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A recent jury verdict marks the first tremor in a building earthquake that may sever the transgender child mutilation pipeline, setting the stage for a host of lawsuits that threaten to end the medical establishment’s promotion of “gender-affirming care.”

Transgender activists push gender confusion and child mutilation in the name of “civil rights,” but we all know the dirty secret: health care companies make a killing when teenagers sign up for a lifetime of harmful “treatments” before they’re able to offer informed consent.

In fact, activists, influencers, teachers, counselors, and medical staff have effectively created a child mutilation pipeline, leading young people to identify as the gender opposite their sex and to take experimental “treatments” to make their body resemble their claimed identity.

The Child Mutilation Pipeline

Activists and influencers push the idea that a person’s inner sense of “gender” overrides his or her biological sex, and that it is “healthy” to change body chemistry in pursuit of this identity. Teachers and counselors mainstream this idea in schools, even working to hide claimed gender identities from parents.

Doctors diagnose kids with “gender dysphoria,” the painful and persistent sense of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex, and recommend “treatments.” Each step along the process involves more harms, and often sets minors on the path to more invasive “treatments.”

The first step, often called “social transition,” involves peers and authority figures using pronouns and names that align with the kid’s gender identity. Even this acts as a “powerful psychotherapeutic intervention that radically changes outcomes,” according to psychologist Dr. Stephen B. Levine.

Next, kids who haven’t undergone puberty may take gonadotropin-releasing hormones that authorities use to “chemically castrate” sex offenders. Doctors also use the drugs to extend the lives of the elderly by fighting certain cancers that feed upon estrogen or testosterone, yet some minors use them off-label to delay the natural process of puberty.

Tellingly, an FDA study found an “increased risk of [suicidal thoughts] and depression” among minors using these drugs to treat “gender dysphoria.”

Not only are these drugs not “fully reversible” as activists claim, but David Gortler, a pharmacologist who previously worked in the Food and Drug Administration, ran a preliminary analysis of FDA data and found 70,000 adverse reports for these “puberty-blocking” drugs. Adverse reactions included hallucinations, bone disorders, cardiac arrest, a clot in the heart, seizures, blindness, and even death.

Minors experiencing puberty or who have gone through puberty may take cross-sex hormones—featuring increased estrogen for boys or increased testosterone for girls. Men who take extra estrogen or other hormones to appear female, for example, face increased risks of infertility, diabetes, testicular and breast cancer, and early death, according to a study published last year.

Levine, the psychologist, warned that cross-sex hormones can have negative effects on fertility, bone density, brain development, and psychosocial well-being.

Finally, some patients suffer the ultimate debilitating “treatment”—the removal of healthy sex organs and their replacement with Frankensteinian approximations of the opposite sex’s organs. While some activist groups do not explicitly recommend such surgeries for minors and claim that minors do not undergo them, at least one study found that an estimated 3,678 minors have undergone surgical alterations in a 5-year period (including 405 minors between the ages of 12 and 18 who underwent genital surgery).

While the lifelong impacts of these sex-rejection procedures remain less than fully known, patients who undertake each of the drug and surgical “treatments” require lasting care, and become patients for life.

Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services released a peer-reviewed study finding “extremely weak evidence” that these interventions have any beneficial effect for children, and that the risks for these interventions are becoming “increasingly undeniable.”

If the child mutilation pipeline loses its veneer of scientific legitimacy, it will struggle. Yet if it loses the ability to make doctors money, the health care industry may reconsider the entire project.

The $2 Million Verdict

That’s where the story of Fox Varian comes in.

New York doctors removed the breasts of Varian, a woman who identified as a man, when she was just 16 years old. On Friday, a New York jury found the two professionals who approved the procedure—a psychologist and a surgeon—liable for medical malpractice, The Epoch Times reported. The jury awarded Varian, now 22 and no longer identifying as a man, $1.6 million for past and future pain and suffering, and an additional $400,000 for future medical expenses.

Varian’s case represents the first detransitioner malpractice lawsuit in the nation to go to trial and win, but it will be far from the last.

Back in 2024, Ron Miller, a partner at the law firm Campbell Miller Payne, told me that detransitioner lawsuits will likely result in jury verdicts between $10 and $20 million. Miller’s firm represented Varian.

“You’re looking at lifelong medical issues that are going to require pharmaceutical drugs and therapies and treatments that just will never end,” Miller explained.

Varian’s verdict falls short of Miller’s prediction—but it proves that detransitioners can win multi-million-dollar judgments.

Miller launched his firm in order to represent detransitioners, and it seems he has no lack of business.

