Because the court transcripts are sealed to protect Varian’s private healthcare information, we don’t have precise details about the harms she endured. But more than ten years into the medical scandal, it’s not hard to imagine what they might be. We have learned about them from the brave detransitioners who have testified in legislative chambers across the country and from stories such as this one and this one, which we have published here on Inspecting Gender. The question is, why has this been so long in coming?

The answer is that Varian’s case was the first to be decided by a jury—in other words, by normies: people with no skin in the game, just an idea of what constitutes reasonable behavior, or common sense.

They listened as Varian described lifelong physical disfigurement, chronic nerve pain, shame, and regret. They heard her mother testify about being pressured to consent because she was led to believe her daughter was at risk of suicide—a fear amplified by the psychologist (Einhorn). They listened as Einhorn gave damning testimony, in which he confused body dysmorphia with gender dysphoria and stumbled over inaccuracies and omissions in approval letters. They learned about the inadequate coordination and communication between the psychologist and the surgeon, about skipped psychological evaluations, unaddressed comorbidities (depression, ADHD, autism, anorexia), and rushed processes.

It was all damning.

And yet, unlike judges who defer to self-proclaimed gender experts or politicians who somehow manage to mouth their party’s line with a straight face, the jury listened and drew the obvious conclusion.

The case was also important because it established that “affirmation-only” or rapid-transition models are not protected from malpractice claims when clinicians bypass thorough assessments, informed consent, or coordination—even when they claim to be following WPATH or similar guidelines.

Such vulnerabilities may change how insurers view gender procedures, both from the perspective of providing coverage for individuals seeking them and from that of doctors who are now at risk of malpractice claims.

The verdict was a timely reminder that even in a deep-blue state like New York, most people, when presented with the evidence, grasp the problems with gender medicine immediately. This is also why it is always worth talking to anyone —friends, neighbors, family members —who will listen. While they don’t wield the power of a politician or a judge, together reasonable people will eventually make a difference.

Nancy McDermott is the director of Genspect USA

It’s been almost three years since I stopped the hormones, the hiding, the desperate attempts at transfiguration that I had been pursuing since I was a teenager. I was physically ill, weathered, swollen, and askew from the cross-sex hormones and your haphazard surgery. The years of growing illness under the encouragement of affirming doctors had taken their toll on my body and mind. Somehow, any illness or injury attributed to the pursuit of transition was an honor that I should be grateful for, or proof of my idiocy for trusting an understudied science enough to be a lab rat.

To this day, there are spans of time where my sleep is replaced by staring at the dark ceiling, remembering the pain after my surgery. I replay the hematoma, the cyst, the orders of Tylenol, ignored calls, and eventual emergency room visits, and the confusion. That was the worst part. You were supposed to be helping me, and instead, I had the sinking feeling that once your money was paid and the body was sewn up, you no longer gave a damn. And I was considered a good result.

I remember the faces of everyone I recommended you to in the months leading up to my operation. I wonder if it was just me that you treated this way, or if I had recommended them into the hands of a woman who would rather you writhe in pain for days than impact her opioid prescription score or re-operation rate. In my heart, I know they will never speak about it, even if they experienced what I did. I know the culture they are engaged in which ingratitude for the community’s addiction of choice would never be tolerated. We were all in the habit of choosing a medical suicide over a social one. I hope, for their sake, that you had kinder hands than the ones you had for the other young women who followed me into your office. I hope for both our sakes that they don’t feel as I do. It is hard enough to live with what I have done to myself.

The hormones have been flushed from my system now. It’s taken years to return my body to its original shape. The pounds of excess weight shed like a second skin, the remainder redistributing over my frame as if it had been waiting for the opportunity to return to normalcy. Even my face settled from the swelling, my thick neck once again proportional. The only reminder that remains of my odyssey is the thick pink-and-white scars carved across my chest, the red, twisted approximations that you claimed to be nipples sitting wide and lopsided on my uneven pecs. This was a good result for you, and I deluded myself into thinking it looked natural for longer than I would care to admit. Over the following months, I realized that the edge of my old areola was tucked into the scar line, discolored, and poking ingrown hairs into the scar tissue. I felt sick. Misled. Betrayed, even, by the young, smiling doctor who had assured me of so much. What I had thought would be the last step in my transition became the last thorn in my side as I attempted to return to myself.

Ginny Welsh is an artist and writer who spent her teen and early adult years enthralled with the world of transition. Though her medical transition would be seen as "successful", the process was one of medical neglect and destruction. Disillusioned by the culture of delusion, lies, and inevitable health issues associated with transition, she finally began her detransition in 2024. She now lives as a happily married lesbian, deconstructing the industry of transition through her work.

California teachers and administrators for whom the PRISM LGBTQ training runs counter to their religious and moral values are asked to contact The National Center for Law and Policy, who can provide guidance with filing an appropriate religious exemption.

Following law school graduation, while starting his civil litigation practice, he was invited to become an affiliate attorney of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), from which Dean has received extensive training in pro-family, pro-life and pro-religious liberty matters at ADF’s outstanding National Litigation Academies (NLA). Because of Dean’s pro-bono work, he was invited to receive special training at ADF’s advanced NLA. Dean is proud to be an ADF affiliate attorney and member of ADF’s honor guard.

The Children's Education Opportunity Act is the latest attempt at providing California parents maximum flexibility when it comes to the education of their children.

2. Parents choose the best education option for their child
Parents select an eligible school that suits their child best.Options range from public and charter schools to private, faith-based institutions, and homeschooling. The chosen school coordinates with the ESA Trust board to allocate funds for educational expenses. Parents do not handle the money directly; transactions occur between the state-controlled ESA and the selected school.

3. Covered education expenses under the Education Savings Account
The ESA covers various educational expenses, including

•  transportation to and from school and school-related activities

4. Unused ESA funds roll over annually and accrue interest
Any unused funds within the student's ESA carry over each year, accruing interest to support future educational expenses throughout the student's life. This is not a voucher program where you lose the funding if you do not use it that year.

If you would like to help in the effort to gather enough signatures to get this important initiative on the 2026 ballot, please let us know.

America's Future

which means protecting our children, first and foremost, and ensuring accountability is upheld. When citizens rise, our nation thrives.

The exploitation of children is not a left-or-right issue; it is a line that no civilized society can allow to be crossed without consequence. Transparency must prevail over secrecy, and justice must be meted out wherever it may lead.

If we fail to insist on truth and accountability, we erode the very foundation this nation is built upon. And when leaders and citizens alike refuse to tolerate heinous crimes against children, we affirm that our nation’s conscience is still alive. Protecting children is not optional; it is the first duty of a moral society.

As explained in our brief, policies requiring teachers and school officials to withhold information regarding a child’s gender expression at school violate the First Amendment rights of speech and religious freedom, and substantially interfere with the fundamental rights of parents to control and direct the upbringing of their children in accord with their values, traditions, religion, and culture.  The public docket is located here.

