When Naomi Best began a counseling psychology master’s program last year at Santa Clara University, she did not expect her professor to ask her what she disliked about her genitals. As a required part of Professor Chongzheng Wei’s “Human Sexuality” class, students were asked to submit a “sexual autobiography” that could include talking about their genitals, sharing when they first began masturbating, or discussing their “personal sexual aspirations,” Best said. The syllabus said students need not answer questions that “make you feel extremely uncomfortable,” but that was easier said than done. At one point, a trans-identifying male psychologist was invited to be a guest speaker for the class, she said. When Best asked him what he meant by “gender euphoria,” he allegedly told her that he “almost came” when he saw himself in the mirror as a woman for the first time, she said. The trans-identifying psychologist also allegedly told students, “trans women have the only p***ies that can blow up the world,” Best said. Then there was the day when Professor Wei, who goes by “he/they/ta” pronouns, allegedly shared that he had bought a device at a kink festival to elongate his foreskin, Best said. The professor also allegedly showed the class an instructional video on how to tie someone up who was wearing a slave “gimp suit” to an X-shaped cross. He also allegedly had students watch a video of a BDSM dungeon tour that featured a female influencer being flogged, electroshocked, ball-gagged, put in a guillotine, subjected to knife “play,” and wrapped in plastic and made to jump up and down as a “humiliation tactic,” all with no warning, Best said. Afterwards, Wei smiled and asked if students wanted to try it themselves. Best walked out of class that day, and ended up dropping the class altogether. “There’s an argument to be made that therapists should be aware of the breadth of human sexual practices, including BDSM, and I am not contesting that, but the manner in which this material was presented was promotional,” Best told The Daily Wire. “There was no clinical framing,” Best said. “I want to be able to talk with clients about sex if they want to talk about it. If a client comes to me and brings it up that they get sexual gratification from inflicting pain upon somebody, I think that therapists should be trained to have curiosity about that association … not for the reason of telling them they’re a bad person. Therapists don’t do that. But to have a conversation about it, if they bring it up.” She had dropped the “Human Sexuality” class once before when she was asked — and declined — to discuss her “masturbation history” in a group of four students that included a man, she said. Best, a 26-year-old married mother of a toddler, believed that revealing her personal sexual history would be a violation of her Christian beliefs. So, she requested the same accommodation she had heard female Muslim students were offered, which was to take the course remotely. Instead, Professor Wei asked to meet with her and promised there would be no personal sexual disclosure in his class, but that turned out to be wrong, she said. “It’s just clearly a hostile learning environment, and I don’t know how to explain that to somebody who just doesn’t inherently understand it,” she said. Best took her complaints about the course all the way up the chain at Santa Clara University, exhausting every official avenue from the Title IX office to the school’s president. She explained her issues with the class — the invasive sexual autobiography, a swath of “gratuitous” sexually titillating course material, and alleged unprofessional behavior from the professor and guest speakers. But she said her concerns were not taken seriously. The school dismissed her Title IX claim, and when she asked for a refund for the class, a school representative called her request “astonishing,” according to emails shared with The Daily Wire. The time is now to take on ideological capture of therapy. I’m just getting started. pic.twitter.com/BTm4OrHUFM — Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 18, 2025 Ideological capture is near complete in the field of psychology. Schools, training grounds, accreditation bodies, and professional guilds are all complicit. — Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 18, 2025 Blew the whistle in @WSJopinion on ideological rigidity in therapy training. A week later, I am fired from my internship with the regret of my boss. This field is in crisis. The public needs to know. pic.twitter.com/EldOjq0hOG — Naomi Best (@naomieppsbest) June 12, 2025 Last week, Best received a letter from Sabrina Zirkel, dean of the School of Education and Counseling Psychology telling her that, “we do not agree with your interpretation or characterization of what the syllabus required” and “based on input from others who were present, we also do not agree with your assertions about and characterization of what occurred during the class.” The dean argued that “the class requires internal self-reflection which is the type of work that therapists ask of their clients,” but that “under no circumstances were you required to disclose sexual memories, sexual experiences, or any other personal information that you did not wish to share.” The school said Best still has the opportunity to “complete this content through approved continuing education classes offered by a third-party provider.” Professor Wei and the heads of the Education and Counseling Psychology school all referred requests for comment to Santa Clara University’s media office. In a statement to The Daily Wire, Santa Clara University said that “no student is expected to or required to reveal or disclose private sexual information they do not want to share” and “self-disclosure of an intensely personal nature is not required.” The school said the class has been taught with a similar approach and similar assignments since the mid-1990s. “We do not agree with