Tag Archive for: Lgbt Activism

Unanimous SCOTUS Ruling Sets Back the White-Collar Rainbow Revolution

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In a 9-0 decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, justices ruled that employers cannot discriminate against a heterosexual woman and unelected judges cannot insert intersectionality into the law. A unanimous Supreme Court opinion rarely brings good news, but justices recently issued a ruling that set back judicial activism, stopped the Left’s tactic of promoting the social revolution at your expense, and exposed the inner workings of the white-collar rainbow revolution.

The plaintiff, Marlean Ames, dedicated her life to eliminating the prison rape of minors. In 2004, she started working for the Ohio Department of Youth — which oversees the state’s incarcerated juvenile population — and in 2014, Ames got promoted to become administrator of PREA: the Prison Rape Elimination Act. “In 2017, Ames was assigned a new supervisor, Ginine Trim, who is gay,” noted the Sixth Circuit’s opinion. Trim’s December 2018 performance evaluation shows Ames met competencies in 10 categories and exceeded in one. But somehow, just four months later, qualified-to-overqualified no longer sufficed.

In April 2019, Ames applied to become Bureau Chief of Quality. After the interview, “Trim congratulated Ames on 30 years of public service, but also suggested that Ames retire,” noted the Sixth Circuit. Activists aim to remake their departments through attrition: Let the old lions emit a final, toothless roar into the sunset while replacing them with young social justice warriors who will bend the arc of history toward radicalism. The department hired “Alexander Stojsavljevic, a 25-year-old gay man, for the position of PREA Administrator. … Later, in December 2019, the Department chose Yolanda Frierson, a gay woman, as its Bureau Chief of Quality.” Frierson had not originally applied for the position and did not have a college degree; Stojsavljevic had only been on the job a few years.

They gave Ames the option of taking her old job as executive secretary, cutting her salary from $47.22 an hour to $28.40. Ames accepted the job. She sued but lost at the district and appellate level. The appeals court admitted, “Ames is right that the Department has offered different reasons for her demotion at different times,” settling on the story that “her position was at-will and that it could remove her at any time without cause.”

Although the facts seem squarely on Ames’s side, the court sided against her, because she did not fulfill the “background circumstances” rule: a legal standard the court invented stating that members of a “majority group” had to meet a higher standard to prove discrimination. Justices struck down that legal fiction. “The Sixth Circuit has implemented a rule that requires certain Title VII plaintiffs — those who are members of majority groups — to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard in order to carry their burden under the first step of the McDonnell Douglas framework. We conclude that Title VII does not impose such a heightened standard on majority-group plaintiffs,” wrote Justice Jackson. The decision does not settle the underlying issue: In a return to the Roberts court’s narrow decisions, it merely remands the case with instructions to use the prima facie legal standard.

The welcome ruling reinstates the notion behind the deeply American principle of equal justice under law, itself drawn from the biblical injunction that judges ought not be a respecter of persons. This furthers President Donald Trump’s second-term commitment to undoing discrimination against the nation’s majority in the name of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). To its credit, the Roberts court has shown leadership here, too.

As important as the facts of the case are its setting. Ohio, long the bellwether of American politics, rejects DEI. When the U.K.’s Guardian started a letter-writing campaign for Europeans to pressure Ohioans into voting for Democrat John Kerry over George W. Bush, values voters in rural, western Ohio turned out to support a state constitutional amendment barring the courts from redefining the institution of marriage (or so they thought).

Today, Ohio is a blood-red state. President Donald Trump, perhaps aided by native son Vice President J.D. Vance, won the state by 11 points in 2024; but he also won by eight points in 2020, snapping the state’s reputation for picking a winner in every presidential race. Every statewide office is held by a Republican; it has not voted for a Democrat for president since 2012. Other than the hapless administration of Ted Strickland, shortly after incumbent Republican Bob Taft entered a “no contest” plea to four misdemeanor ethics violations, no Democrat has won a governor’s race since 1986.

Yet those governors have not delivered. Mike DeWine — a former lieutenant governor, U.S. senator, state attorney general, and now governor — vetoed the state SAFE Act, protecting minors from potentially sterilizing transgender injections and surgeries. While he issued an executive order on the topic, he promptly watered down even those temporary provisions. The Republican-controlled state legislature promptly overrode his veto, codifying robust protections for children — just as Ames tried to do throughout her career.

Ohioans have expressed their will for three decades at the ballot box. Meanwhile, unelected bureaucrats advance their radicalism through the HR department by adopting a prescription offered by Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals:”

“From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues. He has nothing with which to confront anything. Until he has those means and power instruments, his ‘tactics’ are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor unions, comer gangs, or as individuals. The only issue is, how will this increase the strength of the organization. If by losing in a certain action he can get more members than by winning, then victory lies in losing and he will lose. Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together. Power is the reason for being of organizations.”

Alinksy even likened these left-wing fiefdoms to a church:

“When people agree on certain religious ideas and want the power to propagate their faith, they organize and call it a church. When people agree on certain political ideas and want the power to put them into practice, they organize and call it a political party. The same reason holds across the board. Power and organization are one and the same.”

One hears echoes of this in teachers union president Becky Pringle when she called on her delegates to “build our power” by enrolling everyone “in our righteous cause.” From teachers, to librarians, to HR departments, to district court judges handing down national injunctions, leftists see the workplace as a political battlefield — or, if you believe Alinsky, the mission field to spread a false religion. The Supreme Court decision comes as welcome relief.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Warrior Spirit Being Restored’: Retired General Weighs In on Renaming USNS Harvey Milk

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a U.S. Navy vessel to be stripped of its name. The USNS Harvey Milk is an oiler named after a San Francisco gay rights activist. In November 2021, the ship was “formally christened and launched” into service after plans were made to name a ship after Milk as early as 2016.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the oiler was named after Milk to recognize his “legacy and dedication to gay rights.” Milk acted as an activist for LGBT causes, openly advocating for those who identify as homosexual while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and giving speeches where he insisted, “Every gay person must come out.” Many criticized the ship’s namesake, questioning whether Milk deserved such an honor.

According to Military.com, the memo ordering the name change labeled the action as a realignment to the “priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture” within the military. Reportedly, making the announcement in June, dubbed Pride Month by LGBT activists, is also intentional.

Some Democrats have expressed their disapproval over the decision. California Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi (D) called the move “spiteful,” adding it is a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) rebuked Hegseth, calling it a “complete and total disgrace” and an “abomination.” Jeffries also referred to Hegseth as “the least qualified secretary of Defense in American history.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blasted Hegseth, saying, “Erasing Harvey Milk’s name is disgusting, blatant discrimination — and during Pride Month to boot. He served the U.S. Navy and his country honorably, and he was assassinated while serving the public and fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. Hegseth should be ashamed of himself and reverse this immediately.”

In a statement made to USA Today, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell defended the decision, saying Hegseth “is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.”

Other ships’ names may be on the chopping block as well. The USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg and USNS Cesar Chavez, among others, are reportedly being considered for rechristening. Parnell noted, “Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”

As far as the USNS Harvey Milk goes, many are praising the decision, including Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. Boykin, executive vice president of Family Research Council. “Secretary Hegseth is sending a message to the entire military establishment that specific value is being put on the warrior ethos,” told the Washington Stand.

Boykin recalled his military experience, saying, “I have stood on east and west coast docks watching the christening of ships for two of my men who died in combat and had ships named for them. That is something that America can be proud of.”

Boykin expressed his gratitude at the changes being made under President Trump and Hegseth. “Our military under the last administration was headed over the cliff at a rapid pace with all of the DEI activities that were taking up time that should have been used to prepare for war. The warrior spirit is being restored by the secretary of Defense and the quality leaders in our military today. We must recognize that the world we live in has become so complex and dangerous that we must use our time wisely to ensure that our men and women of the armed services are ready when the call comes.”

“Ships and other memorials should be reserved for those who have either proven themselves in a courageous way or they have died in combat,” Boykin concluded. “[There are] no exceptions.”

AUTHOR

Zachary Gohl

Zachary Gohl serves as an intern at Family Research Council.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Explainer: How Trump ’s Proposed 2026 Budget Impacts Transgenderism, Abortion, Education, Immigration, and More

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President Donald Trump won the 2024 election with a promise to end divisive, taxpayer-funded programs, and his proposed budget for the next fiscal year proves he is willing to save your money where his mouth is. The president’s budget specifically asks Congress to cut billions of dollars from government programs promoting “radical transgender ideology,” “LGBTQIA+” programs, and government “targeting [of] peaceful pro-life protesters” while transferring power back to the states and increasing federal funding for national defense, border security, and public safety.

President Trump detailed his proposed FY 2026 budget in a 46-page overview of major discretionary funding changes, revealing a fiscal and ideological break with his Democratic predecessors. In all, Trump would spend $1.69 trillion, including requesting more than $1 trillion in defense spending for the first time in U.S. history to assist in “repelling the invasion of our border” and “to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration.”

Yet the White House refers to the spending guidelines as the “skinny budget,” since it offsets significant spending hikes with $136 billion in reductions that slash 22.6% from non-defense discretionary spending. “Savings come from eliminating radical diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory programs, Green New Scam funding, large swaths of the Federal Government weaponized against the American people, and moving programs that are better suited for States and localities to provide,” according to a White House fact sheet that accompanied the budget release.

If the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed FY 2025 budget sought to insert equity into every program through a whole-of-government approach, the second Trump administration has set out to uproot every vestige of compulsory taxpayer funding of the radical Left. “Over the last four years, Government spending aggressively turned against the American people and trillions of our dollars were used to fund cultural Marxism … and even our own invasion” by illegal immigrants, said Russ Vought, director of the Office and Management and Budget (OMB). “No agency was spared in the Left’s taxpayer-funded cultural revolution.” The administration cited $315 million the Biden administration spent on grant programs “to push ‘intersectionality,’ ‘racial equity,’ and LGBTQIA+ programming for preschoolers,” adding that the FY 2026 budget “ends all of that.”

The budget also promises to advance “the Administration’s goal of restoring federalism,” tying the well-being of families to the U.S. government’s respect for states’ rights and constitutional order. “Just as the Federal Government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people,” writes Vought in a letter transmitting the budget.

Here are the specific cuts and dollar amounts removed from the federal budget.

Abortion and the Right-to-Life Movement

President Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget slashes or eliminates abortion funding while protecting pro-life advocates’ constitutional rights. Specifically, the budget would cut $6.2 billion from Global Health Programs and Family Planning initiatives. “The United States is the largest global contributor to programs that provide so-called family planning services through liberal NGOs, and have funded abortions. This stands in direct conflict with the President’s action reinstating the ‘Mexico City Policy.’ The Budget protects life and prevents a pro-abortion agenda from being promoted abroad with taxpayer dollars.” The president reinstated his 2017 Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA) policy, which bars any group that receives taxpayer funding from carrying out or advocating for abortion overseas. But the budget maintains funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for current recipients.

