up: It was far more serious.”

However, the school told Smith it was going to handle the incident “in-house,” apparently meaning without involving law enforcement. Smith said he lost his temper.

“Deputies from the sheriff’s office ultimately responded to the school — not to investigate the alleged rape of a child, Smith said, but because school administrators called them on him for making a scene about it,” The Daily Wire reported.

Still, Smith said at least some good came of his arrest that day. Because of it, he told The Daily Wire, his daughter was taken to the hospital, where swabs were taken for a rape kit that would strengthen a prosecution in the case.

Although juvenile records are sealed, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office responded to a Daily Wire public records request by confirming that a report with “Offense: Forcible Sodomy [and] Sexual Battery” matching the date and location of Smith’s claim does, indeed, exist.

Smith said he’d been assured by prosecutors that the suspect in his daughter’s case was being held responsible and was expected to plead guilty to a lesser sexual assault charge at a hearing scheduled for Oct. 14.

However, on Oct. 6, a 15-year-old was charged with sexual battery and abduction after he allegedly forced a young girl into an empty classroom and assaulted her, according to a release from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

And, as it turns out, this is the same boy as the suspect in Smith’s daughter’s case, various sources confirmed to Smith’s attorney and The Daily Wire.

Smith doesn’t come off like a vengeful father — The Daily Wire reported that he was even amenable to the suspect receiving the lesser charge in his daughter’s case.

He merely attended the school board meeting on June 22 to make sure what he said happened to his daughter never happens to another girl in Loudoun County.

But after being provoked by a pro-LGBT activist who accused his daughter of being a liar, Smith faced possible jail time for disorderly conduct, even though such cases are almost universally dropped, according to Lancaster.

The lead prosecutor in Loudoun County, Buta Biberaj, took it upon herself to personally prosecute Smith’s case, The Daily Wire reported, a decision the outlet attributed to Biberaj’s close relationship with the progressive members of the Loudoun County school board.

Smith was convicted Aug. 17 of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to LoudounNow, a local online news outlet.

Biberaj won the office in a 2019 election, after she received $845,000 in campaign funds from billionaire George Soros, according to The Daily Wire. Her Republican opponent spent a total of $113,000, The Daily Wire reported.

In recent years, Soros’ money has been behind a “rogue prosecutors movement,” where candidates ran on an extremely progressive platform of leniency and alternatives to incarceration.

Despite a soft-on-criminals philosophy, Biberaj sought jail time for Smith. He was sentenced to 10 days behind bars, but it was suspended as long as he stays out of trouble for a year, according to LoudounNow.

Given Biberaj’s radical political leanings, her push for a harsher sentence should come as no surprise.

To progressives like her, Smith is nothing more than a domestic terrorist.

A Bravo network TV personality is under fire from the left after she shared her shock over a bizarre story in which she said small girls were exposed to a so-called transgender girl’s penis this past summer at a camp.

Only in today’s depraved society could a mother who is bothered by the thought of young girls being exposed to male genitalia become the villain. But that is what has happened to former “The Real Housewives of New York City” star Bethenny Frankel when she took on the transgender lobby this week.

The TV personality recently spoke on her “Just B” podcast about an incident she’d heard about from a friend which she said had happened recently at an all-girls camp.

“It’s an all-girls camp and a person with a penis, who identifies as being a girl, went to the camp and was in the bunk with the girls,” Frankel told her listeners. “And the girls saw her — because it’s her, because it’s a male anatomy but identifying as a woman — so the other girls saw a penis.”

“They’re like 9, 10 years old, so the parents … obviously weren’t that happy,” she added.

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Frankel also commented she’d heard that this “trans girl” at the camp had been “making out with a lot of the different girls at the camp.”

Frankel further angered the pronoun warriors during the podcast by sharing a story about her 11-year-old daughter’s experiences in school with gender hysteria.

“We have to go into the fact that I did a Zoom for my daughter’s school and [had] the pronouns conversation with each teacher, each parent, each child,” she complained. “And my daughter says in school, too, that everybody has to say their pronouns.”

“And my daughter didn’t even know what hers were,” she added. “[She said], ‘I know what I am or what I think I am, but I never have said it out loud. It hasn’t come up for me.’ So she didn’t know.”

