The largest teachers’ unions and associations in the country are now using their massive reach to pressure tech companies to integrate left-wing political ideologies into AI tools before K-12 schools adopt them. In a new groundbreaking report, Defending Education found that the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and several other associations are actively promoting the idea that AI tools are created predominantly by white and Asian men, and as a result, provide students and educators with biased answers and solutions from this specific worldview. The teachers’ organizations often refer to this idea as “algorithmic bias.” The integration of AI into America’s K-12 schools is not a matter of if but when. These organizations understand that whoever shapes AI today will influence what the nation’s students learn in the future. Schools will soon use AI to assist teachers in creating their lesson plans and even grading tests and essays. This is the next battleground in education, and these groups understand that. The NEA has a sample school board policy that districts can adopt, mandating that tech companies integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives into their AI programs before schools can even consider using them. This is a direct warning to tech vendors that they will not receive a school district’s business unless they embed DEI in their products. When considering the business a tech company can lose from being blackballed by the largest school districts, such as those in Los Angeles or Chicago, most of these AI vendors will likely cave without a second thought, and the NEA is very well aware. The AFT’s National Academy for AI Instruction is potentially even more dangerous in this regard. This so-called academy prioritizes the idea that AI can “perpetuate bias” and “undermine educational equity” unless“proper guardrails” are in place to prevent those perceived issues. The goal of this academy is to “provide training and support” to educators in AI usage. The National Academy for AI Instruction is backed by $23 million in funding and is supported by partnering companies Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. These are three of the largest corporations building AI on a global scale, and their systems are already used by many school districts. The troubling reality is that these giant corporations are involved in this endeavor knowing that the end goal is to politicize their AI tools before schools fully adopt them, and they appear to be complicit partners in this initiative. Unfortunately, that is the sway these teachers’ unions, with millions of members, have over corporations. Most classrooms will adopt AI, in one form or another, within the next few years. These groups intend to shape this new technology before that happens. They intend to make DEI a core pillar before AI inevitably becomes institutionalized in our nation’s schools. These organizations have spent years attempting to embed left-wing ideology into classrooms, and they see AI as the latest Trojan horse to accomplish that goal. This problem will be much harder to fix if we do not stop it now, while modern AI is still in its infancy. For better or worse, artificial intelligence will revolutionize the way our schools educate children in approaches that we have not even considered yet. It will become one of the most influential educational tools ever created. Concerned parents and families must pay attention as their schools begin to adopt AI into their children’s classrooms and school infrastructure. They must follow these issues and speak up before schools agree to integrate AI into their classrooms. Parents still have the power to influence AI during this watershed moment. It is imperative that they provide input now and help shape AI while there is still time. *** Casey Ryan is a writer and investigative reporter at Defending Education.

Academy Award-winning Russell Crowe revealed a lot about his own values, giving a thoughtful answer when he was asked about which movies should be required viewing for young men, specifically Gen Z. Crowe, who won the coveted Best Actor award for his role in “Gladiator,” was asked to look back at his filmography and explain which movies he thought every young man should watch. He based his answer on what values and lessons the younger generation could take away from the movies he’d chosen to make.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by JustWatch (@justwatch) “That’s kind of a very serious question,” Crowe began with a smile, adding, “It would probably take me a month to write a dissertation.” Crowe then selected three of his movies — 2000’s “Gladiator,” 2003’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” and 2005’s “Cinderella Man” — and explained what he believed young men might learn from each of them. “Gladiator” “Gladiator” was first on his list because he said it would teach young men about “honor and the importance of la familia.” Crowe has often talked about the fact that family, and one man’s mission to avenge his loss, is the heart of that film. He felt so strongly about that particular point that he pushed back — hard — when producers and even director Ridley Scott wanted to add a sex scene into the movie. “When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I just kept pushing back,” he said in a previous interview. “This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child,” Crowe explained. “There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because then that destroys the journey.” The end results spoke for themselves: Scott ultimately sided with Crowe, agreeing that a sex scene would take away from the film’s “moral core.” The finished product netted them not only Crowe’s Best Actor statue, but also the Best Picture