The proposed budget also safeguards pro-life advocates’ rights by eliminating $545 million from Biden-Harris administration policies that charged the FBI with “targeting peaceful pro-life protesters, concerned parents at school board meetings, and citizens opposed to radical transgender ideology,” as well as erasing “DEI programs.” The budget also reestablishes fairness by cutting $193 million from General Legal Activities at the Justice Department, prioritizing criminal prosecutions but reducing the budget of the Civil Rights Division, “which the previous administration weaponized against States implementing election integrity measures, local police departments, and pro-life Americans.”

Slashing LGBTQ Radicalism and DEI Programs

President Trump made eliminating DEI, critical race theory, and government-sponsored racism and sexism a focus of his successful 2024 campaign, cementing the approach through a series of executive actions that prosecute race-based discrimination. Similarly, the Republican Party spent $65 million on ads highlighting the Democratic Party’s extremism on transgender ideology, making it the top reason swing voters decided not to vote for Kamala Harris, according to the Democratic polling firm Blueprint. The proposed FY 2026 budget cuts tens of billions of dollars in DEI and LGBTQIA+ funding, as well as climate change ideology.

The proposed budget cuts $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to restore “accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH. NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health” by denying the likely lab leak origin of COVID-19 and promoting gain-of-function research, which the president recently banned by executive order. Yet “NIH has also promoted radical gender ideology to the detriment of America’s youth. For example, the NIH funded a study titled ‘Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones,’ in which two participants tragically committed suicide,” the budget notes. The president also cuts $3.6 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a blueprint that “eliminates duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs.”

The president would cut $8.3 billion from Economic Support Fund, Development Assistance for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia, as part of a broader foreign policy to place American interests first and save Europe from itself, but also because “U.S. economic and development aid has been funneled to radical, leftist priorities, including climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and LGBTQ activities around the world.”

The budget cuts $3.5 billion from the National Science Foundation’s grants and research on “climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences.” That comes in addition to another $1.1 billion cut to NSF’s Broadening Participation activities, which have underwritten such programs as “Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM”; “addressing White Supremacy in the STEM profession”; and preparing “the next generation of DEI leaders to promote long-term, sustainable racial equity initiatives.”

The president moved dramatically against the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after taking office: exposing their radical grants before firing most of their staff and placing the agency under the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The FY 2026 budget cuts $2.5 billion from USAID and “eliminates non-essential staff that were hired based on DEI and preferencing practices” while implementing executive orders 14169 to realign foreign aid and 14151 to eliminate DEI programs.

The budget cuts more than $1 billion in grants nestled under the Department of Justice, such as “$1 million to the National Opinion Research Center to ‘investigate the social ecological context of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime reporting.’ Further, the Budget realigns Violence Against Women Act funding with its original core mission to combat violence against women and directly serve victims — eliminating extraneous programs that divert resources from these core functions. For example, grant funding from the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) had been offered for biological men. In addition, OVW’s Rural Program grants were sent to train community-based Fa’afafine advocates — an organization of biological men that describes themselves as a ‘third-gender.’”

Pro-family experts singled out the VAWA proposal as a welcome gesture. “VAWA programs are intended to help women who are the victims of abuse and in recent years it has been invaded by gender ideology. Currently, women who escape abuse in a VAWA funded shelter could be forced to share private spaces with a man,” Mary Beth Waddell, director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “We are grateful that the president is calling out this injustice.”

The budget cuts $4.5 billion from the Department of Education while maintaining full federal funding for K-12 schools, consolidating 18 programs into one formula grant that allows the DOE to do as much work with fewer employees. “The new approach allows States and districts to focus on the core subjects — math, reading, science, and history — without the distractions of DEI and weaponization from the previous administration,” notes the budget. It also saves $127 million in administrative costs.

At the college level, the budget cuts $195 million from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Ed (FIPSE), noting that Congress has “abused FIPSE by using it to fund initiatives unrelated to students or institutional reforms, including earmarking $1.2 million for San Diego Community College’s LGBTQIA+ PRIDE Center staffing.” It also cuts $1.6 billion from TRIO and GEAR UP, two programs that incentivized colleges to engage low-income students. The administration argues that economic incentives have eliminated the need for the federal government to continue underwriting colleges and universities’ outreach. “A renewed focus on academics and scholastic accomplishment by [Institutions of Higher Education], rather than engaging in woke ideology with Federal taxpayer subsidies, would be a welcome change for students and the future of the Nation.” The budget also removes $691 million in cultural exchanges for foreign exchange students that prevent American students from acquiring high-demand skills, which the foreign students then take back to their home countries.

The budget cuts $1.6 billion by consolidating the Labor Department’s Make America Skilled Again (MASA) grants, defunding nonprofits promoting DEI, and “the hiring of illegal aliens and migrants; sometimes providing them subsidized housing in addition to a job.”

It cuts $1.3 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scrutinizing NOAA grants for “George Mason University’s ‘Policy Experience in Equity Climate and Health’ fellowship, a workshop for ‘transgender women, and those who identify as nonbinary.’”

Trump’s budget cuts $646 million from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s non-disaster grant programs, seeking to curtail such FEMA activities as “webinars promoting the distribution of disaster aid based on ‘intersectional’ factors like sexual orientation and prioritizing ‘investment in diversity and inclusion efforts … and multicultural training’ over disaster prevention and response.” Under the Trump administration, “FEMA will no longer ‘instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.’” The document rightly notes that “FEMA discriminated against Americans who voted for the President in the wake of recent hurricanes, skipping over their homes when providing aid. This activity will no longer be tolerated.”

The budget cuts $624 million from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) and Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), specifically citing an EDA grant “constructing a ‘Pride Plaza’ in Portland, Oregon.”

It cuts $602 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), effectively eliminating “wasteful, woke programming in NIFA, such as activities related to climate change, renewable energy, and promoting DEI in education that were prioritized under the Biden Administration.”

The Trump administration aims to gut federally funded woke programs aimed at Americans at both ends of life. The proposed FY 2026 budget eliminates $405 million from the Labor Department’s Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), which is supposed to subsidize jobs and employment for poor senior citizens but “is effectively an earmark to leftist, DEI-promoting entities like the National Urban League, the Center for Workforce Inclusion, and Easter Seals.” At the same time, it cuts $315 million from Preschool Development Grants (PDG), which was “weaponized by the Biden-Harris Administration to extend the Federal reach and push DEI policies on to toddlers.” For instance, the “guiding principles” implemented by the Minnesota Department of Education for its PDG program include “intersectionality” and “racial equity.”

The budget cuts roughly $19 billion from programs promoting what the White House calls the “Green New Scam.”

The government’s proposed budget generally reins in government grants flowing to radical causes:

  • It cuts $167 million by consolidating the Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneurial Development Programs (EDP), deleting such programs as SCORE, “which in 2023 posted ‘Six Ways to Support LGBTQIA-Owned Businesses.’”
  • It cuts $129 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which “pushed radical gender ideology onto children, funding a project at the Seattle Children’s Hospital titled, ‘Using Telehealth to Improve Access to Gender-Affirming Care for BIPOC and Rural Gender-Diverse Youth.’”
  • It cuts $112 million from programs aimed at “Strengthening Institutions,” noting, “It is not the responsibility of Federal taxpayers to support a new ‘Guided Pathways Village, expanding the current Learning Communities and creating a new Ethnic and Pride Inclusion Center for historically underserved students, including LGBTQ+ students.’”
  • It cuts $100 million in “divisive racial discrimination and environmental justice grants that were destined to go to organizations that advance radical ideologies.”
  • It cuts $70 million from Teacher Quality Partnerships, which field grants indoctrinating teachers to begin “acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, ‘gender-based’ discrimination, homophobia, and ageism.”
  • It cuts $55 million from Complex Crisis Fund, “a catch-all slush fund for nation-building projects and political interference” which “has been weaponized to mandate DEI and LGBTQ policies be implemented in recipient countries as a condition of aid to small businesses.”
  • It cuts $49 million from the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights, a 35% strategic reduction to “refocus away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases … while removing their ability to push DEI programs and promote radical transgender ideology.”

The proposed FY 2026 budget also cuts a total of $19.2 billion from Energy Department initiatives it describes as part of the “Green New Scam.”

Getting the Government Out of the ‘Disinformation’ Business

The proposed FY 2026 budget cuts $491 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as part of its efforts to eliminate “weaponization and waste.” The budget “eliminates programs focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement offices such as international affairs. These programs and offices were used as a hub in the Censorship Industrial Complex to violate the First Amendment.”

It also cuts $315 million for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which supported Ukrainian government efforts to brand critics as exponents of Russian disinformation and “funded the now-infamous Disinformation Index Foundation that targeted and blacklisted conservative media outlets like Federalist, Newsmax, TAC, the Blaze,” and others.

Restoring National Sovereignty

President Trump has identified himself with the words “America First,” and his budget stakes out similar priorities. It cuts $1.7 billion from the United Nations, UNESCO, and World Health Organization dues, implementing executive order 14199. However, the president may fund these organizations out of a separate funding source “to preserve maximum negotiating leverage.” It also eliminates $1.6 billion from United Nations “peacekeeping” missions that wage war under the U.N.’s blue-helmeted auspices. And it cuts $1.5 billion from Food for Peace, recognizing the waste and abuse of foreign aid transfers from U.S. taxpayers to foreign oligarchs.

The budget also acknowledges that the free market and local business development create sustainable prosperity, not foreign aid. “The program also distorts and undermines local and regional markets where the aid often could be purchased for less and with less waste,” says the budget. Similarly, it cuts $75 million from Transition Initiatives, a program that leads to “further destabilization” around the world and “funds a wasteful tangle of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and partisan cutouts pushing a leftist agenda around the world.”

Borders, Patriotism, National Unity

The budget increases funding for the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees many border enforcement and deportation efforts — by a whopping 65%, or $43.8 billion in additional funds. It cuts nearly $2 billion from programs for refugees and Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs), funds which “were weaponized by the Biden-Harris Administration to give cash handouts, medical services, and job training to illegal immigrants” and to release children in the custody of “insufficiently vetted sponsors,” effectively making the government complicit in child trafficking.

It cuts $650 million from the Shelter and Services Program earmarked for “non-citizen migrants,” tax payments which “funded radical leftist NGOs, who spent funding to facilitate mass illegal migration into the interior of the Nation … weakening the United States from within, taking resources away from American citizens, and promoting crime and decay in America’s cities.” And it cuts $247 million from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which the Biden administration used “to facilitate mass illegal migration by allowing illegal migrants to fly into the interior without proper documentation.”

Yet the budget radically increases funding for the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to hire more air traffic controllers; for Rail Safety and Infrastructure grants to prevent tragedies such as the train derailment and intentional detonation of a train in East Palestine, Ohio; for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to intercept fentanyl; and for stronger trade enforcement against technological and competitiveness threats from the People’s Republic of China.

