COLUMBUS, OHIO—I just finished testifying against a bill that would make it illegal for the state government to rip children away from loving parents who refuse to “affirm” that child’s so-called “transgender identity.” It’s not every day an investigative journalist weighs in on legislation like this. But this is different. More than two years ago, I began investigating how transgender activists were working to weaponize child welfare systems against loving parents. I was horrified by what I found. The Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) was chosen as one of four agencies nationwide to develop gender ideology-based child welfare interventions that suggest parents and caregivers who do not affirm a child’s sexual orientation or gender confusion are unsafe. As part of its “Safe Identification” program, Cuyahoga County DCFS created a database that tracked the sexual orientation, transgender identity, and pronouns of children who interacted with the child welfare system. The database noted if parents were “accepting” or “rejecting” of their child’s gender identity. Parents who were “rejecting” could be referred to re-education programs where parents learned to “accept” their child’s transgender identity as a last resort before CPS stepped in and removed the child. Some transgender activists believe refusing to affirm a child’s gender confusion is a form of child abuse and have even suggested families should be prosecuted as abusers for refusing to call their gender confused child the opposite sex. Public records revealed that behind the scenes, members of the Cuyahoga County DCFS team were communicating with the Biden administration on how interventions like Safe Identification could be implemented at the federal level. This would be insane regardless of where it was happening. But the fact that it’s been going on in a red state like Ohio is truly shocking. As part of my reporting, I reached out to Ohio State Representative Gary Click and asked him to comment on what was happening in Cuyahoga County. He promised the Ohio legislature would not be idle while local government attempted to usurp the role of the family and harm children. Click has kept that promise by co-sponsoring the Affirming Families First Act, the bill I testified in favor of today. It states that parents have a right to use their child’s given name and correct pronouns, and prohibits state agencies from using state funds for training, education, or programming that characterizes affirming a child’s sex as abuse or neglect. I’m proud to have played a part in this bill’s inspiration. As a mother, I know if we can’t protect our children from lies and raise them according to reality, without fear of retribution from the state, we no longer live in a free nation. When the state strips custody from loving parents who simply don’t want to affirm their confused child’s gender delusions, it violates all the rights Americans hold dear: the freedoms of speech and religion first and foremost, as well as parental rights and medical freedom. All these protections are swiftly swept away as families are ripped apart and vulnerable youth are placed in the hands of transgender activists who encourage them to destroy their bodies. I’ve spoken with parents who’ve experienced this nightmare, and I wouldn’t wish their pain on my worst enemy. I want to see vulnerable children and families in our nation protected from this insanity, which is why I’ve traveled to Ohio to testify in favor of a bill that will protect parents who do not “affirm” their transgender-identifying children. I wasn’t always a journalist. I’m a nurse by training, but switched careers when I realized the extent to which radical transgender ideology was endangering children. I’ve since spent hundreds of hours exposing the horrors of transgenderism because I understand stopping gender ideology is the most important issue of our time. If we can’t define the basic reality of the sexes, we can’t define anything. President Donald Trump has kept his campaign promises to purge gender ideology from the federal government, but without legislation, these policies can be reversed as quickly as they were implemented. Some parental rights advocates I’ve spoken with are concerned we are one election away from a full return to the transgender insanity we were living through just 15 months ago. The transgender activists have lost some major battles under President Trump. But the war for sanity is raging on. We can’t let up on fighting gender ideology until it’s been returned to the pit of hell it came from.

