Democrats Keep TARGETING Kids With Trans Ideology, It MUST STOP ft. Josh Williams
Ohio Rep. Josh Williams unveils the Affirming Families First Act, a bill blocking state/local governments from using gender identity or sexual orientation in custody cases, after $10M was funneled to track 5-year-olds’ identities in foster care—leading to CPS removals for parental non-affirmation. He cites sealed court cases where judges ruled against parents, exposing a system pressuring compliance via threats and school reports, while activists label the bill a suicide risk despite studies showing higher post-transition rates. Williams dismisses GOP hesitation, framing this as a globalist push to exploit children for lifelong medical dependencies and political leverage, with hospitals profiting from gender transitions. The fight pivots on redefining "best interest of the child" to protect parental rights, with testimony from affected families looming in committee. [Automatically generated summary]
Ohio may protect parents who won't affirm their child's gender identity.
Quote, no parent should lose custody, face a state intervention, or be deemed simply unfit for affirming a child's sex.
So the guest that I wanted to bring on is Josh Williams.
He's a representative from Ohio and he's the co-sponsor of this bill.
Again, I'm just, it really interested me.
I've been really interested recently in the state level politics.
You know, at Timcast, we are able not the flex, but fairly easily bring on sitting congressmen and these sorts of things.
But it's the state levels that really fascinates me because I get really exasperated with the way that a lot of these state GOPs operate and conduct themselves.
It's not enough action for some of these states that are deep red.
So when I see stuff like this, I want to hear what are you doing that a lot of these other Republicans just can't seem to figure out.
So I don't know.
Kelly, do we have any updates?
Nothing yet.
I guess we can go take a look in there and see if he's in there.
We're talking about the Affirming Families First Act.
What this legislation does is it makes sure that the state government at every level, including our local and county level, cannot allege that a parent is abusing their child by refusing to affirm their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Under the Biden administration, $10 million went to a university to do a study of a program to classify every kid in the foster care system or who came in contact with protective services according to their sexuality Sexuality and gender orientation, and then categorize whether or not the foster parent, adoptive parent, or biological parent was affirming.
Part of that money came to Cuyahoga County, who came up with an affirm program where they kept record of every child that came in contact with the Department of Protective Services of Children Protective Services and their sexual orientation and gender identity,
classifying kids as young as five. according to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and then classifying their parents and tracking whether or not those parents were affirming of the child's sexual orientation or gender identity, forming the basis for a national executive order by the president making this a firm rule under the Biden administration that President Trump was inclined to reverse when he took office.
But unfortunately, he had to reverse it.
And we found out just through the reporting that came out of the Daily Wire that this happened right here in the state of Ohio.
So obviously the situation, people have heard some, I guess, more high-profile instances of this happening, like a divorce gets messy and these sorts of things.
How often is this occurring?
How often is the government stepping in and sort of taking away parents' rights to parenting their children?
How frequent is this?
Because like I said, I mean, we do see some high-profile cases, but I've also heard just from word of mouth, like things happening in my community quite extensively.
Yeah, unfortunately, we don't know how widespread it is until the cases hit the news when the parents actually have legal representation and reach out and make it public.
Because in our child custody cases in the state of Ohio, they're under seal.
We don't know.
Our family courts, if you go through a divorce, your divorce is public.
If you're unmarried parents, your cases are behind closed doors.
If you are having your children taken away for allegations of abuse or neglect, which the government was alleging that this is abuse or neglect, not to affirm, those were done behind closed doors in cases that never saw the light unless the parent actually went public.
And many times the courts were taking kids from parents and then threatening the parents.
You would never see your child again if you talk about this case publicly.
And only in those small instances where parents were, you know, motivated enough to come forward are we hearing about this.
So we've tried to address it multiple times in the state of Ohio.
We did it before.
We made it, we tried to make it where you couldn't determine child custody based off of which parent would affirm or disaffirm a child's gender.
But now we have to take it a step further and make sure that our local governments are prohibited from doing this at every single level.
So if you're a parent out there and again, the government sort of intervenes on the side of this child, again, sort of stripping you of your rights to parent the child.