Oscar. (Crowe has also said that the reason “Gladiator 2” failed to capture the audience in the same way was that it strayed from that “moral core.”) “Master and Commander” The second film Crowe listed was “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” a period piece set in 1805 and loosely based on the “real-life naval exploits of British Captain Lord Thomas Cochrane.” The actor said that film, which did not garner anywhere near the commercial or critical success he saw with “Gladiator,” would nonetheless teach young men “about loyalty and fealty.” “There are a few movies in the things that I’ve done which can have a profound connection to a young man,” Crowe continued before offering up his third and final selection. “Those two are very important, but there’s also a film called ‘Cinderella Man,’ which is about somebody who’s facing the worst kind of situation, but he still goes forward. And because they go forward, they end up achieving what they set out to achieve.” “Cinderella Man” “Cinderella Man,” as Crowe noted, follows the career of the boxing champion who almost wasn’t: Jim Braddock. After a hand injury and the onset of the Great Depression stalled what had looked to be a promising boxing career, Braddock was forced to work manual labor jobs on the New Jersey docks — and rely on government assistance at times — to support his family. In 1934, he got a chance to step back into the ring, but he wasn’t fighting for the title so much as for his own name. He won in a knockout — and kept winning. But as the prize money rolled in, Braddock didn’t spend it or even put it into savings. Instead, he tracked down every government agency through which his family had gotten aid, paying every cent back. Dubbed “the Cinderella Man” due to his rags-to-riches story, Braddock went into the 1935 championship match at Madison Square Garden against World Heavyweight Champion Max Baer with 10-1 odds that he would lose. But years of working on the docks had given him the stamina to wear Baer down, and after 12 rounds, Braddock was named the new world champion. With more than 80 acting credits to his name, Crowe could have answered that question dozens of different ways. The way he chose to answer, what he chose to pass on to the next generation, revealed that values he holds dear: family, loyalty, honor, and determination. And, as Crowe himself showed when the “moral core” was threatened during the filming of “Gladiator,” he is willing to fight for them when necessary. *** 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.

For years, the fertility industry has attacked restorative reproductive medicine with two contradictory arguments.  The first is that RRM is not real medicine. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) dismisses it as an unrecognized subspecialty, and editorials in the industry’s own journals characterize it as unscientific and ideologically driven.  The second is that the infertility treatment is unnecessary because fertility clinics already provide the thorough diagnostic workups and root-cause treatment that RRM promises. When the federal government proposed an “excepted fertility benefit” earlier this year to address the “diagnosis, mitigation, or treatment of infertility or infertility-related reproductive health conditions,” ASRM objected that the rule’s emphasis on treating underlying conditions covers “a gap that does not exist” because standard care already includes thorough workups and root-cause treatment. Notice that these claims cannot both be true. If the fertility industry is to be believed, RRM is either quackery or exactly the care the industry already delivers. Yet a study released in July suggests the truth is neither. The care that supposedly makes RRM redundant is, for many patients, not happening at all. The study, conducted by researchers at the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine and now under peer review, analyzed roughly five million insurance claims and identified commercially insured patients who were diagnosed with infertility and went on to receive IVF between 2021 and 2024. For each condition the study covered, the researchers asked a straightforward question: Before these patients began IVF, did they receive the evaluations and first-line treatments that ASRM’s own published guidelines recommend?  The study did not measure clinics against RRM’s more extensive protocols. It measured them against the fertility industry’s own standards, written by the professional societies to which these physicians belong. The result? The industry failed its own test.  Across nearly every condition studied, care gaps ranged from roughly 13 to 78 percentage points, depending on the workup. Within one month of an infertility diagnosis, up to 12% of patients had already started IVF before the basic diagnostic picture was complete. Only 1% of men had completed the two semen analyses that guidelines recommend as the starting point of any male evaluation. By nine months, 70% to 85% of patients had begun IVF, while many of the evaluations and treatments the industry itself recommends sat below 40% completion, and several remained in the single digits. The condition-by-condition numbers are worse. Take endometriosis, a chronic disease affecting more than 11% of American women between 15 and 44 and making up 30% to 50% of infertility diagnoses. Among younger women with the condition, only 9.3% received the recommended first-line intervention by nine months, while more than 80% had already started IVF.  