Journalist Benjamin Ryan has a list of 28 different detransitioner lawsuits.

If the horrific scandal that is “gender-affirming care” isn’t enough to shame doctors into stopping this insanity, perhaps multi-million-dollar judgments will.

The post Detransitioner’s Multi-Million-Dollar Jury Verdict Strikes an Arrow in the Heart of the Child Mutilation Pipeline appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“The President has been clear–we must bring back our American maritime industrial might.”

This recent statement by Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan channels President Donald Trump’s strong commitment to a modern naval fleet that can protect America around the globe.

While much has been made of the new Trump-class of battleships, any advances in naval power will be left vulnerable if not backed up by serious efforts to revive America’s Merchant Marine. That’s a point that was made clear by Tidalwave, an ongoing major analytical project by The Heritage Foundation that’ s painted a dire picture of U.S. readiness for a prolonged Pacific war. The report noted that “…aging, and low-survivability CLF (Combat Logistics Force) inventory likely makes at-sea fuel replenishment the primary throttle on sustained naval operations.”

The Merchant Marine, composed of civilian vessels flying the U.S. Flag and crewed by Americans, is crippled by labor shortages and a small, stagnant fleet of less than 90 ships capable of international trade. A bipartisan bill to address the most glaring weaknesses–The SHIPS for America Act–has been stalled in Congress for almost a year.

Being able to move critical goods and equipment during time of war is a prerequisite for deterrence and victory in the Pacific. The two most pressing issues facing the Merchant Marine are a lack of ships and a shortage of qualified Mariners. A 2020 report found that we would be short by about 2,000 mariners in the event of a prolonged U.S. military engagement.

At present, Military Sealift Command (which supplies and refuels the Navy across the globe) has 12 tankers, less than 15% of the number required. And last year, 17 ships of this sealift command were sidelined due to personnel shortages. Yet by 2027, China says it plans to be prepared for an invasion of Taiwan, while we mothball some of our most strategically important assets.

These problems are the result of many factors, including a suboptimal recruitment campaign. The co-author of this article, Hollins Randolph, is the exception having not heard about the industry from family or friends before becoming a merchant mariner. To grow this vital force, a different approach to recruitment is needed. Among the general public, there is a lack of awareness about maritime careers; the SHIPS for America Act addresses this and includes initiatives aimed at raising awareness about maritime careers in K-12 settings. But most pressing is improving the conditions of the training of merchant mariners.

Foremost is the United States Merchant Marine Academy, often referred to as “King’s Point.”

Unfortunately, the reality for future merchant mariners at King’s Point is bleak; mold, leaky pipes, and a lack of hot water are all a daily reality. Not surprising then that graduations are down nearly 15% in the last five years. The SHIPS for America Act funds comprehensive renovations of the Academy and begins to address decades of neglect. Something seen firsthand and publicly called out as unacceptable by the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

The United States must have a commercial fleet capable of supporting national security–today it clearly does not. Moreover, reviving our maritime industry means leading in technology by, for example, bringing back nuclear propulsion for commercial shipping once taught at King’s Point.

Innovations like this will foster an American maritime comparative advantage and make American-built ships competitive, today sadly they are 26 times costlier than foreign equivalents. To this end, the SHIPS for America Act establishes Maritime Incubators such as the U.S. Center for Maritime Innovation, the National Shipbuilding Research Program, and Maritime Prosperity Zones to kickstart America’s maritime revival.

A century ago, after witnessing America scramble to find enough ships for the First World War, the sponsors of the Jones Act recognized the necessity of a strong Merchant Marine. Unfortunately, our Merchant Marine was allowed to wither. Then, in 1998, the People’s Republic of China decided to become the foremost maritime power to undermine America’s place in the world. For this new challenge, the provisions of the Jones Act alone will not suffice.

China in 27 years came from further behind than the U.S. today, to controlling over 120 ports around the world and 60% of the orderbook for new ships. The SHIPS for America Act and Trump’s executive order are largely aligned, together providing a strong signal to private industry to expand maritime innovation, build new shipyards, and work with our allies and partners to invest in our maritime industry.

In the meantime, reversing a slackening momentum on this endeavor requires orders for new ships to get American shipyards building the needed Strategic Commercial Fleet crewed by American merchant mariners.

Unfortunately, recent public partisan actions by co-sponsor Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, to the SHIPS for America ACT are complicating what has been a non-partisan and widely supported effort. As a retired naval officer and graduate of King’s Point, Kelly’s advocacy for merchant mariners has been powerful. As such, it may be time to deepen the bench or bring onboard a new co-sponsor.