What is this process actually looking like for these parents that this is, you know, that are being victimized in this sense?
You know, can you maybe lay out like how that even happens?
There's three different ways that it kind of can happen.
It can happen in a divorce case.
It can happen in your normal unmarried couple going through a custody case or a case where child protective services gets involved.
So in a divorce case and a unmarried case, very similarly, a parent can make an allegation or as simple as trying to determine which parent the child should go with, the court will appoint what's called a guardian at lightum that's supposed to represent the interests of the child.
So if sexual orientation and gender identity is an issue in that custody arrangement, the guardian at lightum is an advocate for the child.
So they will go to the court and say, because this child wants to transition, this parent is not willing to allow the child to transition versus this parent.
We think the parent should go to one or the other.
Those were the traditional cases that we were seeing.
So that's why we changed state statute and said that should not be a determination in the allocation of parental rights.
But now what we're seeing is when children's service, when protective services gets involved and child protective services gets involved, they can do it at the request of the court, at the request of the guardian at Lightham, or at the request of the child by going to the going to school and saying they're transgender and their parents are not affirming at home and that's a form of child abuse.
As soon as child protective services got involved, they would screen the child for this issue.
And they had a script that they wrote that we can read to you where it's like, introduce yourself by your pronouns.
Ask the child what their pronouns are.
If they don't know what pronouns are, explain to them what pronouns are.
Ask them what their sexual orientation is.
If they don't know what it is, explain to them that you can be attracted to the opposite sex, the opposite gender.
There was a script they were using, essentially grooming our kids into saying that they were, you know, gay or bi or trans and then using it against the parents where the parents then would be called in front of a judge, ask if they were affirming of the child's sexuality or not.
And certain judges would then say that that is a form of abuse or neglect.
And that would justify removing custody from the parent.
I think this is one of those things where, you know, people are always talking about a dystopian future, this sort of thing.
I'm like, if you just showed that to someone like 30, 40 years, they'd be like, oh, we're already in the dystopian future.
I mean, that is absolutely petrifying.
What is the pushback for, I mean, obviously you're co-sponsoring this bill.
What has been the pushback from the left?
And is there any like weak Republicans?
Because it seems like every time like Republic, solid Republicans like you try to get anything done, it's these like weak, you know, soft Republicans that get really antsy and they come up with a reason to oppose it.
Has that happened at all?
And obviously, what is the Democrats sort of case here?
And then we provided them the spreadsheet, the actual database. that was released as part of a public information request from Cuyahoga County Child Protective Services.
So then the press started looking at, you know, the left-leaning press started looking at the spreadsheet.
And you can, if you look, if you go to my Twitter at Josh WilliamsOH, you'll see that there's a reporter at our press conference who says, yeah, but that five-year-old who was labeled as gay, the database listed them as their parents being affirming.
So that's not an issue, right?
And I'm like, the problem is that you screened a five-year-old for sexual orientation.
Like, I don't get what we're missing here, that we shouldn't be talking to five-year-olds about that stuff.
Now you get the second wave, which is the LGBTQ, I call them the Alphabet Coalition, you know, having people call my office and email saying kids are going to commit suicide because of you, you know, because they're not being affirmed in their gender identity from their parent.
They should have the right to flee.
I mean, we look at these other states like California and several other ones now that make it where it is abuse to not affirm your child's gender orientation or sexual orientation, gender identity or sexual orientation.
We're seeing state after state allow kids to run away from home and into the arms of NGOs that will house them and transition them.
So we're hitting that kind of second wave of woke left liberal reaching out saying that, you know, this is going to kill children, children are going to die.
That's entirely false.
We've seen the surveys, we've seen the reports that actually after a transition, they're more likely to commit suicide as an adult if they've gone through surgical transition as a minor.
And then lastly, to your question, most Republicans are supportive of this.
Of course, you have some Republicans that are in concern that they're in tight general elections and this is an issue that could hurt them in the general election.
But at the same time, I don't buy into that.
I mean, I'm running for Congress right now in the ninth congressional district trying to flip a blue seat red, and I'm not shying away from this topic.
And this is going to be a congressional district, one of the tightest in the state and one of the most important in the nation.