Our brief provides an overview of the case background, as follows,

In January 2016, the California Department of Education issued a Legal Advisory together with an accompanying list of FAQs, instructing local school districts as to how California’s anti-discrimination statutes should be applied to schoolchildren identifying as transgender. The FAQs page instructed that ‘schools must consult with a transgender student to determine who can or will be informed of the student’s transgender status, if anyone, including the student’s family.’ Further, that ‘schools are required to respect the limitations that a student places on the disclosure of their transgender status, including not sharing that information with the student’s parents’…

On December 22, 2025, the district court granted summary judgment and issued a permanent injunction against California’s school policies on both Free Exercise and Substantive Due Process grounds.  Relying in significant part on the SCOTUS landmark decisions in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025)  and Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the court held that parents, including religious parents, “have the right to notice and opt out before a school socially transitions their child.” A few days later, on December 26, 2025, the Ninth Circuit blocked the district court order from taking effect when it issued an administrative stay in the case, which was eventually converted into a stay pending appeal of the entire injunction.

Our brief reminds the Court of its landmark ruling in Mahmoud (2025), including emphasizing the following, 

The practice of educating one’s children in one’s religious beliefs, like all religious acts and practices, receives a generous measure of protection from our Constitution…. And this is not merely a right to teach religion in the confines of one’s own home. Rather, it extends to the choices that parents wish to make for their children outside the home…. [T]he right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their’ children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom. 

Over a century of SCOTUS decisions establish that parents and the welfare of their children are firmly bound together and are afforded great constitutional protection.  For the reasons stated here and, as explained in our brief, the Supreme Court should reverse the Ninth Circuit injunction and remand the case for reinstatement of the district court ruling.

Freedom of Speech
Stockton v. Brown, Dkt. 25-606

On December 29, 2025, America’s Future filed an amicus brief in Stockton v. Brown, SCOTUS Dkt. 25-606. This case challenges a Washington State licensure statute compelling licensed healthcare professionals to adopt the official viewpoints of the state or jeopardize their medical license.  The statute at issue is Rev. Code Wash. § 18.130.180 subsections (1) and (13) of the state’s “unprofessional conduct” rule for physicians. Our brief was filed in support of the petitioners’ position that the statute violates freedom of speech under the First Amendment. The public docket is located here.

The challenged state law relates to alleged misinformation and so-called “dishonest” conduct by members of the medical profession.  The rule establishes that the State of Washington shall be the arbiter of truth in this instance, which raises a whole line of questions regarding the veracity of research and science that the state relies upon in its decisions to investigate or punish healthcare professionals.

Notably, the petitioners in this case are challenging disciplinary investigations against physicians Richard Eggleston and Thomas Siler.  As our brief explains,

The disciplinary board allege that ‘Dr. Eggleston’s articles minimized deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, incorrectly asserted that PCR tests for a COVID diagnosis are inaccurate, and falsely stated that COVID-19 vaccines and mRNA vaccines are harmful or ineffective and that ivermectin is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.’ It also alleges that ‘Dr. Siler wrote false statements about the risks of contracting COVID-19, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for COVID-19, the transmissibility of COVID-19 from children, and the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.’

Our brief confirms that the Ninth Circuit erred in its understanding that “professional speech” gets lesser protection than other speech, arguing that the statute chills speech in a profession that advances new ideas and dissenting scientific viewpoints.

The question presented here is one of the most important free speech issues of the day — whether states may rely on the ‘police power’ of occupational licensing to crush dissenting views to prop up the state’s viewpoint on disputed matters of health and wellness.

Editor’s Note: To read more details about this filing, along with other briefs filed by America’s Future, please visit our Law & Policy page.

Christian Teachers Must Remain Strong!

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior...  Psalm 25:5

is no mere professional development. It is an ideological loyalty test demanding that educators affirm beliefs about gender and sexuality that directly contradict biblical truth.

Yet there is good news: Christian teachers do not have to surrender their faith to keep their jobs. Under both the First Amendment and federal and state civil rights laws, they have the right to request a religious exemption from trainings that violate their sincerely held beliefs.

That’s why the National Center for Law and Policy, led by constitutional attorney Dean Broyles, is stepping forward to defend teachers of faith who refuse to compromise their convictions. “Teachers’ civil rights do not evaporate when they enter our public schools,” Broyles said. “California’s coercive mandatory PRISM LGBTQ identity cultural competency training directly conflicts with and seeks to actively undermine the deeply held religious beliefs of millions of California families, students, and public-school teachers.”

What the Law Demands — and Why It Is Unconstitutional

Under AB 5, public school teachers in grades 7-12 must complete the PRISM Training, or a closely aligned alternative, which instructs participants to affirm concepts like gender fluidity and to use students’ self-selected pronouns, even when doing so violates their conscience. The program also directs teachers to withhold information from parents about a child’s gender identity if the child has not given permission, falsely claiming that minors have a “right to privacy” from their own parents.

The training explicitly labels traditional Christian beliefs as harmful “heteronormativity,” “homophobic,” and “transphobic,” and equates adherence to biblical truth with discrimination. In essence, teachers are told they must deny their faith or face discipline.

A recent federal court ruling in Mirabelli v. Olson reaffirmed that public school districts cannot compel teachers to lie to parents or affirm gender ideology in violation of their faith. The court condemned such policies as a “trifecta of harm” to teachers, students, and parents. That decision opened the door for teachers statewide to challenge similar unconstitutional policies.

One Teacher’s Example of Courage

One Southern California teacher, represented by Broyles, has formally requested a religious accommodation from his district. In Broyles’s letter to school officials, he explains that the teacher’s faith requires him to speak truthfully, honor parents’ rights, and affirm that God created humanity male and female (Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4). Participating in PRISM training would force him to endorse falsehoods about human sexuality and violate his conscience before God.

“The government has no legitimate place marginalizing, shaming, and demonizing the sincere religious beliefs of its good citizens,” Broyles wrote. “State and local LGBTQ+ laws or policies do not supersede well-established federal constitutional rights or a teacher’s right to be free from religious discrimination.”

Broyles also warned that districts cannot retaliate against teachers who request religious accommodation, and that his office will be monitoring any cases of harassment or discrimination.

A Call for Courage

Many Christian teachers are afraid. They worry that refusing the training might cost them their jobs or reputations. Others are tempted to simply “click through” the training and answer as the state demands, just to keep the peace. But as followers of Christ, we are called to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) and to stand firm in truth even when pressured to conform.

CFC’s Call to Action

California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt is urging both teachers and school board members to take a public stand for truth.

“Christian teachers should not quietly comply with a state mandate that calls evil good and good evil,” said Greg Burt, Vice President of California Family Council. “By standing up for their own rights, teachers are also defending the civil rights of parents and students, protecting every family’s freedom to live and speak according to biblical truth. We need courageous believers in every classroom and on every school board willing to draw a line and say, ‘We will not bow.’ Our children need to see adults who are unashamed to stand for God’s truth about life, family, and gender, no matter the cost.”