Dennis Coyle, an American held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan since January 2025, set foot on U.S. soil on Wednesday morning after his release was secured by President Donald Trump. After landing in San Antonio, Texas, Coyle was reunited with his family, who had spent nearly 14 months working to help secure his release. Dennis Coyle is BACK on U.S. soil and reunited with his family after more than a year in Taliban captivity. Promises made, promises kept

A newly announced “Lord of the Rings” movie is getting trashed online after Warner Bros. announced that late-night host Stephen Colbert will develop the project with his son.  The announcement came via social media on Tuesday night, which was also Tolkien Reading Day. First, film director Peter Jackson gave an update on the sequel “The Hunt for Gollum,” which is currently in production. “Andy [Serkis] is doing a terrific job. It’s looking amazing. The script is coming together really well, and I think it’s going to be a really good film,” Jackson said before revealing what’s up next. The director had Colbert join him on the video after announcing he’d be writing “The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past.” Colbert explained that the movie would be based on chapters of “The Fellowship of the Ring” that weren’t in Jackson’s 2001 film. In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement. pic.twitter.com/ufh9RLBIxO — Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) March 25, 2026 “You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert told Jackson. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in [‘The Fellowship of the Ring’] that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day. It’s basically the chapter ‘Three Is Company’ [Chapter III] through ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’ [Chapter VIII]. And I thought, ‘Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’” Colbert said that he and his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, have been working with Jackson on the project for two years. The hyper-partisan, Trump-hating late-night host made headlines last year after CBS canceled his “Late Show,” which led to him crying censorship rather than admitting that the program had been allegedly hemorrhaging money for years. CBS confirmed it was a financial decision to sunset the program. Most reactions to Colbert’s new gig were negative. “This is by far the worst thing to ever happen to the franchise,” one X user wrote.  “Is it gonna have a sequence with dancing vaccine syringes? What about an evil orange man?” another person wondered. “No, absolutely not,” a third commenter said. “Colbert hasn’t been anything remotely close to a competent writer, comedy or otherwise, for a very long time. Just the thought of the Lord of the Rings getting put through a heavily political infusion, Colbert only schtick at this point, is sickening.” “Imagine burning billions on rings of power and still not learning any lessons from it,” another commenter wrote, referencing the controversial, widely panned Amazon series based on the fantasy series. The film’s description for “Shadows of the Past” says, “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” was turned into three massively popular films, with releases in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Jackson’s epic fantasy trilogy is considered the highlight of his career and won 17 Academy Awards. 

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Parents today have every reason to mistrust Pixar. From “Lightyear” to “Elio,” which would have depicted an 11-year-old boy as “queer” had audiences not panned test screenings, its films are literally getting gayer. But its latest offering, “Hoppers,” proves that when the company dispenses with identity box-checking, it can still create a story that will delight parents and children alike.  I’ll admit I was skeptical going into the theater; the film’s premise had me anticipating an environmental screed. Mabel, a 19-year-old who once spent her school days freeing class pets from their cages, is embroiled in a battle with her city’s mayor, who wants to build a highway over a pond where she used to watch the local fauna with her grandmother. After stumbling upon her college professor’s secret research project, she uses the technology to put her own mind in the body of a robotic beaver and infiltrate the habitat to enlist the animals’ help in stopping the construction project. What sounds like a throwback to the peak Greta Thunberg days is actually a heartwarming and hilarious commentary on the good in humanity, Teddy Roosevelt-style environmentalism, and what happens when the downtrodden finally get power. The twist in the film’s second act is so good that I have to spoil it in order to discuss the movie’s moral themes. If you’d like to watch “Hoppers” with your (slightly older) kids, which I recommend that you do, read the rest at your own peril. The pond is a special place for Mabel because it’s where her grandmother taught her to control her childhood anger issues. “It’s hard to be mad when you feel like you’re part of something big,” her grandmother tells her. At a time when Generation Z seems to spend its time yelling at people online or literally