The post The Other Golden Fleet: The Urgent Need for a Strong Merchant Marine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Wall Street Journal is out with a very specific hit piece against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  The article is 100% Intelligence Community insider lawfare against DNI Gabbard; however, in addition to being completely bogus the construct of the hit itself is very revealing. Within this current story we are going to find […]

The post Intel Community Frame Another “Anonymous” Inspector General Complaint Against DNI Tulsi Gabbard appeared first on The Last Refuge.

Setting aside all the conspiracy theories about who shot Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson stands accused by the State of Utah of committing that heinous crime. And his case had a flurry of pretrial activity and a rare and interesting motion by the defense that could shake up, or at least delay, the trial.

The defense filed a motion to recuse the entire Utah County Attorney’s Office from handling the prosecution because one of the deputy prosecutor’s adult children (presumably a teenager or college aged student) was at the Utah Valley University event when Kirk was shot.

Even though the adult child (whom I’ll refer to as “he”) didn’t see the shooting, never saw Kirk after he was shot, nor saw him being evacuated from the crime scene, the defense maintains that the mere fact that he texted his father to say “Charlie got shot” and other non-specific, non-eye witness comments, means that not only should the deputy prosecutor be recused from the case, the entire Utah County Attorney’s Office should be ordered off of the case.

In response to the defense’s creative motion to recuse, the prosecution claims that the adult child was positioned 85 feet away from Charlie Kirk and out of the field of vision of the shooter when Kirk was shot. The adult child was looking at the audience, “heard a loud sound, like a pop,” then heard someone yell “he’s been shot.” He never looked back at Kirk and did not see his wound nor did he see Kirk carried from the scene. He texted his father, a deputy prosecuting attorney who was with the elected County Attorney Jeff Gray at a conference in Ogden.

After news of the shooting, both the deputy prosecutor and Gray left the conference (at separate times) and drove to the law enforcement command post that had been set up at UVU. The prosecution also claims that although the adult child “was scared at the time,” there has been “no lasting trauma from the event” in a way that has hindered the adult child’s normal activities.

But that wasn’t good enough for the defense. The familial relationship in and of itself between the deputy attorney and his adult child is a legal non-starter.  

The defense’s motion to disqualify the Utah County Attorney’s Office was submitted Dec.10, and the opposition to the defense’s motion was submitted Jan. 5. The judge presiding over the case, Judge Tony Graf of Utah’s 4th District Court, decided to hold a hearing on the defense’s motion in a Jan. 16 hearing.

The nearly five-hour hearing was inconclusive on the defense’s motion. The defense questioned Gray, the chief prosecutor, on how much his deputy attorney told him about the adult child who was at UVU the day of the shooting. The court concluded the hearing without a decision and set another evidentiary hearing to Feb. 3. At that hearing, Gray will be further questioned, and very likely the deputy county attorney and his adult child are expected to testify as well.

The thrust of the defense’s argument, which the court took seriously, is this: the adult child’s experience raises an “objective” question as to whether or not the circumstance presents a “significant risk” that the attorney’s “personally family interests may materially limit” his ability to ethically represent the State of Utah.

They also argue that the defense makes a strong claim about the attorney’s inability to separate his role as a father from that of an attorney. They argue that expecting the attorney to “separate his role as a [father] with the wholly natural instinct to protect and shield his [adult child] from past and future harm, from his role in the prosecution of the individual alleged to have caused harm to many—including his [adult child], is not practical and defies common human experience.” They relied on the “harrowing” aftermath of the event for witnesses, and “even those who did not see the shooting as it happened,” combined with a paternal desire to shield a child from harm, as context for this attorney’s conflict of interest.

One of the weaker arguments made by the defense is that since the Utah County Attorney’s Office noticed their intent to seek the death penalty “less than one week after” the attorney’s communications with his adult child on the day of the murder, that may serve as evidence of “strong emotional reactions” from “the county attorney and the entire prosecution team,” who were at that time informed of the attorney’s child’s personal experiences at the UVU.

These are creative arguments and what you would expect from a top-notch defense team.

The government’s response is compelling and to me, a strong argument. There are lots of actual witnesses to the shooting and other forensic evidence tying the defendant to the murder.

The deputy attorney’s child is not a material witness in the case, his observations are not relevant and what he heard amounts to hearsay, and as such he would not offer any meaningful or substantive and necessary testimony as a witness.

Since the adult child is not a witness the government plans to call in the case, the prosecution argues that “any risk that Mr. [deputy attorney’s] representation of the State will be materially limited because of his relationship with his [child] is slim to none.”