many of the student’s public assertions about the class,” the university said. “People who were present dispute statements being made by the student and her characterization of classroom discussions and course content, including the readings, speakers, and assignments.” Best says one of the books the class studied was “The Guide To Getting It On,” a book with explicit cartoons of sexual acts, whose author said he wrote the book as “revenge for eight years in Catholic school.” Santa Clara University is a Catholic Jesuit school. The school said it could not comment on the details of Best’s complaint but said the Title IX office may sometimes conclude that “course requirements or classroom content are protected by the principles of academic freedom.” Best believes her experience points to a deeper problem in the counseling psychology world. “What happened at Santa Clara University was unethical and will be remedied,” she said. “I want to bring awareness to the fact that psychology and counseling has been ideologically captured. That means that there is one permissible worldview for upcoming therapists to hold, and it is grounded in critical theory.” Earlier this month, Best came out publicly with her concerns and published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. After her op-ed ran, Best said she was fired from her required therapy internship — unrelated to the school — after she was called into a meeting with over a dozen colleagues where she said she was “attacked for what I wrote.” “I think I just blew up my career,” she told The Daily Wire. However, since going public with her allegations, Best has received an outpouring of support. An alumnus of Santa Clara University called Best’s experience with her graduate class “gobsmacking, sordid and sad” in a letter to the editor The Journal published. Her social media videos discussing the situation have been viewed millions of times, and many people have reached out in support, including lawyers and other students with similar experiences, she said. “Two weeks ago, I was living a private life with a great career path,” Best said. “I am putting that on the line to bring this issue to the public’s attention because I think it is important and I think people will be harmed if it is not addressed.”

WASHINGTON—During a Senate Judiciary hearing Wednesday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz exposed China’s shady efforts to infiltrate the American energy sector and leave the United States dependent on Beijing for so-called green energy. “We are witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy,” Cruz said at the hearing. “There is a coordinated assault by the radical Left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party, to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against US energy producers all in order to undermine American energy dominance.” Cruz in particular focused on Energy Foundation China, a group with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The senator cited a report from State Armor, which found that “To secure U.S. dependence, the CCP has been co-opting the progressive American climate change lobby to push a transition from fossil fuels and other critical inputs…onto ‘green’ technologies controlled by China.” By funneling money through the foundation, the report claims, the CCP has funded many climate advocacy groups in America, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is well known for its litigious character. “Their lawsuits are designed to destroy the American energy industry, which happens to perfectly coincide with the political objective of Senate Democrats to destroy the American energy industry,” Cruz said. Cruz continued by exposing the Climate Judiciary Project, which claims to be impartial and uninvolved in litigation, but reportedly trains and supports judges presiding over cases of climate litigation. Cruz pointed out that Energy Foundation China, which is run by former CCP officials, is funding litigation groups working to flood the courts with cases against American energy companies. These cases then come before judges trained by leftist-funded climate advocacy groups. “This three-pronged strategy — foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination — is a full-spectrum assault on American energy independence,” Cruz said. “And while China drills and digs, we sue and shut down.” “While China prepares for energy dominance, the American Left prepares to attack our own domestic capability.” Ranking Member Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called Cruz’s claims a “conspiracy,” arguing that the oil industry’s “dark money” schemes were more concerning. “The hearing ignores that the fossil fuel industry has, for decades, benefited from secret funding to wage war on the American consumer by making energy more expensive and dirtier,” Whitehouse said. Whitehouse also dismissed the claim that China was indirectly providing funds to litigious groups. Energy Foundation China, he argued, seemed focused on addressing Chinese environmental concerns, not advocating for legislative change in the United States. Whitehouse said, “Fighting Chinese pollution in China […] is a very different thing than having a Chinese conspiracy that funds a litigation group here in the United States.” From 2001 to 2020, the EFC has paid out nearly $1.02 billion in grants to hundreds of different organizations seeking climate reform, according to a report by Influence Watch. The Climate Judiciary Project paid an undisclosed amount toward its judicial education programs. Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Center, was among those testifying about the role the CCP might play among American climate lobbyists and judges. Asked about the motives of the CCP officials who founded Energy Foundation China, Walter said he was “skeptical that former Chinese communist officials are interested in doing anything that would harm their country.”

Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby (R) on Wednesday finally had her voice restored after state Democrats censured the Republican for a post calling out the state’s unpopular transgender sports policy. Libby announced on X that state Democrats passed a House resolution to fully restore her voting and speaking rights, which were first stripped in February. “VICTORY!! Democrats CAVE and give my Voice AND Vote back,” she said. “My constituent’s right to representation and my right to free speech should never have been stripped.” Notably, Libby was told she would have to apologize to Democrats for her Facebook post drawing attention to Maine’s controversial transgender policies if she wanted her voting and speech rights back.  “I have NEVER apologized and NEVER WILL for speaking up for girls’ sports,” Libby said.  ? VICTORY!! ? Democrats CAVE and give my Voice AND Vote back. My constituent’s right to representation and my right to free speech should never have been stripped. I have NEVER apologized and NEVER WILL for speaking up for girls’ sports. — Rep. Laurel Libby (@laurel_libby) June 25, 2025 Libby filed a lawsuit over the censure, and last month she scored a legal win at the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled to give the Republican back her voting rights as the lawsuit plays out. “The Democrats caved because they know that they are losing, they are losing in the court of public opinion, they are losing in the literal court, and they have to save face,” Libby said in a video post. As highlighted by Libby, constituents in Maine — though a liberal state — side with Republicans and President Donald Trump on transgender sports issues: they want to protect female spaces and sports and keep trans-identifying males out. “This is not over. This all began because I spoke up on behalf of Maine women and girls, who are being discriminated against,” Libby continued. “Their rights have not been assured. This is a Democrat maneuver to try to get themselves out of trouble — but they are still in trouble.” In Maine, Democrat Gov. Janet Mills is still standing by her position to allow males in girls sports. The Trump administration has sued the state’s Department of Education and frozen federal dollars over that decision. WATCH: LIVE from Augusta… the Democrats CAVED!! pic.twitter.com/qiXLipy37i — Rep. Laurel Libby (@laurel_libby) June 25, 2025 Related: She Stood Up For Girls, Then Got A SCOTUS Win: Laurel Libby Speaks Out

President Donald Trump delivered a scathing rebuke of the state of Israel over the “witch hunt” targeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a case that began in 2020 — is set to move forward on Monday. Trump made it clear in his post, shared first via his Truth Social platform, that both he and the United States would have Netanyahu’s back — and he called for the case to be dropped immediately, praising the Prime Minister’s recent actions with regard to the conflict with Iran. “BREAKING NEWS … I was shocked to hear that the State of Israel, which has just had one of its Greatest Moments in History, and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous Witch Hunt against their Great War Time Prime Minister!” Trump began. President Trump just posted a long, strong defense of Netanyahu regarding his trial. “It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.” pic.twitter.com/sRUZVEWn4F — Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) June 25, 2025 The president then pivoted to address Iran and argued that Netanyahu had handled the situation perfectly. “Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land,” he continued. “Anybody else would have suffered losses, embarrassment, and chaos! Bibi Netanyahu was a WARRIOR, like perhaps no other Warrior in the History of Israel, and the result was something that nobody thought was possible, a complete elimination of potentially one of the biggest and most powerful Nuclear Weapons anywhere in the World, and it was going to happen, SOON!” “We were fighting, literally, for the Survival of Israel, and there is nobody in Israel’s History that fought harder or more competently than Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said, turning his attention to the legal case against the Israeli Prime Minister. “Despite all of this, I just learned that Bibi has been summoned to Court on Monday for the continuation of this long running, (He has been going through this ‘Horror Show’ since May of 2020 – Unheard of! This is the first time a sitting Israeli Prime Minister has ever been on trial.), politically motivated case, ‘concerning cigars, a Bugs Bunny doll, and numerous other unfair charges’ in order to do him great harm.” Using similar language to what he’d used to describe the legal cases against him in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump continued: “Such a WITCH HUNT, for a man who has given so much, is unthinkable to me. He deserves much better than this, and so does the State of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State.” “Perhaps there is no one that I know who could have worked in better harmony with the President of the United States, ME, than Bibi Netanyahu,” he concluded. “It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu. THIS TRAVESTY OF ‘JUSTICE’ CAN NOT BE ALLOWED!”

