Washington swim league finds workaround to keep boys competing in girls’ events

A Washington swim league says it has found a procedural workaround it believes will let meets continue under USA Swimming rules while still complying with Washington’s gender-identity laws, effectively allowing athletes to compete based on self-identification, which means boys can keep entering girls’ events despite President Trump’s executive order aimed at keeping men out of women’s sports.

In a November email obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, Chad Winkle, general chair of Pacific Northwest Swimming (PNS), warned parents, athletes, coaches, and officials about “issues” affecting PNS’s ability to host meets in Washington, including in King County and at the King County Aquatic Center. Winkle explained that after Executive Order 14201 was signed in February 2025, requiring federal definitions of sex to be based on male and female, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee adopted corresponding policies. Under the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, he said, USA Swimming was required to align with those standards, and as a local swimming committee, PNS is bound by USA Swimming rules.

But Winkle said those federal standards conflict with Washington State law and King County ordinances that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. He told members PNS had been working with USA Swimming, King County, and legal counsel to find a path forward that would allow meets to continue at the local level, though it might not apply to higher-level competitions. PNS also urged families not to contact outside organizations, warning that public pressure could disrupt negotiations.

On Dec. 2, Winkle announced in a follow-up email that PNS had reached “common ground” with King County and USA Swimming. The solution, he wrote, was to shift all PNS competitions to “Approved” meet status. That would keep USA Swimming technical rules intact, so times for athletes in good standing could still be entered into the SWIMS database and meets could remain properly insured, while changing the administrative side to satisfy Washington law.

The new approach “allows athletes to compete as they self-identify,” which continues to allow male athletes to compete in girls’ sports. Winkle said the PNS board voted to run meets this way through the end of January, when the policy will be reviewed again. He emphasized that PNS “is not the decider on this topic,” describing the organization as a facilitator operating within the demands of state law, county law, and USA Swimming regulations.

Keep reading

Enoch Burke: Irish School Teacher Jailed Following His Stance Against Transgender Ideology

Irish teacher Enoch Burke was arrested and jailed in November 2025. He was charged with contempt of court, and authorities insist this has nothing to do with his refusal to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.

Technically, they are correct that his imprisonment stems from repeated violations of a court order barring him from returning to the school during his suspension.

However, it is also true that the entire case began with his refusal to give in to transgender ideology, which led to his suspension in the first place. Burke was a teacher at Wilson’s Hospital School in County Westmeath, Ireland.

In 2022 the school instructed staff to refer to a transgender student by a new name and the “they/them” pronoun, and Burke refused to comply.

After he publicly objected at a school event and confronted school leadership, he was suspended pending disciplinary proceedings.

The school then obtained a court injunction barring him from its premises for the duration of his suspension.

Despite that order, Burke repeatedly returned to the school, prompting officials to seek court enforcement. He has since been found in contempt of court multiple times.

In late November 2025, a High Court judge ordered his committal to prison again, describing his repeated attendance as trespass and noting that fines were no longer effective.

Along with jail time, Burke is now facing fines exceeding 225,000 euros.

Historically, Ireland was one of the strongest Catholic countries in the world.

For most of the twentieth century more than 90 percent of the population identified as Catholic, and weekly Mass attendance often exceeded 90 percent.

Religious vocations were high, with thousands of priests and more than a thousand seminarians in the mid-1960s.

Keep reading

The Link Between Transgenderism and Autism

Chloe Cole grew up a tomboy, was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by age 7, and referred for autism screening by age 17.

Cole began identifying as a boy during adolescence and sought physical changes to match.

Doctors readily consented to medical intervention. They prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13. At 15, surgeons performed a double mastectomy, she told The Epoch Times.

But doctors didn’t address her neurological issues first. The same gender specialist who referred her for breast surgery later referred her for autism screening. Cole has described herself as being on the autism spectrum, but said she was never formally diagnosed.

Cole is now a leading campaigner against interventions to transition children with gender dysphoria.

She said many of those she knew personally when she was involved in the transgender community, as well as many of the detransitioners she knows, “are either somewhere on the autism spectrum, or they have been diagnosed with similar conditions, like ADHD.”

Her observations are increasingly supported by research. For at least a decade, studies have reported links among transgender identity, autism, and other neurological conditions. These connections have recently gained greater public attention.