Hyperprolactinemia, a hormonal disorder usually correctable with an inexpensive daily pill, showed a gap of nearly 60 percentage points: 25.7% of women received the recommended dopamine agonist, while 85.5% had begun IVF. Likewise, care for PMOS, the most common cause of ovulatory infertility, ran the same way: Guidelines say letrozole should be the first-line drug for inducing ovulation, and it costs a few dollars a cycle, but only 34.1% of these women had been prescribed it by nine months, while 78.4% had begun IVF. Men fared no better. Male-factor problems contribute to roughly half of infertility cases, yet the male half of the workup was the more neglected one. Among men diagnosed after recurrent pregnancy loss, just 3.2% received the recommended sperm DNA testing and 24.5% a karyotype, while 81% had already begun IVF. Notably, a semen analysis is not only a fertility test: male infertility signals undiagnosed conditions that carry consequences long after the question of conception is settled, which means a skipped workup leaves a question about a man’s health not just unanswered but unasked. Why does this matter? Because infertility is not a standalone disease. It is a symptom of underlying conditions, such as endometriosis, PMOS, and thyroid disorders in women and low sperm count, low motility, abnormal sperm, and varicoceles in men, with diagnoses split roughly evenly between the sexes. RRM diagnoses and treats those conditions in the hope that couples restore their health and go on to conceive naturally.  When a clinic moves a couple into IVF without completing the recommended evaluation, it is not simply choosing one fertility treatment over another. It is bypassing the diagnosis of a disease that will continue to affect that patient’s health, whether or not the IVF cycle produces a child. This is precisely the distinction restorative reproductive medicine exists to address: RRM identifies and treats the underlying condition so that couples can conceive naturally, while IVF bypasses the body to create human embryos in a laboratory setting. IVF may result in the live birth of a child, but it cannot heal anyone, and, in fact, results in much higher rates of adverse outcomes for the mother and baby.  While I don’t think that individual doctors, who are themselves captive to the health insurance model, are motivated by financial gain, it is hard to ignore the economics of fertility clinics. Over a third of U.S. fertility clinics are now owned by or affiliated with private equity firms, up from just 4% in 2013, and these clinics perform more than half of all IVF cycles in the country. Private equity does not invest in slow medicine. These firms buy businesses with high patient turnaround and recurring revenue, and they impose a standardized operating model designed to maximize both. The economics of fertility care help explain how this pattern became standard practice. Diagnosing and treating the underlying causes of infertility in both patients takes time, and a full restorative evaluation and course of treatment typically runs $7,500 to $15,000. A single IVF cycle costs $15,000 to $30,000, succeeds 25% to 35% of the time, and generates additional cycles when it fails or when a couple returns hoping for another child. A treatment model that resolves a patient’s condition does not produce that kind of recurring revenue. The public seems to have noticed as well. Earlier this year, when the Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury departments proposed the excepted fertility benefit, a new insurance option designed to cover the diagnosis and treatment of infertility-related conditions, the agencies invited the public to weigh in. The response was extraordinary by the standards of federal rulemaking. Most proposed rules pass through their comment periods in near silence; about 80% draw 10 or fewer comments.  By the time this one closed on July 13, the docket held 4,652 comments. And the message was consistent. By two preliminary counts, at least 62% of commenters called for greater access to root-cause care, from fertility awareness-based methods to treatment of underlying reproductive health conditions, and many asked that restorative reproductive medicine be named and promoted in the final rule. ASRM, faced with thousands of Americans asking for exactly the care it insists patients already receive, responded by asking the government to withdraw the rule entirely. The comment docket is no outlier. A March survey by Carrot, a fertility benefits company, found that 89% of women would prefer to try a less invasive option before IVF if it came with clinical guidance, and 78% said better information alone would make them more likely to pursue non-IVF options. Interest in metabolic health support topped every option surveyed, yet fewer than half of the women had ever had a single clinical conversation about metabolic health in their entire fertility journey. The demand for this medicine is real, and it is growing along with the problem it addresses: More than 16% of married women now experience infertility, and most intend to have another child. RRM’s record with these patients deserves attention, too. Women with one to nine failed IVF cycles still have nearly a one in three chance of conceiving through restorative care. The fertility industry can keep calling RRM fake medicine, or it can keep insisting it already provides the same care. It cannot do both — and after the review of five million insurance claims, it cannot credibly do either. The billing records show an IVF-first approach that routinely bypasses the industry’s own guidelines. American families have said clearly that they want something better, and federal policy and public awareness campaigns should ensure they can find it. *** Emma Waters is a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and the author of the book “Lead Like Jael: Seven Timeless Principles for Today’s Women of Faith” and host of the new podcast “Rethinking Fertility.”  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.