Take Action

If you are a Christian teacher being forced to take this training, you have legal options. Contact the National Center for Law and Policy for assistance in drafting a religious accommodation request. You can also reach out to California Family Council for resources and support.

Now is not the time for silent compliance. The next generation of students is watching. When faithful teachers stand firm, they bear witness to the truth that God, not the government, defines human identity, morality, and truth.

Just as Daniel, Esther, and the three Hebrew men stood unashamed before kings and rulers, California’s Christian teachers must now stand before their school boards and declare:

“We will not bow.”

An Inconvenient Truth

Statistically, nearly every mass shooting over the last several decades has been committed by biological males. This pattern stretches across countries, cultures, and generations. It predates modern debates about gender identity. Violence at that scale is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon.

So what is happening with men?

We are clearly facing a crisis in male mental health. Isolation, resentment, identity confusion, anger without purpose, untreated trauma. These are not political talking points. They are realities documented in research.

But instead of carefully examining the psychological roots of this crisis, we often seem to respond with affirmation first and evaluation second.

Compassion is essential. But compassion without careful clinical assessment can become something else entirely.

When someone struggles deeply with identity, that pain deserves thoughtful, professional attention. It deserves rigorous psychological care. It deserves honesty.

Where were these identity crises in the 70s, 80s, and 90s at the scale we see today? Why are so many young men reporting confusion, alienation, and detachment from their own bodies and purpose? Is this purely individual, or are there social influences amplifying vulnerability?

These are legitimate questions.

If a person believes something about themselves that causes severe distress, the humane response is not mockery. It is not cruelty. But neither is it automatic affirmation without exploration.

Mental health care should be evidence-based, cautious, and individualized. Especially with young people.

We must be careful not to let ideology replace clinical judgment.

The issue is not compassion versus rejection. The issue is whether we are truly helping people, or simply validating them without addressing deeper roots.

Society owes struggling young men more than slogans.

It owes them truth, structure, purpose, and careful psychological care.

If we cannot have that conversation honestly, we risk continuing down a path we do not fully understand or ever will.

Congress Wants to Hand Your Parenting to Big Tech

Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing today on “examining the effect of technology on America’s youth.” Witnesses warned about “addictive” online content, mental health, and kids spending too much time buried in screen. At the center of the debate is a bill from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) called the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA), which they say will protect children and “empower parents.” 

That’s a reasonable goal, especially at a time when many parents feel overwhelmed and nervous about how much time their kids spend on screens. But while the bill’s press release contains soothing language, KOSMA doesn’t actually give parents more control. 

Instead of respecting how most parents guide their kids towards healthy and educational content, KOSMA hands the control panel to Big Tech. That’s right—this bill would take power away from parents, and hand it over to the companies that lawmakers say are the problem.  

Kids Under 13 Are Already Banned From Social Media

One of the main promises of KOSMA is simple and dramatic: it would ban kids under 13 from social media. Based on the language of bill sponsors, one might think that’s a big change, and that today’s rules let kids wander freely into social media sites. But that’s not the case.   

Most Social Media Use By Younger Kids Is Family-Mediated 

If lawmakers picture under-13 social media use as a bunch of kids lying about their age and sneaking onto apps behind their parents’ backs, they’ve got it wrong. Serious studies that have looked at this all find the opposite: most under-13 use is out in the open, with parents’ knowledge, and often with their direct help. 

A large national study published last year in Academic Pediatrics found that 63.8% of under-13s have a social media account, but only 5.4% of them said they were keeping one secret from their parents. That means roughly 90% of kids under 13 who are on social media aren’t hiding it at all. Their parents know. (For kids aged thirteen and over, the “secret account” number is almost as low, at 6.9%.) 

Earlier research in the U.S. found the same pattern. In a well-known study of Facebook use by 10-to-14-year-olds, researchers found that about 70% of parents said they actually helped create their child’s account, and between 82% and 95% knew the account existed. Again, this wasn’t kids sneaking around. It was families making a decision together.

A 2022 study by the UK’s media regulator Ofcom points in the same direction, finding that up to two-thirds of social media users below the age of thirteen had direct help from a parent or guardian getting onto the platform. 

The typical under-13 social media user is not a sneaky kid. It’s a family making a decision together.

KOSMA Forces Platforms To Override Families 

This bill doesn’t just set an age rule. It creates a legal duty for platforms to police families.

Section 103(b) of the bill is blunt: if a platform knows a user is under 13, it “shall terminate any existing account or profile” belonging to that user. And “knows” doesn’t just mean someone admits their age. The bill defines knowledge to include what is “fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances”—in other words, what a reasonable person would conclude from how the account is being used. The reality of how services would comply with KOSMA is clear: rather than risk liability for how they should have known a user was under 13, they will require all users to prove their age to ensure that they block anyone under 13. 

KOSMA contains no exceptions for parental consent, for family accounts, or for educational or supervised use. The vast majority of people policed by this bill won’t be kids sneaking around—it will be minors who are following their parents’ guidance, and the parents themselves. 

Imagine a child using their parent’s YouTube account to watch science videos about how a volcano works. If they were to leave a comment saying, “Cool video—I’ll show this to my 6th grade teacher!” and YouTube becomes aware of the comment, the platform now has clear signals that a child is using that account. It doesn’t matter whether the parent gave permission. Under KOSMA, the company is legally required to act. To avoid violating KOSMA, it would likely  lock, suspend, or terminate the account, or demand proof it belongs to an adult. That proof would likely mean asking for a scan of a government ID, biometric data, or some other form of intrusive verification, all to keep what is essentially a “family” account from being shut down.

Violations of KOSMA are enforced by the FTC and state attorneys general. That’s more than enough legal risk to make platforms err on the side of cutting people off.

Platforms have no way to remove “just the kid” from a shared account. Their tools are blunt: freeze it, verify it, or delete it. Which means that even when a parent has explicitly approved and supervised their child’s use, KOSMA forces Big Tech to override that family decision.

These companies don’t know your family or your rules. They only know what their algorithms infer. Under KOSMA, those inferences carry the force of law. Rather than parents or teachers, decisions about who can be online, and for what purpose, will be made by corporate compliance teams and automated detection systems. 

What Families Lose 

This debate isn’t really about TikTok trends or doomscrolling. It’s about all the ordinary, boring, parent-guided uses of the modern internet. It’s about a kid watching “How volcanoes work” on regular YouTube, instead of the stripped-down YouTube Kids. It’s about using a shared Spotify account to listen to music a parent already approves. It’s about piano lessons from a teacher who makes her living from YouTube ads.

These aren’t loopholes. They’re how parenting works in the digital age. Parents increasingly filter, supervise, and, usually, decide together with their kids. KOSMA will lead to more locked accounts, and more parents submitting to face scans and ID checks. It will also lead to more power concentrated in the hands of the companies Congress claims to distrust. 