As to the assertion that the office filed notice of the death penalty because it was influenced by the adult child through his father to the elected prosecutor, the Utah County Attorney’s Office responded (as you might expect) that their intent to seek the ultimate punishment had nothing to do with the adult child’s presence at the UVU event. They noted that when Gray ran for elected office three years earlier, he ran on a commitment to seek the death penalty in appropriate cases, and he has learned over the years subsequent to his election that waiting to file notice of seeking the death penalty when the evidence is substantial only fuels speculation and misinformation. Those are strong arguments and ones the court will have to grapple with at the next hearing.

If the Utah County Attorney’s Office were to be removed from the case, the preliminary hearing would be delayed, further delaying the case as a new prosecutor would need to be appointed and have time to prepare the case.

One last thing to consider: The Utah County Attorney’s Office is one of the largest in the state, with expertise in cases like Robinson’s. The chief prosecutor for Utah County previously spent years working in the Utah Attorney General’s Office, handling felony appeals, and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on state cases. The largest prosecutor’s office in the state is in Salt Lake City.

The hearing on Feb. 3 will certainly be interesting. Expect more creative motions and twists and turns as this case proceeds.

The post Here Are the Latest Developments in Charlie Kirk Murder Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fake constitutionalism is increasingly becoming a problem in America. There is a marked tendency for public officials, political commentators, and those in the media to invoke bogus constitutional principles or bogus interpretations of genuine constitutional principles. They do this mainly to cast blame on their political opponents or to shelter the otherwise unacceptable behavior of their political allies. Fake constitutionalism undermines constitutional government by spreading misconceptions about what our Constitution means.

Regrettably, the First Amendment has become one of the most fruitful areas in which fake constitutionalism thrives. It is now commonplace for Americans—even constitutional lawyers—to make inflated claims about the protections afforded by the First Amendment, extending its scope far beyond the safeguards the American Founders had in mind when they debated and wrote this essential provision of our Constitution. The most recent case in point is the misplaced outrage over the supposed violations of the First Amendment involved in the arrest of Don Lemon.

Lemon, formerly of CNN, was taken into custody late last week for his part in disrupting a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lemon accompanied and filmed protestors who stormed the service to express their disapproval of ICE operations in Minneapolis. (An elder of the church is reportedly an ICE agent.) The Department of Justice has charged a number of the disruptors, including Lemon, with violating the FACE Act and conspiracy to deprive others of their civil rights—in this case, their right to gather and worship God in peace in their own church.

In his statement to the media, Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, characterized his client’s arrest and the filing of federal charges against Lemon as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.” “Don has been a journalist for 30 years,” Lowell continued, “and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.” Arguments to this effect have also been made by countless journalists and commentators incensed by the idea that a journalist might be held to account for his unlawful behavior.

Contrary to Lowell, the First Amendment does not afford any protection to journalism as an activity or to journalists as a class. It instead protects certain more narrowly defined activities, namely, speech and publication. This is evident from the language the framers of the amendment chose to express their meaning: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

The scope of the First Amendment’s protection is also indicated by the early controversies over its meaning, most notably the debates over the Sedition Act of 1798. Celebrated American statesmen and jurists like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison condemned the act, while others of equal stature such as Alexander Hamilton and Supreme Court Justice James Iredell defended it. The argument concerned the extent to which the government could punish certain kinds of publications. No one at the time, however, suggested that the First Amendment protected otherwise unlawful acts done in the pursuit of publishing information.

The narrow—and reasonable—original understanding of the First Amendment is also evident in the works of the great early American legal commentators such as Justice Joseph Story. In his celebrated Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Story wrote that “it is plain…that the language of” the First Amendment “imports no more, than that every man shall have a right to speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatever, without any prior restraint, so always, that he does not injure any other person in his rights, person, or property, or reputation; and so always, that he does not thereby disturb the public peace….” As Story’s remarks make clear, even the right to speak and publish is limited by certain principles necessary to a just public order and the protection of other essential rights. Even more to the present purpose is Story’s argument that the First Amendment protects only the right to speak and publish—that is, rights that belong to every man, not just to journalists.

Rejecting this traditional understanding of the First Amendment and accepting the Abbe Lowell version would lead to ridiculous and unacceptable consequences. It would mean that professional journalists must be treated as a privileged class and must be allowed to break the law in the pursuit of a story. But practically nobody thinks this should be the case, and it is certainly not how the law operates in its ordinary course.

If a reporter is speeding at 100 miles per hour through a town to get to the scene of an important story, he will be stopped by the police and charged with violating the speed limit and reckless driving. If this reporter were to cause an accident and kill someone, he would be charged with negligent homicide or manslaughter—and the fact that he committed the crime in connection with his desire to engage in activities that the First Amendment protects would be totally irrelevant to his defense.