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) is the world’s preeminent transgender medical organization and a leading force in the push for minors to receive transgender medical interventions, including sex-change surgeries. The group’s medical guidance, called the Standards of Care Version 8, informs clinical practice, insurance policy, and government regulations throughout the United States. Systematic reviews and legal investigation have shown the SOC-8 to be built on faulty methodology and politicized science. The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against WPATH in June 2026, stating the organization has “misled parents and children about the medical consensus and medical necessity, as well as the safety and effectiveness” of child sex-change interventions. WPATH members receive access to a member-only forum that discusses various topics related to transgender medicine and policy. Through a public records request The Daily Wire uncovered almost 250 pages of messages from WPATH’s member-only forum written between June 2024 and November 2024. The messages offer a glimpse into the organization’s cultural reach and challenge some of its public-facing recommendations. This is the second article in The Daily Wire’s investigative series on the uncovered WPATH messages.  *** Members of the world’s leading transgender medical organization admitted protocols were needed to help transgender patients “detransition” back to their real sex while publicly recommending children receive sex-change surgery. In a private online forum, members of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) asked for advice on treating the complex medical needs of patients wanting to return or “detransition” to their real sex after undergoing sex-change surgeries such as vaginoplasty, breast augmentation, double mastectomy, hysterectomy, and oophorectomy. WPATH members acknowledged in the forum the brutalized bodies of detransitioners needed specialized care and these struggling patients were often forsaken by the medical community which gave them their scars. “Curious if anyone or any institutions have protocols or policies related to ‘de-transition’ – either request to reverse any gender-affirming surgeries or put people back on prior hormonal state,” wrote Dr. Christopher Terndrup, the associate director of the LGBTQ+ Healthcare Fellowship Program at Vanderbilt Health, in a message thread titled “De-transition Protocols/Policies.” A screenshot of a message obtained through a public record request by The Daily Wire. Several WPATH members responded and expressed a need for formalized detransition protocols, writing that a lack of medical guidance left detransitioners feeling “ignored” as they try to reclaim their broken bodies. “We really need the clinical pathways. People will ask how to go off testosterone or how to restart testosterone and I’ve asked various MDs and gotten different responses. Often, folks who are choosing to detransition feel like they have to do this all on their own,” wrote a psychologist. “When folks restart testosterone there can be mood shifts as well. When people alter their hormones, a lot of regret arises about choices they have made and it seems like it’s helpful to offer patients a non-regret focused frame — ie, that they are embracing who they are at this moment and taking positive steps to embody themselves, etc.” Members suggested creating a specific group to develop medical guidance for detransitioners and noted transgender patients should receive psychological therapy for a period of time before undergoing any identity changes. “I still think that we should be developing protocols to handle this regardless of how many detransitioners there are,” wrote a psychologist. “I think it’s important.” Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire there is an “undeniable need” for detransitioner medical protocols. “There is a critical and undeniable need for detransitioner protocols — a reality acknowledged even by WPATH’s own members. Yet this is the same organization that has ignored systematic review upon systematic review as it promotes harmful and irreversible sex-rejecting procedures for minors,” Miceli told The Daily Wire. “This contradiction cannot be brushed aside: it exposes a fundamental inconsistency in which life-altering interventions are championed for minors on the one hand while the reality of those who later seek to reverse them has unfortunately been minimized and gone unaddressed.” A screenshot of a message obtained through a public record request by The Daily Wire. In the Standards of Care Version 8, WPATH recommends that children have access to irreversible sex-change surgeries without any age minimums. The group calls the choice to detransition “proportionally rare” but tells healthcare providers they “should be prepared to support adolescents who detransition” without providing formal protocols to accomplish this. “We have limited ability to know in advance the ways in which a child’s gender identity and expressions may evolve over time and whether or why detransition,” the standards read. In a separate post, a physician’s assistant asked for insight on managing the estrogen needs of a young woman who had her breasts, uterus, and ovaries removed while she self-identified as a “trans male.” “The patient more recently has been experiencing an evolution/shift in gender identity as genderfluid/feminine learning, wanting to detransition,” wrote the physician’s assistant in the thread titled “DETRANSITION: Optimal estrogen therapy for patient detransitioning.” “This is a complex case with much more to it and I will not be able to go in depth here, but I did want to ask the group specifically your thoughts/experience with detransition and optimal dosing of estrogen for such a patient.” The young woman was in her 20s and wanted to detransition. But because she had no ovaries, her young body could not produce the needed estrogen and was in a surgically induced post-menopausal state. Miceli told The Daily Wire that without external estrogen replacement therapy, the patient is at risk of developing osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and other health complications. “Hormone therapy becomes a lifelong medical requirement following this irreversible procedure,” he said. “This reality makes the development of detransition protocols all the more essential, ensuring that hormone management is guided by clinically appropriate, evidence‑based standards rather than left to an ad hoc practice.” The post brought out strong opinions on detransitioning on the forum