“Linking proposed decreases in funding to areas of egregious mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and reorienting these dollars to their intended purpose, as opposed to ideological ones, sends a strong message that taxpayers deserve respect, and the use of their hard-earned money should be stewarded well,” Waddell told TWS.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Cuts Off Student Loan Forgiveness to LGBTQ Activists, Open Borders Groups, and Terrorists

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As part of his ongoing efforts to root out federal programs that underwrite left-wing programs at taxpayer expense, President Donald Trump has curbed a program that forgives student loans for those who work for groups that promote illegal immigration, terrorism, anti-American policies, or facilitate “child mutilation” through transgender surgeries.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), created by the 2007 College Cos tReduction and Access Act signed by President George W. Bush, allows college graduates to write-off their loans if they worked as public servants in the government or a nonprofit organization and made at least 10 years (120 months) of repayments. It also caps those payments at 10% of income above 150% of the poverty line.

But “instead of alleviating worker shortages in necessary occupations, the PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values” through its “subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States,” says the executive order, which was released on March 7.

The order, entitled “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” bars student loan forgiveness to employees of 501(c)3 organizations “whose activities have a substantial illegal purpose.” That list includes those who take part in “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents.”

The order also bars “supporting terrorism,” violating federal immigration laws, and “engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination” often under the banner of advancing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).

Organizations that regularly engage in “trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism and obstruction of highways” — such as protests illegally blocking highways and intersections — also lose PSLF eligibility.

“The Biden Administration was accused of using the student loan forgiveness program to pay pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activists and criminals with taxpayer dollars,” added a White House fact sheet accompanying the order.

Much of the focus will go toward defunding organizations that actively assist illegal immigrants en route to, or residing in, the United States. Scholars at the Center for Immigration Studies discovered that “the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been mainlining taxpayer funds” to more than 30 faith-based NGOs that offered “cash debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, and even ‘humanitarian transportation’ during 2024 to millions of U.S.-bound immigrants in 17 Latin American nations and Mexico.” Last April alone, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Homeland Security doled out $300 million to nonprofits that shelter illegal immigrants through the government’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP), administered by FEMA. “Of those recently awarded grants, 35 are NGOs,” revealed the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) at the time. Illegal immigrants often stayed at four-star hotels at taxpayer expense, even as the Democratic administration claimed FEMA lacked the funds to care for hurricane-struck U.S. citizens.

Republicans have sought to change the tax-exempt status of NGOs that facilitate the illegal flow of drugs and human traffickers across the border. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) recently introduced the Fixing Exemptions for Networks Choosing to Enable Illegal Migration (FENCE) Act (S. 497), which would revoke the tax-exempt status of NGOs that consistently aid illegal immigrants.

“It’s absurd that our federal government has been giving tax exemptions and federal funding to NGOs that have helped facilitate record illegal immigration and carry out the far-left’s agenda, while cloaked as charities,” said Hagerty last month. “President Trump’s executive order requiring a review of federal funding to NGOs will expose this malpractice that has occurred for too long. I’m pleased to introduce this legislation that will augment the President’s work to hold these NGOs accountable by revoking their tax-exempt statuses.”

Conservative Christians cheered the reforms. “In fact, 25 percent of the U.S. workforce are employed in ‘public service’ occupations as currently defined, which can include everything from NPR employees to Planned Parenthood,” noted Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), a pastor who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee. “President Trump is stepping up by preventing these activists from receiving windfalls in forgiveness benefits footed by taxpayers.”

But teachers unions and liberals charged the president with violating the First Amendment by refusing to underwrite left-wing political activism, even if it skirts, or transgresses, the law. “The president claims to be committed to ‘free speech,’ but we’ve quickly discovered that pledge doesn’t apply to higher education and now, PSLF,” griped Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), who helped craft the Biden administration’s public school lockdown policy. “He wants to impose an ideological litmus test antithetical to American values.” Mike Pierce, executive director of the liberal Student Borrower Protection Center, decried the order as “an attack on working families everywhere,” although the evidence suggests the program benefits graduate students and doctors.

“Estimates show that the top one-fifth of households owe $3 in student loan debt for every $1 held by the bottom fifth,” found the Heritage Foundation, which called for the abolition of PSLF. Critics say student loan “forgiveness” is immoral, because it creates perverse incentives and forces those who never went to college to pay for the bad behavior of those who did.

PSLF has had a troubled history since its formation under the second Bush administration. Users said the program had vague criteria, offered bad advice, and ultimately denied 99% of applications to have their remaining student loan debt expunged. The Biden-Harris administration significantly expanded the number of borrowers whose debt was assumed by taxpayers through the controversial program, from 7,000 when he took office to 1,069,000 borrowers representing $78.5 billion in debt when he left.

Members of the Obama-Biden administration publicly declared they had used the PSLF program to have taxpayers foot the bill as they enacted far-left social policies. “I was lucky enough to land my dream job working in President Obama’s White House on the Domestic Policy Council. For nearly the entire second term, I helped push for policies that aimed to bend the arc of the moral universe a little more toward justice — from women’s equality to foster care to LGBTQ rights to criminal justice reform,” boasted Molly Dillon in 2017. “[T]he Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program made it possible for me [to] use my education for a career in public service without the fear of a lifetime of debt.”

By no longer writing off student loan debt, the Trump administration may discourage students from working for left-wing activist groups whose activities further social lawlessness. “If Trump does prohibit some workers from getting student loan forgiveness, there could be larger implications for the impacted nonprofits, with potentially fewer job applicants for open roles at those organizations in the future,” reports Newsweek.

Whatever changes will come, they will not take place immediately. The Federal Student Aid office announced Monday that it was “reviewing” the executive order. “The PSLF Program is not changing today, and borrowers do not need to take any action,” it said.

Some urge caution in changing the criteria of federal programs, because a future left-wing president could deny loan forgiveness to conservative nonprofits, much as the Obama-Biden administration targeted Tea Party groups for heightened IRS scrutiny. “To avoid this corrosive legal ping pong, all student loan borrowers should be treated the same,” wrote Andrew Gillen at the Cato Institute. “Rather than debate about which organizations are eligible for PSLF, we should get rid of PSLF entirely.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Whoopi Goldberg: ‘God Doesn’t Make Mistakes’ … Except on Transgenderism?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Americans Rush to Enlist in Trump’s Military Recruitment Boom

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The Trump team may be slashing and burning lots of government jobs, but there’s one agency that’s been hanging a “We’re hiring” shingle for four years: the U.S. military. In yet another sign that the long and embarrassing chapter of the Biden administration is over, young men and women apparently can’t enlist fast enough, spiking recruitment numbers that had been at their lowest levels since World War II. Apparently, voters aren’t the only ones eager to exchange a commander in woke for a commander in chief.

The boom of sign-ups was celebrated by new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who tweeted on Tuesday, “BREAKING: In December 2024, the @USArmy had its best recruiting number in 12 years. In January 2025, the Army hit its best recruiting number in 15 YEARS. BOTTOM LINE: America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong ‘America First’ leadership of @realDonaldTrump.”

Since the election, a steady stream of recruits have been pouring into local offices. The Army, which has been hemorrhaging soldiers over the last several years, reported that it was enlisting almost 350 soldiers a day in December. For a Pentagon that missed its goals by 41,000 in 2023, the burst of potential reinforcements was welcome news. “Our Recruiters have one of the toughest jobs — inspiring the next generation of #Soldiers to serve. Congratulations and keep up the great work! #BAYCB,” Army officials wrote on X.

The surge couldn’t come at a better time, as Daniel Driscoll, President Trump’s nominee for Army secretary, made quite clear. “We have the fewest number of active soldiers that we’ve had since World War II, even as conflict is erupting around the world. We need to fix that,” he said at his confirmation hearing earlier this month. And while the Biden administration’s solution was lowering standards and sweetening the pot with benefits and signing bonuses, Driscoll doesn’t think that approach attracts the people America needs. “I actually don’t think the answer is throwing more money at the problem. I think it’s nice to get things like GI Bill benefits. But I didn’t join for that. I enlisted to serve the country.”

That jives with what some of Biden’s critics have been saying for years. To them, it wasn’t just that Americans couldn’t be bought, but that this generation didn’t believe in the only battle the last president insisted on fighting: the culture war. Instead of raising up a warrior class, the previous commander in chief seemed preoccupied with drag shows on military bases, critical race theory, preferred pronouns, underwriting gender transition surgeries, and projecting weakness on the world stage.

“It is no surprise to me that the recruiting figures have taken a turn for the better,” Lt. General (Ret.) William Boykin told The Washington Stand. “I think we will see this trend continue as young men and women step up to be part of our military now that DEI is no longer a part of it, and commanders are not bullying their people to take vaccinations that they don’t want. Now that Donald Trump is the commander in chief, the young men and women around the country see strength and resolve,” he pointed out. “They want to be part of something great, and our military will be great again when Donald Trump leaves office at the end of his term. Our enemies need to know that American military power is on the rise.”

Interestingly enough, this all comes on the heels of the annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey — which painted an unflattering picture of the state of service in the last year of the Biden administration. Conducted from March to May last year, more than 5,000 people chimed in about their experiences — from active-duty, National Guard, Reserve, veterans, and their families.

Among the more interesting findings, 69% agreed that military service has “added value to their family’s life,” but only 32% would recommend military service to a young family member. Equally as disheartening, there’s a national perception that the military is appreciated by the public at large when only 19% of active-duty families believe Americans are truly grateful for their sacrifice.

One area where the military does agree with civilians is that a major conflict is on the horizon. Eighty-three percent of active-duty families think America is on the cusp of global war within the next three to five years, as do 67% of everyday people. Clearly, the authors concluded, more needs to be done to bolster the troops and their families before those crisis times arrive.

Freshman Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.), a former Green Beret, emphatically agrees. He’s watched with disgust the decisions of the Biden administration — decisions, he says, that prompted him to run for Congress. “I [saw] Afghanistan fall,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Thursday’s “Washington Watch.” “And I knew at that point that we had just condemned the next generation of Americans to conflict.”

Widely viewed as one of the most catastrophic decisions of Joe Biden’s term (and there were many), Harrigan believes more than anything that the Afghan withdrawal emboldened our enemies. “We had never been weaker than that one moment in our nation’s history. And so, we need real change in this country,” the veteran insisted. “We need real leadership. Thankfully, we have it. And as you were talking about with the record-breaking January recruitment cycle that the Army had, I think that there is a resounding consensus that that leadership is back. And this is a military that our young men and women want to join again.”

Perkins, who served in the Marine Corps, nodded. “I know there [are] a lot of young men and women who are willing to serve this country, but they don’t want to serve for no reason,” he reiterated. “They want to serve, and they’re willing to make sacrifices if it’s for a purpose. And I think, as you pointed out, what happened in Afghanistan was disastrous. And it just, I think, it turned many, many young men and women away, thinking, ‘What’s the point?’”