The First Amendment certainly protects a reporter’s right to publish information. However, it does not protect unlawful activity in pursuit of information, which is often protected by principles of privacy and ownership that are also recognized in law. It is undoubtedly a news event if a potential candidate for public office is meeting with advisors in his home to decide whether to launch a campaign. But this would not give someone like Don Lemon the right to barge into the home over the objections of those who live there and “cover” the event. He would be guilty of trespassing or home invasion and liable to legal punishment.

This example points to the inadequacy of the arguments made by those who have condemned the disruption of the church service, but claimed that Lemon, as a journalist, ought not to be among the ones charged. Such defenders seem to think that the other disruptors did something unlawful, but that Lemon was merely there to report on the event. But his relevant actions were the same as those of the others involved. They came into the church uninvited during a service at which the worshippers had been peacefully conducting their own business—and in fact exercising a constitutional right clearly stated in the First Amendment. This disruption, of which Lemon was a part, prevented the congregants from carrying on the activities they had a right to pursue. Charging the other protestors but not Lemon would treat him as a member of a privileged class that has a right to break the law.

This would introduce an unacceptable incoherence into our constitutional law. To the extent that the protestors wanted to make a political point, they also have views that are protected by the First Amendment. They erred, however, in choosing an unlawful method by which to make their complaints heard—just as Lemon erred in the method by which he tried to get his story. Lemon and the protestors are guilty of the same misconduct, and the First Amendment is of no help to either.

Suppose a case in which the legal and constitutional issues are the same, but the actors’ political identities are different. Suppose, for example, a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, outraged by federal civil rights enforcement, decides to disrupt the service at a predominantly African American church, of which a federal civil rights lawyer is a member. Suppose further that the Klan brings along a sympathetic reporter and storms the church, shouting insults, while the reporter films the whole shameful episode. Would any decent American think this action was a legitimate form of First Amendment-protected “protest”? Or that the reporter who tagged along should be immune to the charges that would properly be filed against the other participants? Of course not.

Recall, further, Justice Story’s observation that the First Amendment’s protection of the right to speak and publish belongs to “every man.” This is a key principle affirmed by the Supreme Court in modern times. The great liberal Justice William Brennan on more than one occasion remarked that the First Amendment protects all Americans equally, and not just the members of the professional, credentialed press. A blogger or a concerned citizen who circulates a newsletter has all the same First Amendment rights as someone who works for the New York Times or CNN.

This point is essential to further clarifying the unacceptable consequences that would result if we accepted the First Amendment defense of Don Lemon’s role in the Minnesota church disruption. Because the amendment protects all Americans, and not only professional journalists, defending Lemon’s conduct as an activity protected by the First Amendment would mean that everybody could break the law and then claim to be engaged in “reporting.” Any concerned citizen with a recording device or a pad of paper could walk into a neighbor’s home, a local church, or, for that matter, the offices of CNN and then claim First Amendment immunity for disrupting the lives of other Americans pursuing legitimate activities. No sensible person would embrace such a chaotic standard, which is certainly not required by the First Amendment.

Justice Story observed in his account of the First Amendment that “the exercise of a right is essentially different from an abuse of it. The one is no legitimate inference from another.” “Common sense,” Story continued, “here promulgates the broad doctrine: so exercise your freedom, as not to infringe the rights of others, or the public peace and safety.” This is the way the Founders thought about the rights they enshrined in the Constitution, and it is the only way to think about them that is consistent with a decent public order in which the rights of all are safe.

The post The Lemon Test appeared first on The American Mind.

A survey finds that only a small majority of NFL players approve of the league's choice of rapper Bad Bunny for its Super Bowl Halftime Show.

The post Poll: NFL Players Give Mixed Reviews on Bad Bunny Halftime Show: ‘It Should Be an American’ appeared first on Breitbart.

LOS ANGELES, CA — A room full of pedophiles in attendance at Sunday night's Grammys ceremony defiantly protested Trump's deportation of pedophiles.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announce a new mental health initiative on Monday, February 2.

The post Watch: RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz Announce New Mental Health Initiative appeared first on Breitbart.

Monday on MS NOW’s “Chris Jansing Reports,” former Governor John Kasich (R-OH) said a “growing numbers of Republicans” were saying enough to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation immigration policies. Kasich said, “Think about these children. This PTSD is real. You

The post Kasich Claims ‘Growing Numbers of Republicans’ Saying Enough to Trump Deportations appeared first on Breitbart.