thread. One member called on WPATH to “take a leadership role” in researching the “phenomenon of detransition.” Marci Bowers, a highly influential transgender surgeon and former president of WPATH, called the patient’s situation “tragic” and wrote that one of WPATH’s great challenges was to “help patients sort through their gender diverse feelings” before receiving “irreversible treatment.” “If ever there was a challenge to the WPATH professional community, it is to help patients sort through their gender diverse feelings prior to undergoing irreversible treatment. Though there can always be a silver lining, cases like this seem tragic,” wrote Bowers. “I don’t feel that greater caution or limits are what are required but rather, brakes, hypothetical questioning, I’m not entirely sure. How can we do better for our patients in avoiding these rare outcomes?” One WPATH member disagreed that the situation was tragic, writing, “sometimes, like many things in life, people need to go ‘too far’ before they realize where they want to be.” The physician assistant who asked for help later noted the young woman wanting to detransition had “severe dysphoria dating back to childhood” and was thoroughly evaluated before having surgery to remove her reproductive organs. She noted in the future it might be helpful to educate young transgender patients seeking sex-change surgery on the “potential benefit” of keeping their ovaries, “just in case.” “They had ongoing support from a comprehensive mental health team and family. They were very much identifying as a trans man most of their life with severe dysphoria, depression, and suicidality,” wrote the physician’s assistant. “There is nothing I think anyone in our team could have done differently to prevent this or ‘do better.’ I’m not sure if we have any data or idea of how gender identity might evolve or change over time, but that seems to be what is happening at least with this patient over time.” A screenshot of a message obtained through a public record request by The Daily Wire. Miceli said these messages reveal the “profound tragedy” detransitioners face after undergoing irreversible gender transition treatments. “Dr. Bowers’ comments within the WPATH Member Forum acknowledge a truth the organization does not confront publicly: the profound tragedy faced by individuals who seek to detransition after irreversible sex‑rejecting surgeries. In fact, WPATH has systematically downplayed and obscured this reality by minimizing detransition and framing regret as rare,” Miceli told The Daily Wire. “These interventions create lifelong anatomical changes and permanent dependence on exogenous hormones, effectively placing patients in chronic medical care.” Bowers declined to provide a comment to The Daily Wire. WPATH and Vanderbilt Health did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

Antisemitic violence reached its deadliest level in more than three decades in 2025, with 20 people killed in attacks across seven countries, according to a new global report. The J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism documented more than 23,000 antisemitic incidents in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and Argentina. Together, those seven countries are home to more than 90% of the Jewish population living outside Israel. According to the report, 20 people were killed in antisemitic attacks in 2025, making it the deadliest year for antisemitic violence since 1994. All of the fatal attacks occurred in J7 countries.  Violent antisemitic incidents increased 97% since 2022, while the total number of reported incidents rose 136% during the same period. The Anti-Defamation League, which represents the United States in the J7 coalition, said the findings show the urgency of confronting antisemitism. “This isn’t a warning sign anymore, it’s already happening,” ADL Senior Director of Global Research and Diplomatic Affairs Aykan Erdemir said. “If governments let antisemitism take root and perpetrators walk free, the violence won’t stop with Jewish communities. History shows Jews are the canary in the coal mine: when hatred against Jews rises unchecked, it’s an early warning that everyone’s safety and rights are at risk.” The report concluded that antisemitism is “no longer confined to the fringes” in the countries it examined. It also found that anti-Zionism related to the war in Gaza has become “a vehicle for antisemitic expression,” while educational institutions have become an “acute flashpoint” for hatred. Combined with growing online extremism, the report said Jewish people “across the globe report hiding their Jewish identity in public” and questioning “whether they have a future in their home countries.” The report documented increases across every country studied. Australia recorded a 270% increase in antisemitic incidents since 2021, Germany posted the highest per-capita rate, and the United States documented 6,274 incidents in 2025, including 300 physical assaults, despite a decline from the previous year. France reported a 124% increase in incidents since 2021, while the United Kingdom saw a 64% increase and Canada recorded a 60% increase. Argentina experienced a 46% increase over the same period.  The report said also examined Ireland, which is not part of the J7 coalition. Although Ireland’s Jewish population numbers only about 2,200 people, researchers said antisemitism has become increasingly common in everyday life and noted that the country lacks both a national strategy to combat antisemitism and government-funded security for Jewish institutions.   The findings come amid several recent antisemitic attacks and alleged plots targeting Jewish institutions in the United States. In April, authorities arrested two teenagers accused of plotting an attack on Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. Authorities accused 18-year-old Angelina Han Hicks of plotting alongside two male subjects to “kill as many Jews as possible.” Although investigators said the alleged attack was planned for 2028, prosecutors warned there was concern an attack could occur much sooner. Erdemir said governments should focus on preventing attacks before they occur. “The most urgent priority for every government should be protecting Jewish communities and institutions before they’re attacked, not after,” he said. He added that security measures alone would not solve the problem. “Governments can’t rely on security alone,” Erdemir said. “It takes a whole of society effort, government, business, schools, civil society and everyday citizens, to root out the hate targeting Jewish communities worldwide.”