And I'm not shying away from the subject because just one parent losing their parental rights because of policies like this that are finally exposed is absurd.
Well, I mean, I imagine the polling on this issue definitely favors you if like the person being polled has explained like the situation and what this bill actually does.
Because I mean, you probably know better than anybody that, you know, as soon as a lot of Republicans, especially get hit with the active, that second wave you're talking about, that activist wave, because you know, a lot of these guys can handle like the bureaucratic kind of back and forth, but it's like when the activists get fired up, that's what freaks them out.
It's when all of a sudden they're not getting glossy press coverage anymore.
Now they're getting some really mean things said about them online and they start to crack, they start to question themselves and these sorts of things.
But this is such this is such a slam dunk, I would assume.
I mean, again, I'm sure the initial, you know, the average Democrat initially is going to be opposed to it purely because it's a Republican thing.
But then as soon as the situation is explained to them, I mean, this is, I would say, probably the majority of fairly left-wing Democrats would even probably concede that it's a little bit crazy that CPS basically just gets a blank check here to do whatever they want.
I mean, the saying is always, you know, when you start catching flack, you're over the target.
So when I get that traditional Democrat calling, it's more of like an area of concern of like, is this really an issue?
Can't we concentrate on other things?
We should concentrate on our schools or, you know, on affordability.
When I get that call, I think that's a typical Democrat calling me because they think that the Republican-controlled General Assembly could be focusing on other topics.
Maybe this isn't an issue.
That same person, I will call them back and volunteer to send them the database.
And then it turns into, oh, they shouldn't be doing that.
I know then it's messaging that's getting to them.
When I get the real woke leftist, LGBTQ aligned, you know, antagonist calling my office and I talk to them on the phone and nothing I say, it's just about this woke ideology, you're going to kill kids.
You know, when I activate that section of the left-leaning Democrat Party, I know for a fact I'm over the target because that call isn't even coming from my district or my state.
I'll get calls from California.
That means that that group, that organization that's pushing this issue nationwide is finally being mobilized against us back here in the state.
That lets me know this is really part of their agenda.
And they're willing to spend the time making a call all the way across the country to try to get me off of the subject matter and get my colleagues to back down.
And that's when I get more ingrained.
That's when I dig my heels in more when I really know that they're fighting back because we actually are going to make strides to attack their agenda here in the state of Ohio.
Well, I got to ask you to drill down a little bit on this because, you know, when this sort of topic is discussed, you know, everyone knows the hits, but maybe on the more philosophical side, can you drill down a little bit why it seems like the left gets so uniquely animated about like trans, the idea of trans kids?
I'm using quote, you know, finger quotes for everyone listening to audio only.
What is it about trans kids that gets the left so like fired up?
Because it really seems to me a borderline demonic.
I mean, that's the only adjective I can really think of here to describe it.
I was wondering kind of what your calculation was seeing as you've gone through the data, you've talked to the parents, you know, everything, you've done the due diligence.
I mean, I think trans kids, their families, their communities, their supporters are a way for the Democrat Party to create a designated lifelong Democrat voter by simply transitioning this child.
Even if you don't surgically or chemically transition the child, if you can convince the child to transition socially and tell them that their parents are bigots if they don't accept it, their community is somehow bigoted, racist, out of touch if they don't accept it.
And they typically get in friend zones, friend groups that support it and are motivated.
We know as Republicans, we're never going to accept this.
So they see it as a way of expanding their Democrat base.
It's no different than the 2020 election results and opening the border and flooding in illegal immigrants to pad the 2026, the 2030 census.
You know, there are long-term, widespread Democrat strategic goals at play.
And one of them became perfectly clear during Barack Obama's second term when he went from being this appearing to be moderate Democrat running on hope and change to getting in and taking over the iron fist when he finally lost control of Congress to where he said he will legislate through the pen.
And he exposed himself as a socialist and he pushed the LGBT agenda on us.
You know, that was the president that abandoned the Defense of Marriage Act, refused to defend it in court, pushing us towards the Obergefeld decision legalizing gay marriage.
They continued to push to try to make it where gay couples could adopt and foster kids and you couldn't stop them.