Growing evidence of an autism–transgender link is already prompting some nations to recommend neurological screening before intervention. In America, the treatment model remains unchanged, and the predominant “affirmation” model makes the link difficult to investigate.

Autism and Gender Dysphoria

report published this month by the British think tank Centre for Social Justice showed that autism and ADHD were “overrepresented,” or disproportionately high, among youth with gender dysphoria.

​The report, citing data from the UK’s National Health Service, showed 32.4 percent of gender dysphoria referrals had an autism diagnosis, and 11.7 percent had an ADHD diagnosis. ​

Those numbers were 16 times higher than the national population averages for autism, and more than twice as high for ADHD. The population-wide averages for autism and ADHD in the United Kingdom are estimated at 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are far more likely to identify as transgender,” Joseph Nicolosi Jr., a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher in California, told The Epoch Times via email.

A pair of studies conducted in 2016 and 2019 indicate that autistic children are between four and seven times more likely to experience gender dysphoria or gender variance, he said. A 2019 study was conducted by researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and a 2016 study was conducted at New York University.

Nicolosi said there are several reasons for the connection, including “rigid thinking.”

​For example, if a boy with autism lacks stereotypical male interests, he may doubt he is a boy and assume he must be a girl. Reading social cues is often hard for those with autism, so they may perceive same-sex peers as getting along better than they do.

​“This heightens their sense of alienation from their peers,” Nicolosi said.

Keep reading

ACLU Files Motion to Have Even More Male Convicts Moved to Women’s Prison After Securing Transfer of 4 Trans-Identified Male Killers and Sex Offenders

At least four trans-identified male convicts were transferred into an Illinois women’s prison after being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Now, the ACLU is requesting that the court issue an order prohibiting those men from being transferred to Menard Correctional Center, the state’s largest maximum security male facility, and demanding that an additional group of men in Menard be offered a transfer to a women’s prison.

For nearly a decade, the Illinois ACLU has acted as legal counsel on behalf of a group of male criminals who claim to be transgender, of whom at least four have been confirmed by Reduxx to be currently housed at Logan Correctional Center – a women’s facility.

In January 2018, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against Department of Corrections (DOC) officials on behalf of six male inmates requesting a transfer to a women’s prison. In legal documents, all of the men were identified by a feminine alias: Andre C. Patterson, or “Janiah Monroe”; Eric D. Padilla, or “Lydia Helena Vision”; Diego R. Melendez, or “Marilyn”; Jordan Kuykendall, or “Sora”; Fadell Reed, or “Sasha”; and Gregory Stamps, or “Ebony.”

The initial suit, Monroe v. Rauner, accused then-mayor Bruce Rauner and DOC Director John Baldwin of “cruel and unusual punishment,” an eighth amendment violation, for not providing the convicted criminals with feminizing hormones.

The complaint argues that “the IDOC systematically fails to provide necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria… Among other common and medically necessary treatments, IDOC routinely fails to provide adequate hormone therapy and to accommodate social transition so that a prisoner can live consistently with his or her gender identity.”

It continues: “And while gender affirming [genital] surgery also is medically necessary for some patients with gender dysphoria, IDOC has adopted a policy that such surgery can be approved only in ‘extraordinary circumstances,’ which in practice means that IDOC never has approved any prisoner for surgical gender dysphoria treatment.”

The suit has been ongoing for the past eight years. Earlier this year, the ACLU filed a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent the DOC from ever transferring Padilla, Patterson, Kuykendall, Melendez, or Reed from being transferred to male prison Menard.

Keep reading

Male ‘Trans’ TSA Agent Wants to Pat Down Women So Bad He’s Filing a Lawsuit Over it

A self-proclaimed transgender employee of the Transportation Security Administration filed a lawsuit over his inability to perform pat-downs under the Trump administration.

Danielle Mittereder, a man claiming to be a woman, is challenging the Department of Homeland Security over its new policy ensuring that TSA agents can only screen members of their actual sex.

The lawsuit filed earlier this month asserted that the policy violates federal civil rights law.

Mittereder started working for the TSA in June 2024 and is currently stationed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Because President Donald Trump signed an executive order against recognizing transgenderism in the federal workforce on his first day back in office, Mittereder now finds himself unable to pat down women.