And Harrigan was quick to make a spiritual connection to that mentality. “I think a lot of us — and a lot of your viewers — [who] have a biblical worldview would identify with this. I think there [was] a genuine question prior to President Trump getting elected: ‘What are we fighting for? Are we fighting for those time-tested concepts of freedom, democracy, free market economies, and the things that our fathers and forefathers have fought and died for in order to make this country the greatest country on the face of the earth? Or are we fighting for some sort of social agenda that we are actually trying to project across the globe?’”

Frankly, he pointed out, “I think that was a question in many folks’ minds prior to November 5th. And so it’s just great to see that America is back — that strong, principled America that traditionally leads the world is back. And it’s here to stay moving forward.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council,

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

National Guardsman Challenges ‘No Christian in Command’ Policy

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A former Idaho National Guardsman is suing the Gem State after he was removed from command for expressing his biblical views on human sexuality.

Major David Worley of the Idaho Army National Guard and attorneys with Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit last week, alleging that Worley was “unlawfully, unconstitutionally, and unconscionably subjected to investigation, discrimination, retaliation, and punishment for the simple exercise of his First Amendment rights … to exercise his sincerely held religious beliefs without fear of discriminatory reprisal from his chain of command.” According to the lawsuit, the discrimination against Worley is rooted in comments he made when campaigning for mayor of Pocatello and, later, for Idaho State Senate.

While campaigning, Worley expressed his opposition to drag queen story hours, pornographic material in public school libraries, and gender transition procedures for minors. Liberty Counsel noted in a press release, “All of Worley’s protected speech occurred off-duty in his private capacity and before he took command of the Idaho Army National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention unit.” In 2023, a fellow National Guardsman who identifies as homosexual filed a complaint against Worley, alleging that the major’s religious beliefs constituted discrimination.

The Idaho Army National Guard subsequently suspended Worley from command and “illegally pressured him to resign without benefit of any counsel or notice.” He was told that if he did not resign he would “face significant and life-altering disciplinary proceedings.” When Worley rescinded his resignation on the advice of counsel, the Idaho Army National Guard launched a formal investigation into the complaints against him.

Although the investigation found that the complaints against Worley were “unsubstantiated” and that there was “no evidence Worley did anything wrong in the workplace,” the National Guard branch recommended a new policy requiring candidates for command be investigated — with examination of private social media posts being a key factor in such an investigation — to ensure that they do not adhere to any “toxic” or “concerning ideologies,” a supposed effort to “ferret out” any “extremism.” Liberty Counsel dubbed the directive the “No Christians in Command” policy.

Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver said in a statement, “The Constitution simply does not allow the military to punish those with sincerely held religious beliefs or to specifically target religion for disparate and discriminatory treatment.” He called on Idaho’s Republican governor to rectify the wrong. “Governor Brad Little must ensure that the Idaho Army National Guard upholds federal and state law and protects the free speech of its service members. This discrimination against Major Worley must stop and his record must be cleared and his career restored,” Staver declared.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, said, “The Idaho Army National Guard made an absolutely shameful decision when they removed an officer for his speech informed by his biblical worldview outside of his military role.” She continued, “We can hope that with the new Trump administration, we will see these violations of religious freedom in the military come to an abrupt halt. This highlights the importance for President Trump to set the tone as commander and chief and make it clear that the religious freedom of every servicemember and chaplain will be protected.”

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — including LGBT activism — in the federal government. The order comes amid numerous moves by the Trump administration to exterminate identity-driven ideology from all areas of the federal government. For example, LGBT and Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags and signage have already been prohibited from government buildings and DEI-supporting military leaders have been fired. Trump, along with Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, have also announced a plan to halt and block military investigations related to alleged “extremism.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Signs Executive Orders Restricting Transgender Troops, Ending Military DEI Practices

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

House Girls’ Sports Vote Exposes Democrats as Unrepentant Extremists

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The House bill to protect girls’ sports wasn’t remarkable for passing — it passed last year. What was remarkable is what the vote says about Democrats. In the first big test of whether Joe Biden’s party had learned its election lessons, the answer was a shocking and resounding “no.”

Every Democrat but two — Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar — ignored the rallying cry of November 5 and stood stubbornly on the side of radical transgenderism, leaving our nation’s daughters vulnerable to injury, lost privacy, and stolen innocence.

Perhaps the most astonishing detractor of Rep. Greg Steube’s (R-Fla.) Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act was Massachusetts’s Rep. Seth Moulton (D), who spent the better part of November fending off the Left’s mob after he had the audacity to agree with 72% of Americans that biological boys don’t belong on girls’ teams, in their locker rooms, or atop their podiums. The Marine veteran spoke frankly and refreshingly about his party’s wildly out-of-step views on transgenderism after the election, declaring, “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Turns out, he wasn’t afraid to say it — he was afraid to defend it. Proving that his party is still wearing an “ideological straitjacket,” as Moulton called it last year, less than 1% of Democrats sided with parents on an issue that most of us still can’t believe is an issue at all. “One of the most common-sense bills that we’ve had is the bill that says men cannot play in women’s sports,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Tuesday. Not a single Democrat supported the legislation when it was brought up in 2023, but that was before the GOP’s nationwide ad blitz outing the Left’s obsession with biological men in girls’ spaces.

And yet, even in deep blue states like New York, 66% of locals are demanding an end to this transgender madness — just a handful of points shy of the national average. “We all know that New York is a liberal state, so this tells you that this should not be a liberal, conservative or Democrat and Republican issue,” state Senator George Borrelo (R) insisted.

Now, Moulton, who was prematurely anointed as a voice of reason among Democrats, claims the bill is “too extreme.” “I’ve stated my belief that our party has failed to come to the table in good faith to debate an issue on which the vast majority of Americans believe we are out of touch,” the congressman told The Washington Post. “We should be able to discuss regulations for trans athletes in competitive sports, while still staunchly defending the rights of transgender Americans to simply exist without fear of danger or oppression. But instead, we’ve run away from the issue altogether. As a result, Republicans are in charge and continue to set the agenda with extremist bills like this.” As he once said to placate the party’s bosses, “I have nuanced views on these issues.”

Unfortunately for Moulton, voters’ views aren’t nuanced when it comes to defending the dignity and rights of women. If political expedience was the goal, this liberal failed miserably. He stood up to the bullies — then surrendered to them. And while not every constituent would have agreed with him, they’d have at least respected Moulton for going to bat for what he thought was right. Now he’s just another weak-kneed Democrat under the thumb of an inflexible, intolerant party. A fraud. In the words of incomparable Senator John Kennedy (R-La.), maybe it’s time to go to Amazon and buy a spine.

“I remember when Rep. Moulton was more concerned with what was best for his daughters than what his party thought. I wish this year’s Rep. Moulton could meet November 2024 Rep. Moulton and catch some of 2024 Seth Moulton’s courage,” FRC’s Quena González told The Washington Stand. “The flimsy reasons he gave for voting today against protecting women is hogwash. All obfuscation aside, there’s a word for not standing up to your little girls — it’s called moral cowardice. And there’s a word for not standing up on an issue that you concede lost your party the last election — it’s called electoral insanity.”

While it would be easy to get lost in the Democrats’ suicidal tendencies, the reality is, House Republicans did do what the country demanded — moving this crucial bill one step closer to reality. Doreen Denny, who, like many conservatives, has been waiting for the day when reason would prevail in Congress, celebrated with The Washington Stand that “the overwhelming mandate of the November election is getting results on Capitol Hill.” Denny, the senior advisor for Concerned Women for America, applauded the GOP majority “for standing for women.” “Now,” she urged, “it’s time for the Senate to get this bill across the finish line.”

But even Denny couldn’t help but shake her head at the asinine, self-defeating strategy of the Left. “Today’s vote could have been a turning point for bipartisanship on this issue,” she told TWS. “Instead, only two Democrats voted in favor of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. What a shame. It proves radical special interest groups promoting the trans agenda continue to have a death grip on the Democratic Party.”

The bill’s sponsor, Greg Steube, is flabbergasted that all but two members are willing to gamble on a proposal that has almost three-quarters of the country’s support. “This is going to be an election issue for them in two years,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “Maybe they think that two years is a long time from now. But we saw this as an election issue just a couple of months ago during the presidential race. … This is an overwhelmingly supported issue across America. So it is very shocking. … But it just shows you how out of touch Democrats are with the majority of America.”

Asked to speculate why Joe Biden’s party refuses to line up behind biological reality and fairness, the Florida Republican says it all comes down to fear. “The bottom line is, politically, they’re afraid of their left flank. And if a progressive Democrat comes along and fights them on this issue, the far Left of their party will root out any type of reason on these issues.”

And not only that, Steube argued, they’ll use lies to do it. Perkins pointed to Democrat Ayanna Pressley’s (Mass.) string of falsehoods on the House floor before the vote. “Imagine you are eight years old, trying out for the soccer team, and your coach demands that you show them your genitals. That is abuse. That is exploitation. That is egregious. But it is exactly what this Republican bill does.” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) went so far as to say the proposal would “unleash predators on girls,” without, as Fox News points out, explaining how.

Look, Steube countered, “None of this that they’re arguing is ever going to happen. It’s a lie. It’s to try to enrage people [to think], ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ and ‘Republicans are bad.’ … And the mainstream media is going to perpetuate that lie. It’s just unfortunate … [because] the bill is very short. It’s like a page and a half or two pages or whatever it is. Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me. But that’s exactly what it [says]: the gender you were assigned biologically at birth will determine what sport you play.”

Understanding the pressure they must have faced, others, like González, applauded the two members who defected to support the bill. “The Congressional Hispanic Caucus still refuses to admit Republicans,” he pointed out to TWS. “It sounds like at least two Democrats realize that, on the policy of protecting little girls, most Democrats are out of step with actual Hispanics. I guess Latinos aren’t Latinxs after all,” he quipped. “Who knew?”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: Majority of Americans Say Biden Is Worst President Since Nixon

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According to a newly released Gallup poll, Americans rate President Joe Biden as the second worst U.S. president since the 1960s, just barely above Richard Nixon.

The survey, released Tuesday, asked respondents to rate how 10 presidents from the last 60 years will go down in history. The presidents included JFK, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump’s first term, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Richard Nixon.

Just 6% of respondents gave Biden an “outstanding” rating, with 13% giving him an “above average” rating, 26% giving him an “average” rating, 17% giving him a “below average” rating, and 37% giving him a “poor” rating. Cumulatively, Biden scored a net positive rating of -35 percentage points — only Richard Nixon fared worse, with -42. Biden’s 37% “poor” rating was the highest of any of the 10 presidents in that category.

Overall, a majority of Americans — 54% — said Biden will be remembered as “below average” or “poorly.”