What Can Be Done Instead

KOSMA also includes separate restrictions on how platforms can use algorithms for users aged 13 to 17. Those raise their own serious questions about speech, privacy, and how online services work, and need debate and scrutiny as well. But they don’t change the core problem here: this bill hands control over children’s online lives to Big Tech.

If Congress really wants to help families, it should start with something much simpler and much more effective: strong privacy protections for everyone. Limits on data collection, restrictions on behavioral tracking, and rules that apply to adults as well as kids would do far more to reduce harmful incentives than deputizing companies to guess how old your child is and shut them out.

But if lawmakers aren’t ready to do that, they should at least drop KOSMA and start over. A law that treats ordinary parenting as a compliance problem is not protecting families—it’s undermining them.

Parents don’t need Big Tech to replace them. They need laws that respect how families actually work.

Support School Board Trustees

Who Protect Children and Promote Liberty

California Chapters of Moms for Liberty Endorse Sonja Shaw 

for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction

AI Is Coming For Your Kids. What Will Parents Do?

An opinion piece written by Tina Descovich which appeared in The Daily Signal on February 12 2026

All the parenting books in the world five years ago could not have fathomed the ubiquitous presence of artificial intelligence in our children’s lives today.

If parents remain ignorant of AI’s true power, we risk surrendering our children to the deepest, darkest psychological abyss humanity has ever encountered. 

A few weeks ago, I joined the White House Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force meeting in Washington. It was an honor to have a seat at the table. I’m so grateful this administration recognizes that artificial intelligence holds enormous power and that the next generation of Americans must be introduced to this technology strategically.

During the meeting, I emphasized that policymakers in Washington must do everything within their power to ensure parents have the keys to the AI toolbox. That requires a few practical steps that businesses, families, and governments must work together to implement:

1. Mandate that platforms adopt strong safety protections, including crisis response protocols and mechanisms that limit addictive design features. Our children should not become algorithmic robots just to pad a company’s bottom line, and businesses need to fund research on the long-term developmental impacts of AI usage among children while governments establish clinical trial and licensure requirements. 
2. Establish clear data protection standards for platforms that collect information from minors, with meaningful penalties for noncompliance. Minors cannot consent to their data being collected, and without real-world consequences for companies that violate the privacy of minors (in their pursuit of higher profits), no real change will ever materialize. 
3. Ban artificial intelligence from being used in mental health services and social-emotional learning. The psychological consequences of replacing human interaction with technology are chilling, and mental health counseling by an algorithm threatens to exacerbate any preexisting struggles a young child may have.

(CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)            

Our conversation with the administration was extremely productive. 

Following our meeting, Moms for Liberty signed the AI Education Pledge, committing to help shape expectations for the responsible advancement of AI in American education.

That pledge included a promise to develop tools and resources that empower parents to support innovation in AI education while ensuring children are protected and parental rights are upheld.

This week, Moms for Liberty is fulfilling that promise by releasing our Artificial Intelligence Education Initiative, a comprehensive resource designed to help parents, lawmakers, educators, and families navigate the rapidly expanding use of artificial intelligence in K-12 education while defending parental rights, student privacy, and academic integrity. 

The resources within this initiative function as a toolkit for parents, and include model legislation, school board policies, parental rights pledges, and guidance documents that establish guardrails to ensure AI remains a tool under human oversight, not an authority over children’s education. 

AI has the potential to be a helpful supplement, but it must never be given the authority to replace educators, override parents, or shape the worldview and mental health of America’s children. 

This is a new frontier, and parents cannot be complacent about its existence. Your child will encounter artificial intelligence at home and in school. But as their parent, you get to define the relationship. As you navigate this new challenge and fight to guard your children, remember that Moms for Liberty is fighting alongside you, and that artificial intelligence is no match against parental instinct.

George Washington's Prayer

I pledge to defend parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s education and upbringing. Any use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in K–12 schools must serve families, protect students, and respect parental authority. I support the following guardrails for the creation and implementation of AI in K–12 education.

A Book for Every California Parent's Reading List

They also offer practical advice based on hard-earned experience that won't be found in mainstream media. Whether progressive or conservative, gay or straight, secular or religious, they all share the aim of protecting children from the physical and emotional harms of the gender industry and seek to empower and encourage other parents and individuals to combat gender ideology at home, in schools, in clinics, and beyond

LGBTQ Loses Ground

An opinion piece written by Tyler O'Neil which appeared in The Daily Signal on February 14 2026

This represents a massive hit to the transgender industrial complex, but conservatives shouldn’t rest on their laurels. In the very press release where HRC admits its massive losses, it touts its abiding impact: the companies still working with HRC employ over 22 million Americans.

HRC’s Social Credit Score

The Human Rights Campaign bills itself as “the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” and it takes credit for “transforming the institutions and systems that shape our everyday lives by advancing LGBTQ+ inclusive policies and practices in schools, workplaces, hospitals, communities and beyond.”

That sounds noble. Americans support being “inclusive,” right? Yet many Americans vehemently disagree with HRC’s interpretation of this purported “inclusion.”

When it comes to transgender orthodoxy, “inclusion” means allowing men into women’s intimate spaces. In the corporate setting, it means forcing employees to endorse the lie that a man can become a woman and vice versa. It means celebrating as “joyful” behaviors that many Americans of good conscience consider sinful or depraved. The “inclusion” travels only in one direction.

How does HRC “transform” institutions? Its Corporate Equality Index gives every major company a rating to show just how pro-“equality” the company is. Investors in the environmental, social, and governance movement used the index to determine where their money goes, and this made the index extremely powerful.

Like the mafia or Al Capone, the Human Rights Campaign promises these brands protection from the Left’s activist investors and protester shock troops in exchange for a generous cut. In order to demonstrate their “inclusion,” companies make contributions to LGBTQ groups, partner with transgender influencers like Dylan Mulvaney, and promote rainbow products.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, HRC released a list of policy preferences, and Biden’s administration met at least 75% of them. Examples include massive policies—like reinterpreting civil rights law to allow men to invade women’s spaces—and mundane policies—like directing Border Patrol to use the preferred pronouns of illegal aliens.

This conservative engagement led companies whose customer bases aren’t a good fit for HRC—firms like Molson Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Lowe’s—to leave HRC in 2024.

Backlash to Transgenderism

Under Trump’s second term, the trend has only accelerated. Not only has the federal government rejected transgender orthodoxy and DEI, but the medical industry is also starting to wake up to just how destructive transgender orthodoxy can be.

Public Education Is Not Without Costs

An opinion piece written by Virginia Allen which appeared in The Daily Signal on February 17 2026

Children should not receive a free education at America’s public schools unless they are lawfully present in the United States, a new report from The Heritage Foundation contends.

States and local governments have been “overwhelmed with costs that flow from illegal immigration, including public education,” Lora Ries, director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of the report, tells The Daily Signal.