Keep reading

Oklahoma U student files discrimination report after flunking gender essay for psych class with trans instructor

A graduate assistant was removed from her position amid investigations into a contested discrimination report filed by a disgruntled student who repeatedly referenced the Bible in an essay response to an article about gender stereotypes — for a course taught by a transgender instructor.

In her essay, which was supposed to cover “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender,” University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky presented a biblically fueled tirade against the notion that there are multiple genders.

The psychology course’s professor, graduate student Mel Curth, who uses “she/they” pronouns, failed Fulnecky on the grounds that she neglected to address the prompt and relied more on “personal ideology” than “empirical evidence,” according to a bombshell thread shared by the university’s Turning Point USA chapter.

In the essay, Fulnecky repeats ad nauseam that she doesn’t take issue with gender stereotypes because “that is how God made us.” However, she neglected to cite the article she was responding to, save for a vague reference to “teasing as a way to enforce gender norms.”

Keep reading

Parents Sue District After School Forced Daughter to Share Bed with ‘Trans’ Male Student on Trip

A Colorado family’s nightmare school trip has now become a federal case, and they are not alone.

According to a news release from the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, four families are suing Jefferson County Public Schools after learning their children were forced into overnight sleeping arrangements with students of the opposite sex without parental knowledge or consent.

For Joe and Serena Wailes, the breaking point came when their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as female during a school-sponsored trip.

No parent should have to discover something like that after the fact. Yet that is exactly what happened on a recent outing.

The Wailes family is now joined by Bret and Susanne Roller and Rob and Jade Perlman, who say the district’s policies robbed them of their right to protect their children’s privacy and safety.

According to the ADF brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, officials at Jefferson County schools assign sleeping arrangements based on gender identity, not sex, while telling parents that boys and girls will be kept on separate floors.

The problem, ADF explained in a news release about the lawsuit, is that the district quietly redefines “boy” and “girl” to mean a student’s gender identity.

Parents are never informed of any of this nonsense.

The result is that families receive a false sense of security, while their children are placed in intimate overnight accommodations with students of the opposite sex.

In the Rollers’ case, they discovered after their young son’s trip that a female student had been assigned to his cabin and was monitoring his showers.

For the Perlmans, whose daughter previously experienced sexual harassment at a district middle school, the risk of her being roomed with a boy was already unacceptable.

The families are asking the court to halt the district’s policy, arguing that it violates parental rights, bodily privacy, and religious freedom.

ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson said the district’s refusal to offer sex-based accommodations contradicts its claim that it “freely grant[s] accommodations to all.”

Where is the sanity?

Teachers, administrators, and lawmakers are supposed to be looking out for children.

Instead, in one of Colorado’s most crowded districts, they concealed information parents needed to keep their children safe.

And it’s not just these families who have been failed.

The “trans” boy placed in a girl’s bed has also been failed by a system that treats identity confusion as an unquestionable truth, rather than a situation requiring a difficult conversation.

No little girl should ever be forced to share a bed with a strange boy — even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

Keep reading

UK Ofcom Pushes Rules Targeting “Misogynistic” Content, Prompting (Even More) Free Speech Concerns

Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has unveiled a new framework urging social media and technology companies to censor so-called “misogynistic” content as part of its A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls campaign.

The initiative, framed as an effort to protect women from online abuse, further weakens the distinction between “harmful” conduct and lawful expression, a tension Ofcom itself acknowledges in its own documentation.

The regulator’s new guidance encourages platforms to adopt a wide range of “safety” measures, many of which would directly influence what users can post, see, and share.

These include inserting prompts that nudge users to “reconsider” certain comments, suppressing “misogynistic” material in recommendation feeds and search results, temporarily suspending users who post repeated “abuse,” and de-monetizing content flagged under this category.

Moderators would also receive special training on “gender-based harms,” while posting rates could be throttled to slow the spread of unwanted speech.

Ofcom’s document also endorses the use of automated scanning systems like “hash-matching” to locate and delete non-consensual intimate imagery.

While intended to prevent the circulation of explicit photos, such systems typically involve the mass analysis of user uploads and can wrongly flag legitimate material.

Additional proposals include “trusted flagger” partnerships with NGOs, identity verification options, and algorithmic “friction” mechanisms, small design barriers meant to deter impulsive posting.

Some of the ideas, such as warning prompts and educational links, are voluntary.