Under Biden’s four-year term, America has experienced a series of disastrous outcomes across a wide array of fronts.

On the economic front, a recent Economist report found that the U.S. currently ranks 20th in the world on a combined scale over the past year of gross domestic product growth, stock market performance, core inflation, change in unemployment rate, and government deficits. Despite this, Biden claimed last month that “we’ve entered a new phase of our economic resurgence.” He also stated, “I believe the economy I’m leaving at the moment … [is] the best economy, strongest economy in the world and for all Americans, doing better.”

But American voters did not appear to share the president’s enthusiastic economic outlook. After experiencing record-high inflation on food, gas, and housing prices and significant spikes in homelessness under Biden’s watch, almost 70% of Americans characterized the nation’s economy as “not so good” or “poor” in exit polls following the November election.

On America’s borders, a true crisis emerged after Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s border security policies shortly after taking office in February 2021. As a result, 10 million illegal border encounters occurred (compared to 2.4 million under Trump’s first term), child sex-trafficking more than tripled, and fentanyl trafficking increased, with over 250,000 Americans dying from fentanyl overdoses (an 80% increase since Trump’s first term). In addition, violent crime spiked significantly across the country under the Biden administration.

Regarding foreign affairs, global stability unraveled drastically following Biden’s decision to abruptly withdraw American troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, resulting in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers from a suicide bomber outside Kabul Airport and the deaths of an unknown number of American allies in the country (in addition to $7 billion worth of military equipment left behind, which the Taliban acquired). Six months later in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of approximately 80,000 Ukrainian troops and 200,000 Russian troops and a combined 800,000 wounded. In addition, approximately 12,100 Ukrainian civilians have also been killed, and there is currently no end in sight to the conflict, with North Korean troops joining the war in October 2024. A year and a half after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in October 2023, the terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, resulting in 1,200 Israeli deaths. This engulfed the Middle East in widespread conflict between Israel and the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others. The Iranian regime also launched direct attacks against Israel.

On the domestic policy front, Biden made highly polarizing and controversial issues the focal point of his administration, including completely unrestricted abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, the targeting of pro-life advocates and political opponents through the Department of Justice, the promotion of gender transition procedures for minors, and more.

“I think the American people are very kind to only give the outgoing administration the second worst grade of any administration since JFK,” Matt Carpenter, director of FRC Action, told The Washington Stand. “To my knowledge, the Nixon administration didn’t publish guidelines for biological males to ‘chestfeed’ their infants, subsidize abortion in the Pentagon, promote dangerous and irreversible gender transitions for minors, flood the country with millions of illegal aliens, and so forth. In my mind, Biden was the worst president since JFK and it’s not even close.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Capitol Hill Bathroom Controversy Continues: 15 Trans Activists Arrested for Illegally Protesting

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Have you ever heard of a “bathroom sit-in”? Apparently, it’s the term used to describe a form of protest in which transgender activists crowd or obstruct a bathroom space to try and prove a point. In this case, roughly 15 people from the Gender Liberation Movement (GLM) occupied the bathroom across from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to protest what some have referred to in similar contexts as “common-sense” legislation.

This is the latest in the saga on Capitol Hill concerning whether trans-identifying people can use the restroom that aligns with their so-called “gender identity.” It all started with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) who refused to sit idly by and let trans-identifying biological men such as Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) utilize the women’s restroom. One thing led to another, and it didn’t take long for Speaker Johnson to announce that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” And now, the trans activists are simply not happy.

A total of two groups graced the halls — or the bathrooms — of the Capitol. Their protest featured signs that read “Stop pissing on our rights” and “Flush bathroom bigotry.” Some also wore shirts that said: “We Just Need to Pee: Let us Be.” GLM co-founder, Raquel Willis, shared with the outlet Mother Jones, “It was important to show up in a radically defiant way and let the world know, and let our electeds know, that we are not going to allow this disrespect and this disregard for our lives.” According to Willis, “Trans folks deserve access to the restrooms like anyone else.” Notably, no one has been outright banned from being able to use the restroom.

Leading his own group was Chelsea Manning, “a former soldier who claimed transgender status after being convicted in 2013 for leaking secret military information during the Iraq War.” He told CNN, “I’m here today because every person deserves dignity and respect, both in daily life and in more symbolic places like the U.S. Capitol.” A video posted by the conservative account Libs of TikTok went viral on X of the activists dancing in the Capitol Hill bathroom. Mace reposted the video, stating that those same people showed up outside her office later that day. “One of them told my staff it’s bad to have sex-based bathrooms because cancer patients lose their hair and can look like the wrong sex,” she wrote. “Anything but the truth from the Radical Left.”

Their actions, however, were not free from consequences. According to Capitol Police, “Approximately 15 people were arrested for D.C. Code § 22–1307 — Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding — for illegally protesting inside the Cannon House Office Building.” Among those arrested was Manning. In response to these circumstances, Mace’s spokeswoman Gabrielle Lipsky told the New York Post, “Progressive politics is the most regressive threat to women. They just keep proving our point. They come here and make a public spectacle out of putting men in our bathrooms intentionally to intimidate women.”

Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon also offered a comment. Drawing special attention to the increased push against transgenderism, she told The Washington Stand, “With this storming of the Congressional ladies’ room by men in dresses, the era of self-reflection for the T-wing of LGBTQ+ appears to be over.”

Kilgannon elaborated, “There was some talk [and] introspection after the 2024 election and the decisive role that rejecting the demands of transactivists played. ‘Latinx’ as a term seems to have been removed from the leftist vernacular, but we can’t seem to remove the men from women’s private spaces.” The problem, she continued, is not just that “they insist on being there, [but] they must be dragged out in restraints.” According to Kilgannon, this bathroom fiasco “is a useful demonstration of why militant and mentally unwell men are not welcome in women’s private spaces.”

“[M]oreover,” she concluded, it illustrates “why honorable men assure women have private spaces in the first place.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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The Cult Is Alive and Well: Why the Trans Movement Isn’t Gone

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RELATED VIDEO: ‘A man cannot become a woman’ – House Speaker Mike Johnson on transgender remarks

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Walmart’s Retreat on DEI This Thanksgiving Is Just Gravy

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Turkeys aren’t the only things on the chopping block this week — so is woke policy. Americans, who are already celebrating a return to sanity after the elections, have to be equally ecstatic that after 19 months, conservatives are savoring another massive corporate surrender. In what Robby Starbuck calls “the biggest win yet,” the country’s number one employer, Walmart, is abandoning DEI in what may be the smartest holiday marketing decision so far.

For shoppers looking for an alternative to Target’s racks of chest-binding lunacy, it’s been disappointing to see how their largest competitor has become just as compromised on everything from Pride merch to abortion travel coverage. Now, in a shocking sea change, the brand is ditching its radical activism for market-friendly neutrality — just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

A jubilant Starbuck, who’d been in conversations with Walmart executives behind the scenes, said in a video announcing the change that he didn’t even know where to start, because, in his mind, “This is different than everything else we’ve done.” And maybe the most impactful. For weeks, the consumer activist was teasing the fact that he’d been investigating an enormous company. “Now I can reveal it was Walmart. But,” he emphasized, “something incredible happened.”

When headquarters realized Starbuck was looking under the retailer’s hood, they reached out to him. “This was critical and honestly turned out pretty fantastic for everybody involved in my opinion,” he explained. “We were able to have frank conversations with Walmart. And as I’ve said for a long time, I don’t ask companies to take on my political views. I am simply advocating for corporate neutrality. … [T]his is the future,” Starbuck insisted of the grassroots movement. And the iconic blue-and-yellow brand must agree, because “after various productive conversations, I am very proud to report to you guys that Walmart has decided on making some changes.”

The biggest, conservatives would agree, is that the company will no longer be participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s outrageous Corporate Equality Index, further frustrating the largest driver of the LGBT agenda in American brands. “I have to give their executives major credit,” Starbuck underscored, “because this will send shockwaves throughout corporate America.” Other changes the company pledged to make:

  • “Monitor the Walmart marketplace to identify and remove inappropriate sexual and / or transgender products marketed to children.
  • Review all funding of Pride, and other events, to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.
  • Discontinue the Racial Equity Center which was established in 2020 as a special five-year initiative.
  • Evaluate supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity. We don’t have quotas and won’t going forward. Financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data.
  • End the use of ‘Latinx’ in official communications.
  • Cancel racial equity training through the Racial Equity Institute.
  • Stop the use of DEI as a term while ensuring a respectful and supportive environment.”

Walmart joins a long list of companies who are publicly rejecting the agenda that’s tanked the stocks and profits of unrepentant brands like Bud Light, Nike, and Disney. Sam Walton’s stores now join a consumer activist trophy wall that includes Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, Ford, Coors, Black & Decker, Jack Daniels, DeWalt tools, Craftsman, Caterpillar, Boeing, and Toyota. Together, these companies represent an eye-popping $2 trillion dollars in market value.

Asked to explain the abrupt reversal, Walmart told Fox Business, ”[We are] willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.” Striking a remarkably contrite tone, they added, “We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone.”

Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital” and vice president at The Political Forum, believes “what’s happening with Walmart is a big deal. And not just because it is the largest retailer in the world,” he told The Washington Stand. “I think Walmart’s decision confirms that American business stands poised on the precipice of a ‘preference cascade.’”

He’s referring to a concept that was invented by economics about 40 years ago to explain “how totalitarian regimes go from seemingly stable and in control to toppled and wiped out in a matter of days or weeks. In brief, everyone lies about their preferences in public for fear of being singled out for retribution by the regime or their peers. In time, however, the lies give way to reality. A spark of some sort alerts individuals to the fact that they are not alone, that everyone shares their hatred of the regime but has also been hiding it,” he explained.

And once that “signals to the masses that the false social support is teetering — once one person, then two people, then three people express publicly what they have long felt privately — the entire social structure collapses upon itself. One leads to two, which leads to three, which leads to a ‘cascade’ of thousands upon thousands.” In this instance, “The DEI regime — largely started and enforced by groups like the Human Rights Campaign — has been stifling for businesses, which nevertheless played along for fear of being singled out. … And so, a return to standard traditional business practices is something that’s really going to benefit shareholders,” Soukup told guest host Joseph Backholm on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Remember, Starbuck emphasized, “This won’t just have a massive effect for their employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers.”

This will all come as a relief to former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, who five years ago, lamented the liberal changes the company had made since he departed a decade ago. “Our view was always, ‘Let’s just run a business,’” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in 2019. “We’ll sell to anybody. We’ll try to stay out of the public eye on issues that can be confrontational.” Fast-forward to the last five years, when everything — including the marketplace — is polarized. It’s astonishing, he said on “Washington Watch,” to see the progression of corporations.

Even then, Simon thought it was only a matter of time before the next shoe would drop. “I think there’s going to have to be some kind of reckoning because businesses,” he predicted, “particularly one that trades in public markets on the stock exchange, has to be available to everybody and can’t exclude one political ideology just because [of] the ideology of the people who are currently running that business.”