Now they flipped the script and said, if you don't affirm a child's gender, you can't be a foster parent.
If you don't sign on that you're willing to affirm a child's gender identity, you can't be an adoptive parent.
They've now weaponized some of the most vulnerable children in the United States to push their agenda.
Children that are engaged with the child protective services inside of their states, many because of abuse, neglect, dependency cases.
They're using them as essentially frontline soldiers in this socialist movement that they have.
And then now it's gone even beyond those kids that are engaged with the Department of Children, Child Protective Services to parents who are simply going through a custody dispute.
This is egregious that, you know, the Democrat Party sees these children as tools.
But as a black man in America, I recognize a hustle when I see it because it happened to my community for decades.
I mean, well, that's why it's refreshing to hear, you know, that you can actually like, you know, you know the issue inside out because I find like a lot of Republicans, they've realized, you know, this is obviously a wedge issue.
And so they know that if they throw some boilerplate up on Twitter and, you know, they get some good sound bites in every once in a while that people are like, wow, this guy's a real renegade.
You know, he's really serious about this issue.
But it never translates into policy because this issue seems to be getting worse and worse.
We're seeing these, again, these trans shooters.
It really seems to be a very common pattern at this point.
I mean, what we're seeing it time and time again, it's like, let's see some policies.
That's why I had to ask because it's like, it's clear you've thought through it.
I mean, I think that's absolutely the case is that, you know, the Democrats, this is a way of shoring up their ideologies.
If you can further sort of deracinate people from, you know, their God-given identity, then that's going to turn them into, you know, someone's going to be more and more, you know, enamored with liberal policy.
So again, I'm very thankful because it's like, yeah, with so many Republicans, they'll just throw a tweet up and they're like, you know, a man is a man, a woman's a woman.
It's like, okay, we got, we figured that out five years ago.
We're talking like, okay, how about we get some policy passed here?
The most out of any legislator in the state's history.
I'm known in my caucus as a policy hawk.
That's why I made my way into leadership.
I work on legislation, my own and my colleagues' legislation.
And I pay attention to trends that I see coming across the state of Ohio and the rest of the nation.
I think one of the things that we miss is we always think that this is only a targeted approach by Democrats.
I think you got to go one step further.
And this is a targeted approach by globalist, socialists, and communists.
I mean, it's not a coincidence that we see the same protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally, then at the Pro-Palestine rally, then at the LGBTQ rally, then at the George Floyd rally, and it's the same paid protesters.
But I believe that this is a push towards socialism and communism here.
You know, it has all the markings of a concerted national effort that has external funding.
One, I think you have to look at under the Biden administration, there was, I forget the individual's name, but it was the transgender individual that was like an admiral that went under the Biden's administration.
When they worked in California, there was behind the door meetings that became public where they were introducing the idea at the time in California of opening gender clinics.
And they were pushing the hospitals to open gender clinics, especially youth gender clinics.
And in that meeting, the conversation went to, this is a good return on investment for your hospital because you are going to have a lifelong patient.
So an individual that gets on puberty blockers at a young age, you know, it's going to cause infertility.
Then you have the surgical portion of it that's going to cause all type of infections and follow-up visits on an annual basis.
You're going to have lifelong drugs that are needed to maintain the transition.
You're going to need lifelong mental health counseling for the individual because of their gender dysphoria.
And it's going to be a boom for the healthcare system.
And at the same time, there's going to be a push for this stuff to be publicly funded.
And we see that nowadays that, you know, this has rained true, that this has actually happened.
And there's this push on a globalist perspective to try to weaponize our youth in this fashion.
And then at the same time, you have to realize that this is the natural results of the push of DEI and CRT at the college level.
If you're teaching kids from birth that they are an oppressor if they're white and they are oppressed if they're black and they get old enough, long enough, and you're teaching this long enough that, hey, if you're a white middle-aged kid with two parents that are doctors and lawyers, you are the oppressor.
You start looking for a way to whitewash that stain on your character if you believe in this left-leaning ideology.
So that means you need to become a member of a marginalized group.
Then you're no longer the oppressor, you're oppressed.