celebrating (alleged) murderers, the gentle reminder that we humans, and animals, are all part of the same big world is well-timed. Mabel starts the movie off as the typical rebellious teenager: She steals the beaver tech to use it for her own ends, tricks her new animal friends into believing she is one of them, and presumes to know what’s best for the animals and their ecosystem. She believes she’s better than the rest of those meddlesome humans, but her initially well-meaning interference disrupts the delicate balance of the animal kingdom. As one bug says to her, “You stole, you lied, you used us!” Thanks to Mabel’s decision to rile up the animals, they, led by a blood-thirsty butterfly, decide to stop the construction project from continuing by “squishing” the mayor. Now, instead of rescuing the animals, Mabel finds herself desperately trying to save the life of her arch-nemesis.  Mabel’s activism comes from a good place: her love for animals and her memories of her grandmother. But it exhausts her. She is tired of feeling “like I can’t make a difference,” she says. It is just that desire to stamp down her feeling of powerlessness that makes her lose her moral compass, pursuing whatever avenue she can just to feel like she can do something. After convening a council of the animals, Mabel grows so flustered by the butterfly queen that she reflexively solves the problem with a simple squish. The shocking moment (hilarious for older viewers but perhaps disturbing to younger ones) leads to mayhem in the animal kingdom and the ascendance of the butterfly’s caterpillar son, who turns out to be even more Darwinian than his mother. Mabel quickly learns and accepts that her mad dash for power, even with good intentions, has led her to exploit and harm others. After her unceremonious squishing betrays the trust of the beaver king, he forgives her: “Trust is like a dam,” he says. “It’s gonna leak sometimes.” The freshly pupated butterfly king, Titus, learns no such lesson. After ordering the “squishing” of the mayor, he inhabits an animatronic human body and tries to use high-decibel sound to kill a crowd of townspeople. (Helpful euphemisms such as “squishing” aside, moments of death, peril, and a misshapen face mask flying off the murderous robot are as laugh-out-loud funny for adults as they may be scary for small children.) Titus airs his grievances, complaining that he has not had the power he feels he deserves. Now, given the chance, he declares, “I’ll burn the whole world down!” I’ll let you guess how that works out for him. “Hoppers” may have the trappings of an environmentalist sermon, but its lessons are far deeper and more traditional than that. In the end, Mabel and the mayor, who in one scene is shown making pancakes for his mother’s breakfast, are more frenemies than nemeses. The human-mind-to-animal-body project is shuttered, lest we begin to anticipate “Hoppers 2: Frankenstein’s Beaver.” Pixar finally remembered how to make a good movie, and it just had to focus on a unique story rooted in truth: The ends don’t justify the means, might doesn’t make right, and “taking back the power” is no way to achieve human (or animal) progress.

As pornography has become increasingly accessible and accepted in Western society in the 21st century, many people have bought into the argument that consuming porn is harmless and can even be beneficial to a person’s sex life. Porn consumption has become so normalized that it’s often referred to jokingly or with a sense of nostalgia — as if it’s just a fun guilty pleasure similar to eating a carton of ice cream every once in a while. But as porn consumption has increased so has the research showing how porn affects people’s thoughts, attitudes, and actions and corrupts their view of what love and sex actually look like. Daily Wire host Matt Fradd’s book “The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy” dives into the evidence revealing the depth of pornography’s destruction. While Fradd is never shy about his faith, “The Porn Myth” addresses the issue as a non- religious response to the commonly held belief that pornography is a harmless or even beneficial pastime. Fradd draws on the experience of porn performers and users, and the expertise of neurologists, sociologists, and psychologists to demonstrate that pornography is destructive to individuals, relationships, and society. He provides insightful arguments, supported by the latest scientific research, to discredit the fanciful claims used to defend and promote pornography. This book explains the neurological reasons porn is addictive, helps individuals learn how to be free of porn, and offers real help to the parents and the spouses of porn users. Because recent research on pornography’s harmful effects on the brain validates the experiences of countless porn users, there is a growing wave of passionate individuals trying to change the pro-porn cultural norm-by inspiring others to pursue real love and to avoid its hollow counterfeit. Signed copies of “The Porn Myth” are now available on Daily Wire Shop. Get a copy of the book that is part of the movement aiding the many men and women who are seeking a love untainted by warped perceptions of intimacy and rejecting the influence of porn in their lives.