In this instance, the mere threat of consumer backlash was enough to force Walmart to wave the white flag. And it’s because, as Starbuck celebrated, “We are a force to be reckoned with. … [T]he paradigm has changed. We are powerful and growing every single day.” And, he added, “We will not stop until we have eliminated wokeness in corporate America.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: House Advances Dismantle DEI Act to Eliminate a ‘Very Dangerous Ideology’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Could Scrap Biden’s Trans Troops Policy ‘as Soon as Day One’

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While there aren’t a lot of familiar faces from Donald Trump’s first term, Americans are hoping there will be some familiar policies. From the border wall to tax cuts, voters have made it clear that the last thing they want is a continuation of Biden’s radical social agenda. And nowhere is that more critical than the United States military.

Of course, the president-elect is used to inheriting messes. (He spent four years cleaning up Barack Obama’s.) This time around, the repeat commander-in-chief will have his hands equally full. Morale is in the (gender-free) toilet, deadly conflicts blaze around the world, readiness and retention are in the basement, and our technology is about to become a distant second to China’s. Since the day Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office, he’s been too obsessed with advancing the culture war to fight the real ones. And until that changes, the shortfall of troops won’t either.

From everything (and everyone) Trump has appointed, the next administration has a good grip on the severity of the crisis. If the collective meltdown over Pete Hegseth’s nomination to head-up the Defense Department is any indication, the military is about to undergo a top-to-bottom overhaul. And not a moment too soon.

And based on the latest reports, the 47th president knows exactly where to start: with the rollback of Biden’s devastating transgender policy. Sources from inside Trump camp say priority number one is weeding out the thousands of gender-confused troops this administration welcomed into the ranks under the guise of “inclusion.” Unlike last time, when Trump tried to undo the Obama trans policy with tweets, the president-elect is said to be planning an executive order that would put the brakes on transgender service on day one.

According to The Independent, “The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.”

While no one has a real read on how many troops would be affected — liberal sources say upwards of 15,000 — the Pentagon counted 2,200 servicemembers who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021 of the country’s 1.3 million active-duty personnel.

Though the Trump team refuses to confirm its plans on the policy, the Left is already in a panic, spinning a web of lies in advance of the change. “There is no money being spent,” Paulo Batista, one of the Navy’s trans-identifying analysts lied. “It’s just continued care.” But that “continued care” — at a bare minimum — includes a refrigerator full of hormones that costs upwards of $3,700 per person, per year, according to the National Library of Medicine. The actual transition surgery can range from an eye-popping $20,000 to more than $150,000 depending on the complexity of the operation.

No one has to guess where Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the DOD, stands on the topic. The young veteran has been extremely vocal about his frustrations with our woke military, calling the current leadership “weak” and “effeminate.” This whole idea of taxpayer-funded medical care for these troops (which FRC calculated before Bidenflation to cost the nation billions of dollars in hormones, surgeries, counselors, and lost service time) is “an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford,” he argued. To waste this kind of money on such a small population is “trans lunacy,” Hegseth fumed, to say nothing of the “complications” it causes.

Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Robert Maginnis, FRC’s senior fellow for National Defense, made the point that if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) supports single-sex facilities in the Capitol, “the same should be true for the U.S. military.” “For readiness reasons, all transgender persons ought to be booted out of the ranks,” he insisted.

Of course, as he explained, all of this has its roots in the past two decades of the Left’s “confused sexuality.” “Early in the 20th century, the military considered gender dysphoria a mental condition and refused to enlist such persons. Then in 1993, President Bill Clinton came to the White House promising to lift the Pentagon’s long-standing ban on homosexuals. Clinton’s directive resulted in the policy known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ … [Then], eventually, President Barack Obama pulled the plug on that policy promising sexual orientation was not a barrier to service in the military.”

Back then, Maginnis pointed out to The Washington Stand, “military personnel with common sense knew all too well that sex in an already limited-privacy setting, especially same-sex attraction, is a readiness issue and always will be. Unfortunately, the woke Left under President Joe Biden pretends otherwise and uses his political power to throw sanity overboard. Today, the Pentagon’s ranks include allegedly thousands of transgender personnel” that hinder America’s ability to fight and win wars.

Practically speaking, Biden’s policy doesn’t even make sense. A trans-identifying person needs a steady stream of hormones and drugs, “which means that he or she can’t deploy overseas and must remain under a doctor’s constant care. That’s an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford because it detracts from combat readiness.”

Before the election, Trump vowed to scrap all of the wokeness plaguing our military, Maginnis continued, “which includes the transgender issue.” The reasons are obvious, he underscored: “Our service members have a full plate preparing for war, and any distractions or unnecessary drain on our precious resources must be eliminated. Besides, there are likely more healthy, well-adjusted people who would take their place in the ranks if the Pentagon dumps the woke nonsense and focuses on what’s important to our national defense.”

To those who say America can’t afford to lose thousands of personnel “at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” as one source complained, the administration didn’t think twice about booting 8,000 qualified men and women from the ranks when they refused the COVID vaccine. Where were the alarmists then?

In this instance, the impact can only be positive. As Maginnis reminds everyone, “Trans-identifying troops are non-deployable, and they create a health care burden. We only recruit and retain those who advance readiness.” In dangerous times like these, he cautioned, “We need every service member to be ready to deploy. For every non-deployable person like the trans soldier, another service member must be sent in their place. That creates additional burdens on an exhausted force and hurts morale.”

Not to mention, if the military can reject someone for a mild peanut allergy or flat feet or taking Adderall for six months as a child, why on earth would it accept the ongoing distraction of recruits with mental health issues and ongoing medical needs?

As Major General (Ret.) Joseph Arbuckle said on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” “There is no right to serve in the military. Nobody has that right. Standards drive performance, and if the trans community cannot meet those standards, and if they’re not prepared to deploy physically or mentally because of that, then they should not be serving. That’s the bottom line.” Congressman Mark Alford (R-Mo.), who was guest hosting the show, agreed. “The enemy doesn’t really care what your pronoun is.”

During an exchange with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a hearing, Alford remembers saying, “‘[I]f we go … right now across the Potomac, and we look down at those white tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery, would you be able to tell me the skin color or the gender or the pronoun of that person?’ And [Austin] said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘That’s because our diversity is not our strength. Our strength is from our unity of our common purpose.’”

When Trump strips DEI out of the military, he’ll restore a lot of morale that Arbuckle thinks is “suffering through the ranks right now, because the mission focus has been taken away.” “So I see the morale coming up. I see recruitment coming up. I see retention coming up. And our combat effectiveness. … That’s exactly what we need.”

At the end of the day, political correctness doesn’t win wars — and it’s time to put an end to policies that pretend it does.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Tugging a Strand of History: Feminism, Communism, and Transgender Bathrooms

PERKINS: Capitol Bathroom Debate Is a Symptom of Much Deeper Problems

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Democrats’ War on Reality: Spending Bills Reveal a Twisted Vision for the Future

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It’s almost September, and that can only mean one thing: Congress is returning to Washington, and Americans should hold on to their wallets. Several things could combine to make this fall a budget-buster: The fiscal year end means that $6 trillion worth of federal budgeting must be renewed by September 30th; the last three weeks of September are the last time Congress will be in session before the November 5th election; and, liberals in Washington only know one way to win — by buying reelection with your taxpayer dollars.

Dear taxpayer, September ain’t gonna be pretty, so buckle up.

Already in July, well ahead of next month’s funding fights, several reporters who cover Capitol Hill suddenly began simultaneously reporting that House Republicans are “fighting culture wars” by stuffing supposedly unrelated provisions into congressional spending bills. They are repeating Democratic talking points that characterize the spending bills in the Senate (controlled by Democrats) as neutral and bipartisan. The obvious implication of this reporting is that the “fair” approach would be to reject House conservatives’ “inflaming” language and instead adopt the Senate’s “neutral” language. Look for that framing to be used in force in September, when the House and Senate return to Washington to try to pass a budget.

This framing gets at least two things wrong.

First, the House and Senate are miles apart, not just on moral issues but on basic spending levels. Last year, the House and Senate fiscal year 2024 (FY24) spending bills were more than $150 billion dollars apart. (Neither set of spending bills balanced the budget, much less made a dent in the national debt, but the Republican-controlled House was proposing spending levels that were either pared down or more modestly increased than the Democrat-controlled Senate.)

This year will be no different, and the difference between what House Republicans and Senate Democrats (with some Republicans) want to spend will likely be even greater. With inflation ballooning under the Biden-Harris administration because of government spending, Democrats in Washington and their friends in the media would like nothing better than to deflect attention onto so-called “culture war issues.” Don’t miss the sleight of hand.

Second, when it comes to standing for life, marriage, and religious liberty, it’s important to realize that conservatives on Capitol Hill are actually playing defense against the Biden-Harris administration’s aggressive offense. Last year, for example, Planned Parenthood received one-third of its budget — $699.4 million — from taxpayers. The Biden-Harris administration is actively and aggressively using the levers of government to advocate for false sexual identities (LGBT) in everything from federally-funded school lunch programs to foreign assistance to poor countries. The government is being weaponized against people of faith and people with no faith at all who continue to believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.

In other words, if there is a “culture war,” it is one that the Biden-Harris administration is waging, with the help of Congressional Democrats who dominate the Senate. Meanwhile, House Republicans — the only bulwark to this onslaught — comprise a bare majority that is split into several factions. Conservative House Republicans are pushing back against the Democrats’ radical agenda, but other House Republicans try to stay as far away from the issues as they can, and some Republicans even join Democrats in destructive efforts to underminemarriage and target the unborn. Senate conservatives often do not have the votes to block harmful Democratic policies.

While some Republicans seem embarrassed by conservative principles, Democrats have seemingly no shame in using taxpayer funding to advance a radical leftist agenda. In the Senate, for example, here are some examples of radical, “culture war” earmarks that Senate Democrats have offered in this year’s spending bills:

Supporting abortion providers

  • $5,106,000 in earmarks for a hospital that provides the abortion drug, mifepristone, up to 10 weeks and surgical abortions up to 23 weeks, when some infants would be able to survive outside of the womb (Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., ChristianaCare Health Services, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies — Labor-HHS appropriations bill, in two separate earmarks).
  • $500,000 earmark for a hospital that provides abortions through 13 weeks and six days (Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Stroger Hospital, Labor-HHS bill).

