Inside The Push For Trump To Keep Radical Gender Ideology Out Of Child Welfare Programs

WASHINGTON—Advocates fighting radical gender ideology are pushing the White House to target child welfare programs, The Daily Wire has learned, pointing to national examples of the state removing children from loving parents who refuse to support gender ideology.

Many of the advocates involved in this effort played pivotal roles fighting gender extremism over the past decade. These individuals are intimately acquainted with the stories of parents who lost custody of their children for refusing to call their daughter a son or refusing to put their child through life altering transgender procedures.

The Daily Wire reviewed the copy of a draft executive order that these advocates plan to present to President Donald Trump, an executive order that proposes the president tie child welfare programs’ federal funding to a rejection of gender ideology. The advocates plan to follow up on this proposed order with legislation in Congress.

The order redefines child abuse and neglect, since, under the current language, leftist organizations claim that child abuse includes refusing to affirm a child’s gender identity. It would also tie federal funding for foster care to state plans that don’t refuse foster parents for their religious or political beliefs, as well as programs that don’t house foster children according to gender identity.

The proposed language of the executive order paints a stark picture of the parents facing Child Protective Services investigations, threats of losing custody, and denials of custody because they will not affirm child gender transitions. It describes how many child welfare services and family court personnel have been trained to remove children from parents who refuse to agree to sex-rejecting interventions.

And it notes that family courts in custody cases are often awarding custody of children to the parent who affirms that child’s gender identify confusion. Ted Hudacko, for example, lost custody of one of his sons to his ex-wife for questioning the impacts of gender transition attempts on children.

Advocates explained to The Daily Wire that their goal is for Trump to consider withholding federal funds from agencies that are investigating parents for “child abuse” for refusing to transition their kids, and to protect families that refuse to comply with ideological foster care principles.

“My team and I have been pulling on every level to get this proposed executive order in front of the President, contacting every contact we have in the administration including agency leaders,” shared Erin Friday, president of Our Duty-USA, a non-partisan parent advocacy group. Friday, one of the advocates spearheading the effort, was investigated for refusing to affirm her daughter’s supposed gender identity.

“This administration is dedicated to protecting children and families from gender ideology,” she explained, “and if we could meet with President Trump or get the proposed order in his hands, parents would be able to stop living in fear that if they refuse to treat their child as the opposite sex, they will be adjudicated abusive.”

Though the president extensively reformed the foster care system with a November executive order, there is concern that the recent order does not address the complete issue: notably, the enticement aspect, where pro-transgender activists coach children on how to circumvent their parents who refuse to consent to transgender procedures, and get themselves into the foster care system where they can begin transgender treatments.

The Daily Wire obtained a copy of a letter from a west coast Child Welfare Agency sent to a parent who refused to support or affirm their child’s new gender identify. The parent asked to remain anonymous pending trial, and the child has been placed in an “affirming” residence during the interim period.

The letter informs the parent that “our office received a report of abuse,” accusing the parent of being “responsible for the mental injury” of the child.

“Your actions and statements towards [the child] have caused significant mental injury,” the letter states. “The severe harm perpetrated showed serious disregard for [child’s] social and emotional well-being. Your adverse reactions to [child] expressing their gender identity have caused serious harm to [child’s] psychological functioning.”

Friday argues that there are many more such cases, often kept from the public eye due to legal constraints on the parents.

“The public is unaware that children are being kidnapped by child protective services and family judges because these cases are usually sealed or there are confidentiality laws that prevent parents from going public,” she explained.

In many states, foster care laws grant children a right to begin transgender interventions and to be housed with families or institutions that will validate and promote transgenderism. This opens up a whole other can of worms: in California, for example, foster care can extend up to the age of 25 in some circumstances, meaning that a grown man who says he identifies as a woman could be sharing living quarters with an already at-risk young girl.

Erin Lee is a mother who was investigated by CPS for refusing to “affirm” her 12-year-old daughter when she said that she was a transgender boy. Lee, who sued the school with her husband, told The Daily Wire that school employees “secretly groomed and transitioned” her daughter and sent a “mandated reporter to my home for a ‘well-child check'” when she refused to comply.

“We managed to evade losing our children that day, but I’ve met many parents who weren’t so lucky,” Lee shared. “I also had a six-year-old and infant at the time, and I shudder to think that I could have lost all three of my kids for being a good parent, for being unwilling to lie to my daughter and send her down a path of self-hatred and destruction. I was labeled abusive for not affirming my child’s mental health distress.”

The Lee’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately refused to take up the case. But Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said in a statement that they were concerned about federal courts avoiding the “particularly contentious” question of whether schools are violating parents’ fundamental rights when they “without parental knowledge or consent” encourage or assist “a student to transition to a new gender.”

Since Lee has gone public, she has met hundreds of families who have come into contact with Child Protective Services for not affirming their child’s gender confusion. This is particularly common in Colorado, she shared, where children are influenced by school officials or teachers who then use the “broken and rotten family court system to gain custody of the minor child.”

Colorado’s HB 24-1039 mandates that schools affirm a student’s social gender transition, meaning use the name of a student’s choice during school and extracurricular activities, declaring it “discriminatory to knowingly or intentionally use a name other than the student’s chosen name.” Students can file a report with the school, or a federal civil rights complaint, if they are “discriminated” against by a teacher who calls them a different name.

The state’s HB 24-1017 establishes a bill of rights for foster kids in Colorado, mandating that all foster families must affirm their foster child’s gender identity, essentially mandating that families who will not affirm a child’s gender identity cannot foster.

“In court, all these kids and their groomers have to say is that parents are not using the new name and pronouns, and 100% of the time, that’s enough to warrant parents losing custody of their children,” Lee insisted. “It feels like the twilight zone. How could this be happening, and why is no one doing anything about it?”

Advocates have long argued that the first step on the conveyer belt toward child gender transition is often public school, where leftwing teachers and counselors  encourage children to explore their gender identity or identify as transgender.

Lee saw this first hand: her young daughter came home confused about her sex, and within days, her family had CPS knocking on the door.

“They abused our child, yet we were the ones being labeled abusive,” she said.