That's why we're seeing a lot of kids identify as pansexual, bisexual, non-binary.
They don't have to make any lifestyle changes.
All they got to do is maybe use they, them pronouns or tell people they're pansexual.
And now all of a sudden you can whitewash the stain of oppression in your mind because now you are part of the marginalized community.
I mean, I wish asexual was a thing when I was, you know, in school.
You just, you hadn't pulled in a while.
You know, you had, you know, you had no game.
You're like, I'm asexual, actually.
That's what it is.
It's a solution.
I don't know.
Yeah, with that.
I know we're running a little bit out of time.
Can you maybe outline what the path forward is for this bill and sort of what people need to be on the lookout for, especially if they're an Ohio resident?
Yeah, so the next path is for sponsor testimony in the committee.
We believe that maybe on the 11th, it's the same day as the state of the state for our governor, so we may have to move that.
We do want to push this steadfast because we want to make sure this never happens again.
If this Department of Child Protective Services could take money from a university in order to run this program behind closed doors, that could change overnight.
It doesn't matter whether or not President Trump is in office or not.
That could be an outside entity, a foreign government that gives that money to the university or to the child protective service to do the same thing.
We have to pass state laws to stop it.
And we got to be, and there's been several states that have done that.
Several more states have signed on, Ohio being one of them, to push this legislation forward.
After that, we'll have proponent testimony.
We're trying to get some of the people that have been affected by this, the families, to come in and tell their story.
We've had some families in Ohio affected by judges doing this.
This is why I've been fighting to get rid of what we call in family law, the best interest of the child standard.
There's a 2002 decision, Troxel v. Granville, where the Supreme Court said the court needs to give special weight to fit parents who are making decisions for their children.
I've introduced legislation to make that into state law.
I've had Democrats and Republicans introduce legislation to push it the opposite direction, giving judges broad discretion to do what they think is in the best interest of the child.
We continue to have that fight here in the state of Ohio.
I don't believe judges are in the best position to make that decision when two fit parents can agree.
So this is an example of two fit parents saying we are going to affirm our child's biological sex.
We refuse to affirm their gender identity.
And the government saying we know what's best for the child, we're taking the child from you.
When I see that, I'm very apprehensive of giving any judges more discretion to make that decision behind closed doors in juvenile cases.
So I think that's the fight that we have going on.
The committee process will continue.
We'll get proponent testimony.
Then it'll be followed by opponent testimony.
I'm sure there's going to be hundreds of people that come in opposition saying that I'm going to be causing kids to commit suicide because I'm not affirming them.
But we know the studies have shown the opposite.
And that's why Europe has stopped transitioning kids when they were the first ones that were doing it.
I mean, that isn't talked about enough, by the way, is that Europe's already abandoned this whole crazy science project because they're like, whoa, this is not good.
Well, thank you very much for hopping on here.
Obviously, you know, with the news this weekend, I think it's good to give people like some insight back on what's going on domestically because sometimes people get so fixated on the timeline, they miss some of these really important, like tangible things that are happening in their own state.
So with that, where can people find you to get more?
Yeah, so they can visit my website, joshwilliams4ohio.com.
They can follow us on Facebook and X and Twitter.
We're very, very active on social media.
And if you're in my district, I'm all over the 9th congressional district going to breakfasts, luncheons.
We have a meet and greet later on today in Falcon County.
So there's many ways to get engaged with the campaign and find out more about my life story.
It's an interesting story.
Going from a homeless high school dropout to being disabled to finally reaching college at 30.
And by 35, I was graduating from law school, becoming a college professor, a practicing attorney.
And I went on to be a state representative.
And just a few years later, I'm running for Congress.
So just in a few years, I really changed my life by, you know, some people call it lifting you up by your own bootstraps.
Me, I call it individual responsibility.
I took individual responsibility over my life.
I stopped looking for government for solutions and I looked how I could better my life through putting in hard work and the effort and my life changed.
With that, you can follow me on X and Instagram at RealTate Brown.
Come give me a follow.
Come hang out.
And we'll be back tonight for Timcast IRL at 8 p.m.
It's going to be a great show.
We will see you there.
Thank you very much for watching.
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