Pushing false sexual identities on youth

  • $1,050,000 earmark for an LGBT advocacy organization that pushes this ideology on youth and advocates for them to undergo harmful gender transition procedures (Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., The Trevor Project, Labor-HHS bill).
  • $750,000 earmark to push gender ideology on youth ages 11-18 years old (Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth, Inc., Labor-HHS bill).
  • $500,000 earmark for a “mental health support initiative” to counsel youth through the lens of LGBT ideology (Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.M., and Schumer, Lesbian and Gay Community Services, Inc., Labor-HHS bill).
  • $356,000 earmark for an all-expenses-paid “training intensive” for self-identified transgender and non-binary theater artists in New York City (Schumer, D-NY, Unremarkable Productions, Labor-HHS bill).
  • $238,000 earmark for an organization said to serve not only girls, but “gender-expansive youth,” signaling that the organization pushes gender ideology on youth (Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., Asian Girls Ignite, Labor-HHS bill).

Directing funding for women’s services to serve men, and vice versa

  • $2,846,000 in earmarks for a young men’s organization to provide “accessibility” to YMCA programs regardless of certain characteristics, including gender identity, suggesting that the money will be used (in part) to facilitate the provision of services meant for men to women who identify as men (Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, D-Va., Young Men’s Christian Association of Central Virginia, Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development, and Related Agencies — T-HUD appropriations bill).
  • $1,500,000 earmark to provide “gender-inclusive shelter” to victims of abuse, raising the concern that biological men will be housed with women, increasing the latter’s risk of harm in the name of inclusivity (Tina Smith, D-Minn., Alexandra House, Inc., T-HUD bill).

House Democrats are no slouches, either, offering at least one “culture war” earmark and many, many amendments to stop conservatives from pumping the brakes on the radical Biden-Harris agenda.

Here are some examples of ways they have prioritized false LGBT identities:

Pushing false sexual identities on youth

  • $125,000 earmark for a heretical church seeking to establish a taxpayer-funded program that would likely push LGBT ideology on at-risk youth struggling with their gender or sexual identities under the guise of “juvenile justice prevention and education” (Mark Pocan, D-Wis., First Congregational United Church of Christ, Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies —CJS appropriations bill).

Discriminating against Americans who believe in one-man, one-woman marriage

Advocating for false sexual identities

Putting women at risk, paying for false sexual identities

  • Amendment to strike a section preventing the Bureau of Prisons from assigning placements based on gender identity, which would allow the placement of men in women’s prisons (Tlaib, D-Mich., amendment to the CJS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section that would prohibit placement in federal prisons based on gender identity, and a section prohibiting public funding of gender transition procedures (Lee, D-Pa., amendment to the CJS bill).
  • Amendment to strike sections barring funding for gender transition procedures, defunding Biden’s anti-religious liberty in adoption final rule, and barring funding for schools that allow males to participate in women’s and girls’ sports (Craig, D-Minn., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).

Here are a few examples of ways House Democrats are prioritizing the promotion of abortion and other policies leading to the destruction of human life:

Advocating for dangerous, do-it-yourself, at-home abortions

  • Amendment expressing the sense of Congress that the abortion drug, mifepristone, was appropriately approved and is appropriately regulated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and that this law supersedes any state effort to regulate this drug to mitigate harms to women (Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., amendment to the Ag bill).

Paying for/subsidizing abortions and the destruction of human life

  • Amendment to strike the Hyde Amendment, which has been in place for 47 years and prohibits HHS funds from being used for abortions (Barbara Lee, D-Calif., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to restore Title X Family Planning Funding to FY23 levels. Title X pays for drugs and devices that can destroy human embryos, and programs that bypass parental consent laws for minors; it also heavily subsidizes abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood (Kathy Manning, D-N.C., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section barring funding for certain organizations that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood (Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section that would allow an individual to sue in court for a suspected violation of the Weldon amendment, which prohibits funding for programs/agencies that discriminate against healthcare entities that decline to provide/pay for abortions (Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section prohibiting the NIH from using fetal tissue obtained from an elective abortion in medical research (Diana DeGette, D-Colo., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section barring funding for elective abortions for federal prisoners (Lois Frankel, D-Fla., amendmentto the CJS bill).
  • Amendment to narrow the scope of the Dornan amendment, which prohibits D.C. funds from paying for abortions, allowing the use of local funds for this purpose (Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., amendment to the FSGG bill).
  • Amendment to prevent the Office of Personnel Management from contracting with Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) carriers unless their plans cover IVF, a procedure that results in the routine destruction and perpetual freezing of living human embryos (Gerry Connolly, D-Va., amendment to the FSGG bill).
  • Amendment to strike a provision prohibiting abortion coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (Ritchie Torres, D-Calif., amendment to the FSGG bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section prohibiting funds to establish, support, administer, oversee, or issue a grant, contract, or cooperative agreement to provide information on, promote access to, or facilitate an abortion (Lizzie Fletcher, D-Va., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).

Paying for abortion advocacy

Allowing the District of Columbia to side-step pro-life federal protections

  • Amendment to strike a section requiring D.C. to submit a report to Congress on its enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, keeping Americans in the dark about unlawful abortions being performed on (sometimes viable) babies (such as the DC Five) in D.C. (Norton, D-D.C., amendment to the FSGG bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section barring D.C. from enforcing its law allowing physician-assisted suicide and from passing any other similar legislation in the future (Norton, D-D.C., amendment to the FSGG bill).

Discriminating against Americans who are pro-life

  • Amendment to strike a section prohibiting funds to implement the EEOC’s rule requiring reasonable accommodations for employees to get abortions, even if such actions would be against the employer’s conscience (Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., amendment to the CJS bill).
  • Amendments to prevent Republicans from protecting the conscience rights of employers from being forced to provide coverage of or accommodations for abortions and contraception for their employees (Norton, D-D.C., amendment to the FSGG bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section that would bar funding for post-graduate physician training programs if they don’t provide an opt-out option for abortion training or if they discriminate against physicians who do opt-out (Kathy Castor, D-Fla., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section barring funding for two pro-abortion Biden executive orders — the first contained directives to convene volunteer lawyers to sue against pro-life legislation, use the FTC to go after pregnancy resource centers, and convene an interagency task force to promote abortion while the second set up policies to pay for out-of-state travel for abortion through Medicaid and used sex discrimination laws to go after health care providers that will not provide abortions because of moral objections (Manning, D-N.C., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).
  • Amendment to strike a section prohibiting funding for HHS to administer, enforce, or finalize its proposed rule that would stop taxpayer dollars from going to pregnancy resource centers, which provide practical support for women facing unplanned pregnancies (Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., amendment to the Labor-HHS bill).

Jim Wallis, a liberal theologian, left-wing activist, and author of the ambitiously titled “Politics According to the Bible,” famously helped coin the phrase, “A budget is a moral document” to argue that it is immoral to cut federal spending. For close to two decades, Democrats have used itto cloak policy prescriptions for everything from wide-open borders to abortion-on-demand in biblical-sounding verbiage and to berate conservatives who opposed the expansion of the federal government far beyond its authority or means.

Maybe it’s time for conservative Republicans to take liberals at their word and take the fight to them. (Hint: They started to last year, and many of those spending provisions either made it into the final package or at least blunted radical Democrats’ counter-proposals.)

Whether or not spending bills are moral documents, they are a battleground. Those are your tax dollars being spent, and you have a right to demand that they reflect your values.

AUTHORS

Chantel Hoyt and Quena Gonzalez

RELATED PODCAST: Pros and Cons of the Child Tax Credit

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Revised 2024 Democratic Platform More Extreme than the Draft

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The final version of the Democratic Party’s 2024 Platform has added references calling transgender procedures “medically necessary,” claiming that Christian schools may further “discrimination,” shifting blame on the U.S. border to the previous administration, and promising American children a more “multilingual” education. The platform maintains its promises to keep “fighting” parents’ efforts to keep pornographic books out of children’s hands, expanding abortion nationwide, and promoting transgender procedures for children and prisoners.

Delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Committee in Chicago adopted the revised platform last week inside Chicago’s United Center. The final version contains minor modifications from the draft platform, which was released on July 13 and obtained by Politico. At that time, Joe Biden remained the presumptive Democratic Party presidential candidate.

Curiously, the 2024 Democratic Party Platform did not update that previous version’s references to the nominee’s name: It contains 20 references to 2024 being an election for Joe Biden’s “second term.” For example, the 2024 platform states, “In his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion” and “stand with Ukraine.” It contains less than 10 references to Kamala Harris in an individual capacity, rather than conjoined with Joe Biden or as part of the “Biden-Harris administration.”

Yet the alterations made between the two drafts indicate a Democratic Party moving ever further to the Left. The revised platform added a brand new promise — not to average citizens but to the transgender industry: “Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors — not politicians — in making health care decisions.”

Yet Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (D) signed a bill disrespecting the role of parents in their children’s health care by allowing children whose parents will not allow them to undergo transgender procedures to flee to Minnesota, a “sanctuary” where the state will reassign custody until the child has undergone a transition against his/her parents’ wishes. Walz also signed a bill outlawing so-called “conversion therapy,’ even if parents and children want it.” The 2024 Democratic Party Platform doubles down on transgender procedures, adding that Biden “protected transgender Americans’ access to health care and coverage, including medically necessary gender-affirming care” (emphasis added).

The platform also strengthened promises to come after individuals accused of holding the wrong positions on hot-button issues. The revised platform changed its promise of “protecting LGBTQI+ children from bullying and assault” to stopping anti-LGBTQI+ “bullying and discrimination” (emphasis added). The platform still mentions the party’s intent to prosecute “hate crimes,” noting, “The Justice Department is taking an all-of-department approach to protecting LGBTQI+ rights.”

That promise may be directed at Christian schools, which may lose federal funding for holding to biblical morality under the vague language of the 2024 Democratic Party Platform. A new section added to the platform states: “We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate” (emphasis added). Teachers’ unions and LGBTQ pressure groups have accused Christian schools of “discrimination,” because they do not allow teachers who flout biblical morality to set that example for their students, or because they do not allow GSA Networks clubs like the one Tim Walz founded in his high school, which promotes transgender transitions without parental notification. Traditional Christianity teaches that one’s biological sex is unalterable, a gift from God, and should be treasured, as well as opposing all sexual activity outside biblical marriage.

The revised platform also deals with language, promising a greater cacophony inside public schools: “[W]e’re working to provide every student with a pathway to multilingual education, while ensuring equitable access to a high-quality education for English learners, who’ve historically been underserved.”

The revised platform pledges to tax U.S. citizens and their communities to facilitate giving U.S. citizenship to non-citizen immigrants. A new sentence states the Harris administration “will also help to fund community-based organizations that host clinics to assist with immigration cases.”

Seemingly, the revised platform added references to the LGBTQIA+ movement wherever possible. The revised platform adds that, not only did President Joe Biden pardon gay veterans, but he “pardoned approximately 2,000 gay,lesbian, and bisexual veterans who were convicted years ago just for being themselves” (emphasis added). Again, “President Biden … expanded funding for campus sexual assault prevention and is keeping students safe on campus by restoring and strengthening protections under Title IX, including explicit protections for LGBTQI+ students” (emphasis added). At other times, it worsens the reputation of those who disagree. It notes that Biden and Harris “reversed Trump’s un-American ban on transgender service members and ended the disgraceful and discriminatory ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men” (emphasis added). It also replaced the term “gay” with the ever-more expansive “LGBTQI+.”