The new report, titled “Every State Should Challenge Plyler v. Doe: Time to End Free Education for Illegal Alien K-12 Students,” argues that the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe should be overturned. It presents model state legislation to allow schools to charge tuition to students who are illegally present in the U.S.

Similarly, about half the states across the U.S. allow counties to charge families tuition if the family does not reside in the school district.

“If you’re charging tuition for a U.S. citizen and lawful permanent resident student from outside the school district to attend a school district, but you’re not charging illegal alien students, then you’re treating U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents worse—it is not equal protection,” Ries says.

Limited Resources

The 34-page report points out the limited resources of most school districts and the challenges that arise when an illegal alien student arrives at a school and requires additional attention or specialized resources due to language barriers.

“States, which are responsible for K-12 education, have a clear basis to, at a minimum, charge tuition for illegal alien students to recoup these costs, maintain a manageable teacher-to-student ratio in the classrooms so that students may receive a quality education, and collect the resources needed for the additional supplies and classroom facilities,” the report states.

Many public schools in the U.S. experienced a spike in enrollments of English as a Second Language students amid the influx of migrants crossing the southern border during the four years of the Biden administration.

In California, for example, there were over 1.1 million students enrolled as English Language Learners in 2021, according to the Migration Policy Institute. By 2024, data shows over 3.5 million immigrant children living in California, indicating a significant rise in public school enrollment.

Legislation

In 2025, Tennessee, Texas, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, and New Jersey introduced measures to either charge illegal aliens tuition or report on students unlawfully present in the U.S. However, none of the bills became law.

If a state does succeed in passing legislation to charge tuition to illegal immigrant children, “of course they will be sued, and Plyler should be overturned,” Ries says.

of legal residency, they may still be enrolled in the school, but “the district shall collect, either from the student, third parties, or local government funding sources, the standard nonresident tuition rate applied to all nonresident students who are admitted to the school.”

The model legislation also includes annual reporting requirements to ensure the law is being followed.

Free K-12 education is “one of many benefits downstream from illegal immigration,” according to Ries, “and if we want to really reduce illegal immigration, we need to turn off those downstream benefits.”

Allen Dalton Speaking Simple Common Truths

Moms for Liberty Santa Clara Works with 917 Society

Getting Constitutions into the hands of every 8^th grader

Mark Your Calendar...

Midterms are Fast Approaching. Your Vote Is Vitally Important

Teach the Children Well

America Celebrates Its 250^th Birthday

1776-2026

Rooting Out Pornographic Books In School Libraries

The campaign to purge pornographic books from public school libraries is gaining serious momentum. Take Back the Classroom has widened its reach — new states, new districts, and yes, all 50 states are now covered..

TakeBacktheClassroom.com now provides a powerful tool to equip parents and communities with a means to stand up, speak out, and pull explicit material out of school districts once and for all.

What Sets Karen's Effort Apart

Nationwide Library Database:

We maintain the only nationwide database that allows parents and community members to look directly into their public school library collections. Users can identify sexually explicit books available on the shelves and review excerpts from each title.

Focused on Results, Not Ratings:

We do not assign ratings to books. While rating systems can offer educational context, they ultimately work against the goal of removing sexually explicit materials. Ratings often suggest that such content simply needs to be labeled or categorized rather than eliminated. This weakens effective action. In short, ratings hinder the cause, our focus is on results. (More information about our decision not to use ratings will be available soon.)

Book Reports in Spanish:

We provide book reports in Spanish to ensure that all families, regardless of language, can access critical information about what is in their children’s schools.

Free Resources to Support Action:

Our website offers a comprehensive library of free materials to equip parents, advocates, and community leaders who are working to protect students from sexually explicit books. Resources include:

• ·      A step-by-step guide for the book removal process

• ·      Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

• ·      A model challenge letter to formally request book removal

• ·      Guidance for addressing objections and opposition

• ·      A model policy for school boards to adopt 

• ·      Personalized staff support for those actively working to remove books

What We Are Up Against

The organizations working to block parents and push and defend having sexually explicit materials in schools are powered by massive donor funding:

• ACLU Foundation — $169.1M (FY2024)
• ACLU (c)(4) — $141.3M (FY2024)
• American Library Association (ALA) — $25.3M (2024)
• PEN America — $21.2M (2023)

That’s over $356 million in donations driving pressure campaigns, legal intimidation, and public messaging designed to make parents back down. Please do not back down!

Ongoing Education and Updates:

A regularly updated blog is maintained featuring the latest developments related to sexually explicit materials in schools. In addition, we offer training webinars to educate, empower, and connect individuals engaged in this important work.

At every level focus remains the same, namely to provide clear, practical tools that lead to meaningful results and protect the hearts and minds of our children.

Soren Aldaco's Medical Malpractice Case

Tests Legal Time Limits for Detransitioners

Background to Soren Aldaco’s Transition

Soren Aldaco epitomises in many ways the complex personal history and troubled background of many detransitioners, both in terms of her uncertain identity/attachment patterns and in terms of her major vulnerabilities to trans recruitment. Brought up by her single mother for the first four years of her life, Soren was diagnosed with ADHD at 5 years, and was treated for this with medication. A socially isolated child and something of a tomboy, she began identifying as a boy around age 9. Around 11, she became absorbed in online fandom culture as a form of escape. Then at 15, she made dramatic contact with her estranged father, which was quickly followed by her breakdown and then admission for psychiatric inpatient treatment.

This hospital admission seemed, by her account, to be a major turning point in her life. According to Soren, a psychiatrist persuaded her that she was really transgender, but then ‘outed’ her to her mother and family. “Soren felt pressured to prove to herself and those around her that her identity as a boy was real. She stopped wearing dresses and makeup, gave up on her dream of playing collegiate softball, began binding her chest full-time, insisted that her family call her by her “boy name,” and viewed the possibility of hormones and surgery more like a legitimate possibility.”

Moving Towards Surgical Intervention

Also around this time, Soren received multiple diagnoses for depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and autism. Her mother resisted the professional encouragement of her transgender identity, but her father and stepmother were more accepting of this stance. Soren joined a transgender support group, coming into contact there with a nurse practitioner who also had a trans child. Through the nurse practitioner, she then started on hormone treatment, at the same time as her new partner, who was also just starting treatment. “It’s interesting, both of these major points in my transition—the beginning of my social transition and the beginning of my medical transition—involved me being in a relationship with another trans person,” Soren said. “We were able to transition together.” Hormone treatment was prescribed by a nurse practitioner, i.e., in the form of testosterone and estrogen blockers, allegedly without Soren undergoing any formal psychological evaluation.