Naturally, Frankel was attacked and accused of being a bigot.

Your comments promote anti-trans rhetoric and the idea that #trans people aren’t welcome in spaces with cis people. That’s hateful and wrong.

Imagine how this innocent kid must feel hearing your words, @Bethenny.https://t.co/Mxf5bJISCB

— Jack Turban MD 🏳️‍🌈🧠 (@jack_turban) September 29, 2021

Hi Beth! I was going to quote the transphobic language you used in the horrific intro to this episode, but it’s too hurtful to even put it in writing. Maybe do the bare minimum of research before you speak to your audience? https://t.co/x56eMpCOMH

— Matt McConkey (@mattmcconkey) September 25, 2021

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After Page Six got involved, Frankel resounded and made it clear she wouldn’t be walking the comments back in the face of potential cancelation.

Listen to the podcast. Then comment. I was absolutely not wrong. And I’m going to discuss this again this week. Thankfully I have a platform to clarify what the media loves to distort. @justbpodcast ps. I’m not afraid of cancelation so not afraid of charged discussions. https://t.co/FDVsKUCWan

— Bethenny Frankel (@Bethenny) September 28, 2021

Ok I’m going to attempt sleep. My new book cover shoot is in the am & @PageSix says I’m transphobic so it must be true…or listen to @justbpodcast & decide for yourself. Gotta sell papers. #donthatetheplayerhatethegame 😘

— Bethenny Frankel (@Bethenny) September 28, 2021

Not apologizing….so don’t hold your breath. I didn’t do a single thing wrong. People need to be able to have discussions without fearing the cancelation citations you get excited to give. Wrong celeb. Find someone afraid to troll.

— Bethenny Frankel (@Bethenny) September 28, 2021

How sick is our culture? A mother to a young girl shared a normal reaction upon hearing that girls near her daughter’s age were exposed to a penis at camp. Many of those who responded painted her as a villain — and not a well-adjusted adult with a sound moral compass.

For now, it doesn’t look like she’ll be backing down. You never apologize to the cancel mob, and it looks like Frankel knows that.

The state of Texas sued the Biden administration on Sept. 20 over guidance issued this summer requiring employers to make certain exceptions for transgender workers.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit (pdf) against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the commission’s chair Charlotte Burrows, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Paxton argues that the guidance issued by the EEOC on June 15 this year “misstates the law” and that “Burrows did not even have authority to issue it.”

“Texas and its constituent agencies, including the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA), have the sovereign right to set their own policies on bathroom usage, dress codes, and pronoun usage within their workplaces,” the lawsuit states. “The June 15 Guidance is invalid on its face.”

The EEOC and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.

On June 15, the EEOC issued a guidance document related to the recent Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. The Supreme Court ruled that the protections against sexual discrimination in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to people with subjective gender identities.

Title VII applies to all private employers with 15 employees or more. The EEOC’s guidance went beyond the language in Title VII and staked a position on issues, including transgender access to bathrooms and that “repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee” amounts to harassment.

“States should be able to choose protection of privacy for their employers over subjective views of gender, and this illegal guidance puts many women and children at risk,” Paxton said in a statement.

“If the Biden Administration thinks they can force states to comply with their political agenda, my office will fight against their radical attempt at social change. These backdoor attempts to force businesses, including the State of Texas, to align with their beliefs is unacceptable.”

The lawsuit argues that the EEOC’s guidance is arbitrary and capricious while violating the First and Eleventh Amendments as well as Title VII itself. The plaintiffs further allege that the commission violated its own rules and failed to follow proper procedures before issuing it.

Paxton is asking the court to declare the guidance unlawful, block the defendants from enforcing it, and award the state of Texas attorneys’ fees.

A group of 20 state attorneys general sued the Biden administration in August over the issuance of interpretations of the Bostock v. Clayton County decision. The plaintiffs, led by Tennessee, argued that the EEOC and the Department of Education flouted “procedural requirements in their rush to overreach, issued ‘interpretations’ of federal antidiscrimination law far beyond what the statutory text, regulatory requirements, judicial precedent, and the Constitution permit,” according to the lawsuit (pdf).

Texas Sues Biden Administration Over Transgender Worker Right Guidance (theepochtimes.com)