The platform still contains its promise to expand taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand nationwide: “With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe [v. Wade] the law of the land again. … We will repeal the Hyde Amendment. And in his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint leaders at the FDA who respect science and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms.”

A second abortion-related plank invokes the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, a relic of the 1970s feminist movement led by Gloria Steinem. “Democrats will fight to make the Equal Rights Amendment the law of the land,” although the never-ratified ERA has been interpreted to codify both a constitutional right to abortion and women’s eligibility for the military draft.

At times, the revision nods toward reality. It edits a sentence saying “the cost of living can still feel too high” to say the cost of living “is too high.”

The revision specifies that national rent control is coming in a Harris-Walz administration. A new sentence states that their housing policy “offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break.” The new platform added another line on housing policy: “and we will go after negligent landlords who don’t maintain basic habitability standards. We will also crack down on those who violate the Fair Housing Act, and on landlords who discriminate against low-income and minority renters and people with housing vouchers.” The Obama-Biden administration ignored written law and interpreted the Fair Housing Act as though it applied to people who identify as transgender. If you are renting out a room in your home but do not want your children sharing a bathroom with a trans-identifying male, you could become the target of a federal lawsuit.

A new section also alleges that former President Donald Trump “and his allies benefit directly from the housing shortage.”

The language does soften some of its anti-Trump rhetoric in light of the July 13 assassination attempt. Rather than saying, “Trump is a greater danger to democracy than ever,” the revised platform states, “Trump refuses to defend core tenets of our democracy: the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of checks and balances.” In two other instances, the platform changes some variant of the word “threat” to softer language (e.g., “The stakes in this election for the soul of our nation are profound.”). It also deletes a sentence stating Trump “has never respected service because he does not understand sacrifice.”

Yet it seeks to blame Trump and others for an historic influx of illegal immigrants over the last four years, and away from the Biden-Harris administration, discussing “a broke immigration system decades in the making” (emphasis added).

The revised platform contains the pledges made in the previous draft, as well, to continue “fighting” alleged “book bans.”

Since delegates did not revise the nominee’s name — or pronouns — the platform gives an insight into what a Joe Biden reelection campaign might have looked like. Until her rebranding as the candidate of “joy,” Kamala Harris was seen as the weaker link on the ticket, with major publications calling on her to drop out so Biden could choose a stronger running mate in articles with titles such as “The Case for Biden to Drop Kamala Harris,” in New York Magazine last September, or “For the country’s sake, Vice President Harris should step aside” in The Washington Post this March.

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee adopted a slimmed-down document containing only a handful of campaign promises that resonated with Donald Trump’s campaign. Notably, the 2024 Republican Party Platform jettisoned its traditional language vowing to protect life from the moment of conception until natural death. Over the weekend, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance indicated that President Donald Trump opposed any federal legislation to protect life, leaving the matter entirely to the states.

That is, however, significantly less pro-abortion than the 2024 Democratic Party Platform.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand c0lumn is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Do the Trump and Harris Campaigns Say about the America They Want to See?

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A political campaign can, should, and very often does tell the American public something about who the candidate is that’s running the campaign. There are, of course, some basic questions, common to any job application, that a campaign should answer: What are your qualifications? What are your achievements and accomplishments? What are your goals and ambitions? In a political campaign — especially a presidential campaign — there are some additional yet crucial questions: Who are you? Who are you running against? What is your vision for America?

In these days of vitriol and polarization, the latter slate of questions, and the final one in particular, have become of paramount importance. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have White House experience; each can point to achievements and accomplishments (whether factual or falsified); and the goals and ambitions of each candidate are necessarily wrapped up in the question of “What is your vision for America?” Thus, as political solutions to pressing problems are more desperately sought, the answers to the questions “Who are you? Who are you running against? What is your vision for America?” become of greater and greater significance.

The Harris campaign makes no bones about the current vice president’s vision for America. As if her policies — open borders resulting in rampant crime, abortion extremism, LGBT worship, and the aggressive prosecution of pro-life and Christian Americans — aren’t enough of an indication already, Harris reiterates her ambitions for America’s future in her inaugural campaign ad. That ad explicitly asks, “What kind of country do we want to live in?” The answer for Harris is simple: video footage shows Harris spending time with LGBT activists and abortion devotees. There is no room in Harris’s America for straight, white men, for Christians, for pro-lifers, or for anyone, it seems, who isn’t as far-left as Harris herself.

The vice president’s choice of running mate further confirms this. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) is, if it’s at all possible, just as pro-LGBT and pro-abortion as Harris. He has supported unrestricted abortions up to birth, gruesome gender transition procedures for children, and proudly presided over the destruction of Minneapolis in the BLM riots of 2020.

Harris is also staffing her campaign with the kind of people she wants to see more of in America. The Washington Stand previously reported that the Harris campaign is asking job applicants to choose from a slate of “neo-pronouns” if they want to help the vice president become the president. The Harris campaign is also requiring that staffers have the controversial COVID-19 shot.

Thus far, the Harris campaign still has no policies listed on its website, even though the Democratic National Convention has decided this week on a party platform. Harris has also continued to avoid media interviews and even shied away from debates against her political opponent. However, she never turns down an opportunity to vilify her challenger, calling Trump a harbinger “of chaos, of fear, of hate.” During the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Trump was mentioned nearly 150 times by Harris and her allies, while issues like “the economy” and “inflation” garnered a combined total of 30 mentions.

So what is Harris’s vision for America? According to the campaign she’s running, it would seem to be LGBT activism, abortion extremism, a dozen made-up pronouns and “gender identities,” the resurgence of COVID hysteria, and the demonization of political dissidents — in this case meaning about half the country.

And what kind of campaign is Trump running? Unlike Harris, the 45th president actually speaks to reporters, hosts solo press conferences, and generally seems comfortable speaking without a teleprompter. In late June, when debating then-presumptive Democratic nominee and President Joe Biden, Trump said, “I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political opponent. Because he indicted me because I was his opponent.” He continued, “I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that. I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again.”

Trump tells the American people who he is. More than that, he shows the American people who he is. Just a few weeks after the debate, when Trump was shot in the side of the head at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last month, he pushed his security detail aside to face the crowd of his supporters — and the shooter — and raise his fist while telling his countrymen to fight for their nation. He demonstrated to the American people that he is a man of courage, a man willing not just to fight for his country but, if need be, die for his country.

And who is Trump running against? The former president has received much criticism — including from his own party — for his attacks against Harris, from questioning her racial identity to highlighting the failures and flawed policies on her record. Among the chief of those failures and flawed policies in Trump’s crosshairs are Harris’s immigration and economic policies. One of the Trump campaign’s latest ads took footage of Harris at one of her own presidential campaign rallies discussing inflation: “A loaf of bread costs 50% more today than it did before the pandemic. Ground beef is up almost 50%,” Harris said. Trump’s team cut the clip there and added, “I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message” over the former president’s campaign logo. The Trump campaign has also launched documentary-style ads compiling news clips reporting on violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants allowed in the U.S. by the incumbent Biden-Harris administration.

But Trump’s vision for America is slightly less clear. Where Harris takes a strong and even an extreme stance on such issues as abortion and the LGBT agenda, Trump’s 2024 campaign has not been as clear as his campaign four years ago. His attention is focused, almost solely it seems, on mass deportations and tackling inflation. While these positions are, no doubt, of great importance to Americans, they are far from comprehensive.

The nation is, as Trump himself has declared on numerous occasions, in steep decline. Economic disaster and a seeming flood of illegal immigrants are part of the problem, but they do not address the problem in its entirety. What of morality? What of the slaughter of innocent unborn babies? What of marriage and family? Trump has told the American people who he is, he has shown the American people who he is running against, but what is his vision for America? Does it really stop at low gas prices and a border wall?

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What’s in a Pronoun? Harris Campaign Asks Job Applicants to Pick ‘Neo-Pronouns’

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A common enough feature of job applications is a list of prior professional positions, and maybe a list of skills or characteristics a prospective employer might appreciate. Far less common are lists of “neo-pronouns,” but that’s exactly what Vice President Kamala Harris is looking for from prospective campaign staffers.

The Harris campaign’s “Work with Us” website lists multiple open positions. When a candidate clicks on a job to apply, space is provided to attach a resume or CV, type a name, and pick a set of pronouns. Options include “He/him,” “She/her,” “They/them,” “Xe/xem,” “Ze/hir,” “Ey/em,” “Hir/hir,” “Fae/faer,” and “Hu/hu.” Applicants may also request that they be addressed only by their names instead of by pronouns, or may create their own “custom” set of pronouns. An explanatory note below the pronoun selection section reads, “Let the employer know what pronouns you use so that they can address you correctly.”

Social media has already erupted with jokes over the Harris campaign’s pronoun selection section. YouTuber and podcaster Blaire White quipped, “Kamala Harris has more pronouns (9) than policies (0) on her website.” Richard Hanania, founder and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, joked, “I would love to see someone ask Tim Walz to explain the difference between ze/hir and hir/hir,” referring to Harris’s running mate. Indicating the “neo-pronouns” on the list, one social media user commented, “Half of those are just the noises Joe Biden makes when he tries to talk.” Another social media user more soberly observed, “That’s kind of all they are running on. Identity politics and abortion.”

In addition to standard questions regarding professional and campaign experience, start date, and willingness to relocate, the application also asks, “How would you contribute to building a diverse culture?” and “Describe a time when you had to overcome adversity.”

At the bottom of the application are two optional surveys. The first is a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity questionnaire, which asks for an applicant’s gender. The only options are “Male,” “Female,” or “Decline to self-identify.” Below that is a “diversity survey” from the Harris campaign. Options for “gender identity” include “Female,” “Male,” “Transgender,” “Non-binary/non-conforming,” or “I do not wish to identify.” Other questions on the survey ask, “Do you identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community?” and “Do you identify as a member of the disability community?”

The Harris-Walz ticket has been branded as the most far-left in American history. “This is the most Radical Left duo in American history. There has never been anything like it, and there never will be again,” former President Donald Trump declared of the Vice President and Minnesota Governor Walz (D). “He’s very heavy into transgender — anything transgender he thinks is great,” Trump later said of Walz, who has been an outspoken advocate of the LGBT agenda.

Last year, Walz signed legislation that would remove children from their parents’ custody if they do not support the child’s supposed efforts to transition gender, including the use of hormone drugs and genital surgery. Walz also supported putting feminine hygiene products in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota public schools, earning him the nickname “Tampon Tim.” Harris also has a long record of left-wing policies, having been rated by GovTrack as the furthest-left member of the U.S. Senate before ascending to the vice presidency. As part of this White House, Harris has overseen arguably the most pro-LGBT administration in American history.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.