Later, heavily impacted by both the break-up of her tumultuous relationship with her then partner and the enforced social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Soren decided to undergo ‘top surgery’. This is the childlike euphemism widely used by gender affirming clinicians for a double mastectomy, i.e., the surgical removal of both breasts. Under the U.S. system, Soren required a letter of confirmation from a therapist to obtain this surgery. In her view, she provided just the right kind of material needed for the therapist’s letter. But, in reality, she hadn’t actually been presenting socially as a male for 12 months, as claimed in the letter, largely because of COVID restrictions. Once again, the connective web of trans relationships seemed influential here – the therapist herself apparently had a trans-identified ex-partner.

Impact of Gender Identity Surgery

Two weeks after the double mastectomy at age 19, Soren experienced exceptionally heavy bleeding, requiring a nightmarish trip to undergo emergency medical care. In addition, she experienced some of the wider side effects of medical transition, including vaginal atrophy, hormone fluctuations, joint pain, and gastrointestinal issues. She says she began to regret the surgery, and later stopped taking cross-sex hormones, and started to detransition soon after this.

Part of this journey involved a brutally frank re-examination of her own experiences. Through this process, Soren has learned to be more compassionate toward herself and to practice mindfulness to manage her ongoing distress. In her video, she comes across as a vibrant young woman, keen to get on with her life. This positive outlook, in turn, has contributed to her decision to pursue legal action against the professionals involved in her care, partly for redress and partly to raise wider issues about the systemic failings in medical transition. Thus, Soren explains: “I originally sued the psychiatrist. I sued the nurse practitioner who prescribed me hormones at age 17 without my mother’s consent. I sued the therapist who wrote the letter for my double mastectomy and then dropped me a month before I actually had the mastectomy.”

Taking the Legal Route

There is, however, many a slip between making a legal claim for malpractice and actually winning a case in court. Soren has had to launch separate legal actions against the various parties providing her care, rather like testing the separate links in a chain. Hence, there have been separate actions against the psychiatrist, the nurse practitioner, the therapist, and the surgeon. So far, all these cases have been dismissed, except the case against the therapist who provided the original letter recommending surgery. This case also failed in a lower court on the grounds that it was time-barred. Texas has a two-year statute of limitations, set by the state’s 2003 Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform Act. Soren and her supporters are challenging this bar in the Texas Supreme Court. They claim that this time limit disadvantages detransitioners, who may only realise the harms of medical transition several years later. Crucially, any delay in detransitioning will likely render their cases outside the narrow two-year window for bringing a civil action for damages.

This presents very real problems for detransitioners. Dr Lisa Littman, one of the leading researchers on detransition, has found that the mean (average) age for participants in her study to start identifying as transgender was 17 years. Again, on average, this transgender identification lasted slightly more than 5 years, leading to detransition at around age 22 years. So, given the fluidity and back-and-forth nature of this rollercoaster process, most detransitioners would not meet a two-year rule for bringing their case, should they be so minded.

It is hard to estimate the potential scope of future legal action by detransitioners with any degree of certainty. Leor Sapir, for example, suggests that the number of ‘gender affirming’ double mastectomies for girls under 18 in the US between 2017 and 2023 was between 5,288 and 6,294. This figure includes 50 to 179 girls who were 12.5 or younger at the time of their procedure. Not all individuals in this sample will necessarily detransition, as detransition rates are little researched and therefore largely unknown, but some may decide to do so in the future.

Shifting our perspective away from the medical angle and toward the legal end of the telescope, Ben Ryan has constructed a provisional database of known U.S. detransitioner legal cases, now running in the mid-twenties. Using the recorded outcomes to construct a table, the following diagram indicates the outcomes for which data are known.

Outcome of US Detransitioner Legal Cases

Table: Outcome of US detransitioner legal cases at February 2026. (Data source: Ryan, 2026)

The information is currently patchy, but these data suggest that detransitioner lawsuits are already building up in numbers. ‘Timing out’ of legal claims via existing legislation may lead to increased pressure for such bans to be revisited in the future, if it is perceived that such time limits unfairly penalize detransitioners, where the realization of the nature of their perceived harm allegedly caused by ‘gender affirming care’ simply arrives too late for them to bring their case to court.

One of Many

One of the cases marked as ‘Pending’ in the Table above is the one currently being brought by Soren Aldaco. Her case before the Texas Supreme Court is now to present arguments for revisiting the two-year statute of limitations in cases like hers. In a nutshell, her case is a compelling moral argument for legal reform. “Children deserve better than plastic surgery and hormones,” she told the state lawmakers. “The gender-affirming care I experienced in adolescence was an elaborate placebo.”

Peter Jenkins is a counsellor, supervisor, trainer and researcher in the UK. He has published a number of books on legal aspects of therapy, including Professional Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Ethics and the Law (Sage, 2017).

Detransitioner Chloe Cole Speaks Truth

The Scars I Carry

warned me about urinary incontinence, or how vaginal atrophy could make menstruation and sexual intimacy painful, even years later. These are the things no one wants to talk about. But I live with them every day.

Debilitating pain is now a regular part of my cycle—sharp, stabbing internal cramping that feels almost foreign in a body that was chemically suppressed and surgically altered. The atrophy caused by years of testosterone has left my tissues fragile and dry, making even basic intimacy or medical exams uncomfortable, sometimes unbearable. I’ve cried in silence, ashamed of what’s become of my body, trying to explain symptoms to doctors who either don’t understand or don’t want to engage with my history.

One of my greatest fears now is pregnancy. Not infertility, though that’s a concern too, but the question of whether my body will be able to carry a child safely if I do become pregnant. Will the pelvic floor issues cause complications during labor? Will the atrophied tissue recover enough to support the changes of pregnancy? I don’t know. The truth is, neither do most doctors. No long-term studies were done on children who medically transitioned and then detransitioned. We are the data.

I grieve the loss of my ability to breastfeed. I had a double mastectomy as a teenager, believing it would bring me peace. But now, as I imagine the possibility of one day holding my own child, I wonder how I’ll feed them. Formula shortages have already shown us how vulnerable that system can be. Donor milk is hard to come by, expensive, and not always accessible. What happens if I can’t give my baby what they need because of choices I made before I was old enough to drive?

The grief is layered. There’s the regret, which is complex, personal, and often made taboo by activists who insist detransition is rare or irrelevant. There’s the fear for my future, the shame of having to explain my body to new doctors, new partners, and possibly, one day, to my children. There’s the loss of trust in the adults and institutions who were supposed to protect me, and trust in my own ability to make safe decisions for myself.

I don’t want pity. I want honesty. I want conversations that acknowledge the complexity of regret, the permanence of these medical decisions, and the very real physical costs we’re left to manage. I want better care for detransitioners. Real, evidence-based care that doesn’t begin and end with a political agenda. I want people to know what can happen when a body is not allowed to grow.

Because these scars are mine. I didn’t choose all of them—but I carry them, every day.

Articles On Detransitioning Legal Activities

Off The Press  @OffThePress1            

“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” said Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books at Pepperdine University. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”

Wilson admitted she now spends class time “tap dancing” and reading passages out loud because she can no longer count on students to do the work at home. “Even when you read it in class with them, there’s so much they can’t process about the very words that are on the page,” she added.