On the surface, it might seem like “wokeness” and the extreme excesses of Left-wing ideology have been defeated, or at least neutralized. But that’s not the case. The most destructive and anti-American impulses of the Left have not been defeated. They haven’t suddenly realized the errors of their ways. Instead, like a malignant cancer, they have mutated. They’ve identified different ways to undermine the foundations of this country. And in the process, they have become much more dangerous and ultimately much more deadly. That’s not to say that we haven’t had any real victories against wokeness, or leftism, in recent years. We have. But the battle is very, very far from over. Cut off one tentacle of this giant squid-like beast, and it grows another. That’s the only way to understand what took place yesterday in New York’s mayoral primary. Andrew Cuomo has conceded the race — which means that, barring an upset in the general election from a candidate like Eric Adams, a 33-year-old Muslim socialist from Uganda named Zohran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York City. Yes, a foreign nepo baby and failed rapper who wants to nationalize the grocery stores and the rental properties, while also destroying the police department in the name of “queer liberation,” and forcing taxpayers to fund sex-changes for children, is the man New Yorkers apparently want to put in charge. Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images Every aspect of his platform is un-American and demented and totally insane, but it’s worth spending a little time specifically on his brilliant idea to create government-run grocery stores, which we touched on yesterday. We can use just this one example, this one part of his platform, to show how utterly foolish the whole thing is. So, in this country, the typical grocery store has a profit margin of roughly 2 to 3%. They’re not colluding with other stores to extract some insane profits, in violation of antitrust law. Instead, the way grocery stores work is by leveraging economies of scale to generate a lot of very small profits from a lot of individual sales, which add up over time. They’re only functional because they’re efficient, which is the opposite of how the government works. And even then, they’re barely turning a profit on every sale. If you’re some kind of greedy capitalist Gordon Gecko like figure, the grocery business is not the kind of business you’d get into. So if you want to create government-run grocery stores, then you might as well create government-run restaurants and technology companies and car dealerships, too. You might as well nationalize the entire economy, and turn the United States into Venezuela. After all, of all the things you can nationalize, grocery stores are the most extreme. As usual, radical leftists don’t follow the slippery slope trajectory in a neat and gradual way. The start with the most extreme thing, and work backwards from there. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show If this conversation sounds familiar, it’s because Kamala Harris also ran on the idea of price controls for grocery stores. Which is just socialism, of course. It was rejected by voters in every swing state because it doesn’t work. But it just won in New York, thanks largely to well-off voters who will never need to shop in a government-run grocery store. That’s why the blue-collar workers didn’t vote for this communist. They saw what happened when San Francisco, and Chicago, and every other jurisdiction on the planet voted for people like this. It ends in widespread poverty and destruction, every single time. And that’s what’s going to happen soon in our largest city. There are broader implications here as well, beyond the disaster that’s about to befall New Yorkers. Whatever happens in the general election, it’s safe to say that, less than 25 years after 9/11, New York has been conquered. All of the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on fighting “the war on terror,” and all of the American lives that have been lost here and abroad, have not prevented an anti-American Muslim from taking control of America’s largest city. We’ve spent the last 25 years bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to countries around the globe while our own country has been systematically invaded and now our largest cities are run by foreigners and communists. If you want to know why I’m so avowedly non-interventionist, this is why. And keep in mind: this guy is a “legal immigrant.” We allowed him into this country and granted him citizenship, even though he doesn’t share any of our values. That’s how seriously we’ve “protected the homeland” after 9/11. We’ve rolled out the red carpet for foreign nationals who are going to destroy us from within. If New York City were a country, its