Yet several major advocacy groups, including Refuge and Internet Matters, are pressing for the government to make them binding on all platforms.

If adopted wholesale, these measures would effectively place Ofcom in a position to oversee the policing of legal speech, with tech firms acting as its enforcement arm.

In a letter announcing the guidance, Ofcom’s Chief Executive Melanie Dawes declared that “the digital world is not serving women and girls the way it should,” describing online misogyny and non-consensual deepfakes as pervasive problems that justify immediate “industry-wide action.”

She stated that Ofcom would “follow up to understand how you are applying this Guidance” and publish a progress report in 2027.

Keep reading

Trump State Dept. declares abortions, euthanasia, transgender surgeries ‘human rights violations’

Federal officials will recognize the intentional destruction of innocent preborn babies as well as the surgical and chemical mutilation of children as human rights violations, according to the State Department.

Spokesperson Tommy Pigott told The Daily Signal that countries receiving foreign aid will be required to include “the mutilation of children” in their annual reporting to the United States.

“In recent years, new destructive ideologies have given safe harbor to human rights violations,” Pigott said. “The Trump administration will not allow these human rights violations, such as the mutilation of children, laws that infringe on free speech, and racially discriminatory employment practices, to go unchecked. We are saying enough is enough.”

“Racially discriminatory” practices include favoring non-white applicants for jobs or other benefits, a practice sometimes called “affirmative action.”

The human rights reports are a standard requirement for countries receiving taxpayer dollars.

“The State Department submits Human Rights Reports on all countries receiving assistance and all United Nations member states to Congress in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974,” The Daily Signal explained.

Other human rights violations that must be tracked include sanctions for so-called “hate speech,” supporting mass migration into other countries, “attempts to coerce individuals into engaging in euthanasia,” “violations of religious freedom, including antisemitic violence and harassment,” and support for “forced testing, forced organ harvesting, and eugenic gene-editing practices on human embryos.”

A medical reform group that opposes transgender drugs and surgeries for minors thanked the Trump administration for “setting a clear moral standard” on this issue, as well as others, such as DEI.

“Do No Harm commends the Trump administration for highlighting toxic ideologies around the globe as the first step to eliminating them,” Executive Director Kristina Rasmussen told LifeSiteNews via a media statement.

“Engaging in racial discrimination or pushing irreversible gender medicalization on children is unacceptable – whether here at home or abroad,” Rasmussen said. “The State Department is leading the way in protecting the vulnerable and setting a clear moral standard for the world.”

Keep reading

US State Department Designates “DEI” As A Violation Of Human Rights

There is no way for a government to enforce Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies without also discriminating against certain groups of people.  DEI, by its very nature, is anti-merit, anti-success and pro-privilege.  Of course, the groups that are most commonly discriminated against under DEI quotas are mostly white, male and straight.  The assumption being that white dudes are widely considered “fair game” by the rest of society. 

This dynamic creates a never-ending cycle of people clamoring for oppression status rather than personal integrity and accomplishment.  To win in life, you must figure out a way to catch the government’s favor and attain that coveted prize; to rise to the top of the diversity totem pole.

This ideology has infected societies throughout most first world countries and even some developing nations.  Woke activism seems rampant in the US, but that’s because DEI faces American opposition.  The color revolution is louder because their power is failing.  For the rest of the west, however, DEI in government is an absolute.  This is a problem because it requires Americans to reconsider which countries they view as “allies.” 

The Trump Administration is adjusting to this ideological conflict quickly, and part of this change requires that the US starts openly calling out far-left governments for their destructive behaviors.

Countries enforcing DEI policies will now be at risk of the Trump Administration deeming them as human rights abusers, which upends the status quo when it comes to diplomatic relations.  The State Department is issuing new rules to all US embassies and consulates involved in compiling its annual report on global human rights violations.  

Other policies by foreign governments which US embassies will be told to categorize as human rights infringements include:     

Subsidising abortions, “as well as the total estimated number of annual abortions”     

Gender-transition surgery for children, defined by the state department as “operations involving chemical or surgical mutilation… to modify their sex.”     

Facilitating mass or illegal migration “across a country’s territory into other countries.”     

Arrests or “official investigations or warnings for speech” – a reference to the Trump administration’s opposition to internet safety laws adopted by some European countries to deter online “hate speech” (any speech which is critical of woke ideology no matter rational).  

Keep reading