The issue isn’t limited to undergraduate programs. At Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, one of the nation’s top-tier business schools, a professor revealed that up to half of the students every semester now identify as “novice or reluctant” readers. Experts believe years of standardized testing, which encourages scanning for specific answers rather than deep comprehension, has robbed a generation of the ability to engage with lengthy texts.

University of Notre Dame theology professor Timothy O’Malley has seen the shift firsthand. He noted that earlier in his career, assigning 25 to 40 pages per class was the norm. “Today, if you assign that amount of reading, they often don’t know what to do,” O’Malley said. He warned that students are increasingly using AI for “cliff’s notes,” which ultimately miss the nuances of the material.

While some critics label the shift to reading aloud as “coddling,” other educators are prioritizing engagement over traditional metrics. Abilene Christian University professor Brad East argued for a more relaxed approach. “It isn’t important to me to have stress-filled cumulative exams, nor do I particularly care about grade inflation,” East told Fortune. “I want them to learn.”

However, for Wilson, the stakes go beyond the classroom. She fears a future where a lack of shared literacy leads to increased social isolation. “I think losing that—polarization, anxiety, loneliness, a lack of friendship, all of these things happen when you don’t have a society that reads together,” she said.

Far-left activists are radicalizing high school students to take on ICE as cops hunt two youngsters who attacked a federal officer, the California Post can reveal.

‘Dare To Struggle SoCal’ is urging children to skip class and “rebel against” agents across major West Coast cities.

It comes a day after an ICE worker was hit by a rock and rushed to hospital when officers faced off against up to 500 teenagers outside Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.

Central District US Attorney Bill Essayli on Saturday released pictures of the two young suspects in the attack and vowed to “criminally prosecute” them.

Dare To Struggle SoCal says its aim is to crush ICE and end mass deportations across the US by radical action in Southern California, the Post has learned.

Masterminds have mobilized across social media, with pamphlets being shared calling for help to “melt ICE” and “smash the mass deportation machine.”

California State Superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw claimed the teacher unions were also involved with the plot and slammed the use of kids as “pawns.”

A sickening message showed Dare To Struggle SoCal’s social media pages mocking the injury to a law enforcement officer, who was seen with blood running down the side of his head, calling it a “little scratch.”

Two suspects wanted for the attack. Photos posted on X by Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor Bill Essayli.

In one image the group shared, a cop brandished a Taser, with the caption: “This was one of the pigs who threatened students with Tasers at the federal building today. F*** DHS!”

Ahead of Friday’s protests, one flyer with the Dare To Struggle logo on advertised the “national school walk out”, adding: “It is right to rebel against ICE.”

Dare To Struggle SoCal, which is an offshoot of a national organization with tentacles across the country, even released a Venmo account begging for donations for those who had their cars towed.

Its mission statement online reads in part: “We’re committed to standing with the people subjected to the horrors of the American nightmare.

“We go to the neighborhoods facing police brutality, ICE raids, poverty, and evictions, talk to people about the problems they face, and organize people in collective struggle.”

Children are allowed to take one day off per year to take part in “civic or political events” in California, but they have to seek their school’s permission first.

Central District US Attorney Essayli on Saturday shared pictures of the youngsters accused of tossing the rocks that injured the ICE officer on Friday. It is unclear if they are directly related to Dare To Struggle.

He wrote: “These assaults will do nothing to stop our immigration enforcement operations. The only thing they will accomplish is ensuring violent agitators will be criminally prosecuted, juveniles included.”

California State Superintendent candidate Shaw tore into the demonstrations and suggested the children were being used as “pawns” by adult organizers.

She told the Post: “We had some kids walking out and even junior highers, so we closed the gates but some got out in other ways.

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton also slammed “far left activists taking over teachers’ unions” for the protests.

He said: “I’m hearing about this more and more from parents — they send their kids to school to get educated and they come back indoctrinated.

“This is what you get when far left activists take over the teacher unions, and teacher unions take over the schools.

“They’re putting kids in harm’s way by sending them into potentially violent confrontations, but perhaps even worse is the long term harm they’re doing by denying kids a proper education.

“No wonder we have some of the worst math and reading scores in the entire country despite spending nearly the most. We’ve got to get the politics out of our schools and education back in.”

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said: “Two Federal Protective Services officers were injured, one in the hospital with concussion and the other with a cut over his eye.

“The rioters remain at large. Assaulting federal law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime. Secretary Noem has been clear: anyone who assaults or obstructs law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Law and order will prevail.”

Dare To Struggle SoCal said in a statement to the Post: “1500+ students from 59 schools across the country walked out on February 13th, and have been doing so in the past weeks.

“We stand firmly with the brave young people in this country who took a stance against ICE’s inhumane kidnapping and murders of immigrants and protesters.

AG Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit this week against the Education Dept., disputing its claim that the California Department of Education violated FERPA and challenging its threat to withhold $4.9 billion in federal funding.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit this week against the U.S. Department of Education, disputing its claim that the California Department of Education violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and challenging its threat to withhold $4.9 billion in federal education funding.

Bonta’s lawsuit, filed against the Trump administration, seeks to block what he described as an unlawful interpretation of FERPA. At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Bonta said the California Department of Education is fully compliant with the law as written and argued that the federal agency does not have the authority to expand statutory requirements.

“The Trump administration has been fond of looking at a law that is clear on what it requires and then twisting it and changing it. Rewriting it in their own minds into something that it is not that is consistent with their own political agenda,” Bonta told The Center Square.

FERPA gives parents or guardians the right to request their children's education records. The Trump administration in January alleged that the CDE violated FERPA for attempting to “conceal information about students’ gender identity” from the parents.

“Our north star here is the law. The Trump administration cannot change the law with its own absurd rendering of it and then say you are not following the law and then withhold $5 billion,” Bonta said.

According to the complaint, the administration “unlawfully seeks to expand the requirements of FERPA by decree, reading an affirmative duty to disclose student records to parents where none exists and demanding that Plaintiff accede to this interpretation as a new condition of receiving federal education funding.”

On Bonta’s website, the office outlines various LGBTQ+ discrimination protections, including guidance stating that students have the right to disclose, or not disclose, their gender identity on their own terms, regardless of age.

Your school, whether public or private, doesn’t have the right to “out” you as LGBTQ+ to anyone without your permission, including your parents,” the website states.

Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, criticized the state’s approach in an exclusive interview with The Center Square. Burt said gender support plans, documents used by schools to support students who seek to transition, are treated as “unofficial records,” which he argues violates FERPA.

“The school is putting itself right in the middle of the relationship between parent and child and pitting them against each other,” Burt said. “You (the schools) are turning faith-based parents into the enemy that Bonta thinks he has to protect the kids from."