GDP would rank it around the 12th largest globally. And now there’s a very, very good chance it’s going to be in the hands of a man who hasn’t even been a citizen for a decade, who fakes his accents, and sees capitalism — the economic engine that has single-handedly prevented this country from becoming another Uganda — as an enemy to be vanquished. This is a man whose own mother has reportedly said: “He is not an American at all.” In that way, he has a lot of company in New York City, where 40% — 40% — of the city’s population wasn’t born in this country. Hearing all of this, you might say — well, New York has always been a Left-wing cesspool. It’s always been a little dysfunctional. But that’s not true. A few decades ago, only around 20% of the city was born in a foreign country. Now the number is close to double that figure. And what do you know? Hot on the heels of demographic replacement, New York is poised to have a third world mayor. The slogans are true. Demographics are destiny. Import the third world, become the third world. It’s all true. And New York will learn that when they have a mayor who proudly tweeted: “Queer liberation means defund the police.” He also called the NYPD: “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.” College-educated New Yorkers, as well as foreign nationals, are the reason he won. There’s no debate about that. Here’s one exit poll, to give you an idea: Wow who could have predicted the poor and working class would see right through this fraud. pic.twitter.com/06rnzjg0fQ — Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) June 25, 2025 As you can see, New Yorkers with the lowest incomes were the ones who rejected Zohran Mamdani. You might think that the poorest voters would support the socialist, but that’s not the case. That’s probably because, unlike college-educated New Yorkers who were taught to despise his country and leech as much as possible, poorer New Yorkers didn’t undergo all of the same brainwashing. As a result, very soon, New Yorkers will discover that “stop and frisk” wasn’t actually so bad. The alternative is lawlessness and socialism, which will trigger a death spiral in New York. Wealthy New Yorkers, who would be forced to fund all of the social experiments this new mayor wants to undertake, will simply leave. And once that happens, New York will no longer have a GDP that rivals most other countries in the world. We will witness, in real-time, the slow and managed destruction of a world-class city. Another one. And that’s not something to celebrate, regardless of your politics, as tempting as it may be. I wish that I could just say “good riddance” to all of the major American cities that have fallen into decay and disorder thanks to their awful leaders and the suicidal idiots who elect them. But as an American, I want these cities to be great. They used to be. They could be again. That’s why I have so much contempt for the parasites who’ve destroyed them. Those are American cities. That means they’re our cities, too. And these morons ruined them. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images Suddenly the fall of “Pride month” doesn’t seem quite as significant. The election of a Muslim socialist to be the next mayor of NYC is very clear evidence that “wokeness” and Left-wing ideology is still very much alive in this country. Say what you will about Andrew Cuomo’s disastrous handling of COVID, and all of his weaknesses as a candidate. There’s still no other explanation for what happened last night. This primary demonstrates, once again, that the culture war continues. It just moves to new battlefields. This is how Leftism operates. It shape shifts and rebrands and grows new tentacles. Finds new Trojan Horses. But it’s always the same enemy underneath it all. And as New Yorkers are about to discover, the enemy is even more potent — and more capable of ruining millions of lives — than it’s ever been. New York, and the entire country, has just suffered a catastrophic blow. And if we’re going to preserve what’s left of America, we have to, as I’ve been saying, return the focus to what’s happening within our own borders. The invaders are winning. That’s not easy to admit, but it’s true. They are a far greater threat to our sovereignty and our security than any country that’s 6,000 miles away. And unless we want the entire country to suffer the same fate as New York, we have to recognize that fact. We have to treat these foreign socialists like the mortal enemy that they are. After last night, we can either choose to fight, or we can become Uganda. Voters in New York — many of whom aren’t even American — have just made their choice. Now the rest of us have to stop wasting our time obsessing over whatever’s happening across the globe, and make our choice as clear as we possibly can.