The California Department of Education has publicly stated there is no “unofficial records” exception under FERPA, including for documents such as gender support plans. In a letter, the department said that whether a support plan or other education record is maintained in a central file or separate location to protect student privacy, it remains subject to parental inspection and review in accordance with FERPA.

Bonta said questions surrounding parental rights are matters for policymakers to discuss, but maintained that the current dispute centers around the law.

A whopping 86% of Americans want Meta and Google held accountable for their role in a social media addiction crisis that has fueled anxiety, eating disorders and even suicide among kids, according to a survey obtained by The Post.

Meanwhile, 67%, or a two-thirds of American voters, said they were more likely to vote for US lawmakers who supported legislation that would crack down on “dangerous social media features like infinite scroll, near-constant notifications, and predatory algorithms,” the survey showed.

“This trial has already proven that there is a direct link between Big Tech’s dangerous product designs and real-world harms, and it should come as no surprise that voters are mad as hell and want Congress to do something about it,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.

One such proposal, according to the Tech Oversight Project, is the Kids Online Safety Act – a long-delayed bipartisan bill meant to enhance safety requirements on social media apps. The Senate version of the bill would impose a legal “duty of care” on companies to ensure their products are safe.

Respondents to the survey agreed that social media giants should be held accountable for evidence that has surfaced at the trial, including internal documents that revealed “companies buried research showing their products had damaging effects,” according to the results.

The online survey was conducted by polling service YouGov from Feb. 11 to Feb. 13 and had a sample size of 1,000 respondents. The margin of error was +/- 3.9%.

In one recently unsealed documented cited by the Tech Oversight Project, Meta employees discussed in 2017 how Zuckerberg “has been talking about [going after <13y/o users] for a while.” Another Meta employee responded that Zuckerberg’s focus on boosting engagement by teen users was “gross.”

In internal research slides from 2018, Facebook employee discussed how “people who are particularly sensitive to social rewards might find FB use more rewarding and therefore use it more.”

The lead plaintiff in the trial is a 20-year-old women identified only as “Kaley” or “KGM,” who alleges that deliberately addictive features in Instagram and YouTube got her hooked and fueled a downward spiral that included depression and suicidal thoughts.

During opening arguments, KGM’s lawyer Mark Lanier argued the case was as “easy as ABC,” with ABC standing for “addicting the brains of children.”

Lanier also alleged that Meta and Google would “try to blame the little girl and her parents for the trap they built” during the trial.

Attorneys for Google and Meta argue that Kaley’s issues were driven by problems in her personal life rather than the app design choices. Both companies say have have worked hard to protect online users, especially kids, from harm.

A lawyer for Google said Kaley had a five-year average watch time on YouTube of 29 minutes per day and an average daily watch time on short-form YouTube shorts of 1 minute and 14 seconds.

TikTok and Snap were originally defendants in the case, but hammered out settlements before the trial began.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri sought to downplay allegations that social media apps are addictive during his testimony last week, arguing that it was “important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use.”

“I’m sure I said that I’ve been addicted to a Netflix show when I binged it really late one night, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as clinical addiction,” said.

The Department of Education (ED) on Thursday opened an investigation into a program that may be illegally collecting and sharing student information for the purpose of “influencing elections,” the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) is investigating whether a research and advocacy program out of Tufts University is complying with federal privacy laws, ED shared with DCNF exclusively. The National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) is afforded access to student data from thousands of campuses through its partnerships, raising red flags about with whom that data is being shared and how it is being used.

thousands of colleges. The investigations seek to discover whether the data collection and sharing constitute violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which gives students — and parents of minor children — the right to decide how their personal data is disclosed.

The partnership was created following pressure from the Obama administration universities to play a bigger role in student voter participation.

A Tufts spokesman told the DCNF they have received notice of ED’s investigation and are in the process of reviewing it.

“American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research – not influencing elections,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “The Biden Administration, with little to no regard for student privacy laws, openly encouraged institutions to share and utilize student data in order to target certain populations. Our Student Privacy Policy Office will thoroughly investigate this matter to protect students’ private data and ensure that our campuses are fully aware of and comply with their responsibilities under FERPA.”

Tufts claims to provide reports to “more than one thousand campuses” through the NSLVE program for the purpose of helping colleges and universities “understand their students’ voting and registration rates.” It also “offers tailored resources and research for institutions to deploy these data to strengthen civic and political learning, close equity gaps in participation, and promote engagement on campus and beyond.”

NSC collaborates with “nearly 100% of America’s colleges and millions of students,” collecting personal student information, enrollment details and academic records.

NSC told the DCNF it is complying with the investigation and insisted it is upholding its privacy obligations under FERPA.

“As a politically neutral 501(c)(3) nonprofit, our mission is to provide trusted data and services to the education and workforce communities, supporting educational success nationwide,” NSC told the DCNF. “NSLVE is designed to encourage student civic engagement rather than advance any political agenda, and we are presently reviewing our involvement to ensure the continued integrity and impartiality of our services to institutions.”

Historically, Democrats have taken advantage of the left-leaning base on college campuses, pushing voter registration drives and often campaigning at school-sanctioned events. Voter registration groups, in partnership with universities, have made their political biases clear by promoting federally-funded jobs for campus ambassadors with “anti-racism” values.

ED is also issuing guidance reminding colleges and universities of their obligation to protect students’ privacy. Institutions using NSLVE data are at risk of violating FERPA, ED said.

The department accused the Biden administration of encouraging reckless data sharing and stated it is revoking “all Biden-era guidance and policies that encouraged institutions of higher education to participate in the NSLVE and use the data to target certain student populations.”

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Think on this...

“Many families have been emotionally blackmailed and told that they will lose their kids to suicide if they don’t agree to participate in the affirmation model. This threat is an unsubstantiated claim. When parents tap into the experiences of detransitioners, they learn that mental health often crumbles after transition. If it doesn’t work out so well on the other side, then what? It is a no-win situation for parents.”

- Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology       

“The word 'affirmation' is literally a 'positive' word, and so our gut instinct is that it must be a good thing. In reality of course an 'affirmation only' approach denies the person any thoughtful enquiry, which could be extremely helpful. After all, the phrase goes, 'a problem shared is a problem solved', and not merely a solution shared...'. The post op regretters were universally of the opinion that if they had been able to access an exploratory space in the first place, then they would not have pursued the irreversible physical steps, which they later came to regret.”

- Dr Az Hakeem           

“There are children, right now, who will never be able to experience orgasms as adults because their puberty was blocked when they were very young. Many of them will be sterile, as well. There is no way they could have consented to these losses at the age of eight, nine, ten, or eleven. And far more won't discover until years later how these brutal interventions predisposed them to the disease that typically affect those much older, such as diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, osteoporosis, and reproductive system atrophy. They, too, are currently barred from seeking justice due to their states' statute of limitations on medical malpractice."

- Anita Bartholomew, Sacrificial Lambs: A Liberal Reporter Exposes How the Progressive Left

Harms Children in the Name of Gender Ideology

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