Iran WAR Has Begun, Middle East ERUPTS | Timcast Noon LIVE
Timcast’s live broadcast dissects the U.S.-led "special operation" in Iran, where strikes reportedly killed key leaders like the Ayatollah, yet skepticism lingers over Trump’s weeks-long escalation amid midterm politics and lobby pressures. Meanwhile, Ohio Rep. Josh Williams unveils the Affirming Families First Act, blocking state intervention against parents refusing to affirm their child’s gender identity, exposing a $10M Biden-funded study tracking foster kids’ pronouns as young as five—tying it to a globalist push weaponizing children for ideological and financial gain. The episode ties military overreach to domestic culture wars, framing both as tools of elite control. [Automatically generated summary]
I am coming to you live for our daily news show here on the Timcast News Live Show, obviously taking from the morning to the evening in the Rumble morning lineup.
I just have to say, Trump is live right now, so we're going to go straight to that.
I think this is a lot more important than whatever takes I have at the moment.
And then when he starts taking fielding questions, if he fields questions from reporters, we'll go back because this is going to be just the Medal of Honor ceremony, which is great stuff.
We can tune in to that later.
Didn't give a proper intro.
I wanted to rush right into that just to see because there were some good clips earlier.
I'll pull some of them as we go along here.
Obviously, if you're keeping up with the news, you saw that over the weekend, we've started an operation in Iran, a special operation, some would say.
There is a lot to say, a lot of reactions all across the space.
My thoughts on it are quite convoluted, to say the least.
And a lot of you tune in for my take, which is interesting.
So I'll be giving that.
Before we do, let's just get this out of the way.
We've got some housekeeping to do.
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So with that, obviously, we have so much to get into.
Let's just operate as if you've kept up with the news over the last weekend.
So obviously, at this point, you know, we went in with Iran, joint strikes with Israel, decimated strategic assets.
We're talking the leadership strategy, the structure.
We're talking nuclear sites.
We're talking military sites, missile sites.
Everything.
This was an all-out blitz on Iran.
I guess in hindsight, when we moved our entire military to be next door to Iran, we probably should have anticipated something of this magnitude.
But again, just because of how Trump has operated for 15 years, you know, I think people are always a bit surprised when this happens.
It's tough.
It really is.
It's really tough.
I think I can speak broadly again as a you know Trump shill, borderline shill, I would say.
Not good.
This is not like something I would support ordinarily.
I think a lot of different things are true right now that ordinarily wouldn't support this.
From what I know, I'm not crazy about this.
I'm not terribly happy.
But there's also, again, there are some geopolitical goals that can be achieved through this operation.
Again, the Trump administration has access to Intel that we don't.
I think that's fair to say.
But no, I've never been in love with these strikes on Iran, especially when we have midterms coming up.
This just doesn't seem wise.
Again, it'd be one thing if it was a Venezuela snatch and grab.
That would be great.
I would totally support that pretty much anywhere because that was such a fantastic operation.
But the rhetoric we're getting is this could last quite a long time.
So Trump says there will be likely be more U.S. deaths as Iran strikes to continue until all goals achieved.
Again, it's just unclear right now.
This is why I'm so hesitant to have such a strong take here because the way that conservative media is set up is it farms outrage.
Like it's outrageous farm.
Everyone has to have a super hot take.
MAGA's dead.
Or this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It's just unclear.
It's just unclear.
I mean, this is an active operation.
The initial wave seemed to be fairly successful.
Iran has demonstrated that they are quite weak.
I mean, the Ayatollah is dead, which is Khomeini is dead, which is massive, along with their next of line, next in line.
He's also dead.
The interim Ayatollah is also dead.
So, I mean, it was a success, I suppose.
There's a lot of different things.
So let's just go through what I have in the stack here rather than me continuing to pontificate because, again, it's just kind of just unclear.
I'm still, I think, in short, I have a lot of trust in the Trump administration while simultaneously saying, like, again, I'm not in favor, I never have been in favor with intervention in Iran of any sort.
So I think those two things are true.
I do have, again, faith and trust in the Trump administration.
Again, there's just some video here.
I'm just going to skim through a lot of this.
You've seen a lot of this again.
This is fresh footage from Operation Epic Fury, Epic Furry, according to Disclose TV.
That would be quite the Operation Epic Furry.
I think I could get down with that.
You'll never hear me counter signaling that.
It's quite interesting.
You're just seeing the magnitude.
Something that needs to be said if you're watching these videos, these scenes, regardless of if you're all in on the Iran operation or if you're completely opposed and you think this is the worst thing ever, I think everyone can admit the power of the U.S. military really is tremendous.
That we're able to operate at such a high level anywhere in the world at a moment's notice is really striking.
And if I weren't an American, I would be terrified, quite frankly.
I feel like this is one of these moments I'm very thankful to be an American.
I mean, I was literally Saturday, we start our operation in Iran, and I'm walking around Washington, D.C., right, with zero fear whatsoever.
I wasn't afraid of anything happening.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, we were literally bombing it.
So that just kind of tells you how all-encompassing our military is.
I mean, it really is something.
This is some of the clips.
So, this was a clip that was captured.
This is what I'm kind of all over the place because we're trying to build a show.
Again, Trump was supposed to go live at 11.
He ended up going live later.
So, the clip started coming out later.
So, it's really hard to build a show around a live clip.
So, okay, not the most encouraging statement on planet Earth.
I think that's fair to say.
Well, we do have, let me find it in the stack again.
Everything's just very disorganized right now.
This is a lot more encouraging.
Trump, this is out of the New York Post.
Trump on sending U.S. troops into Iran.
I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.
Like every president says, there will be no boots on the ground.
I don't say it adding, I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary.
So, again, like, if it's just strikes on Iran, I think that's fairly tolerable.
Again, it's kind of like inconsequential.
If this is, if the strategy is just bomb Iran until the regime changes itself, that's a terrible idea.
If the strategy is completely incapacitate their nuclear regime, I think that's a worthwhile endeavor.
These sorts of things need to be communicated to the American people.
In addition to that, I mean, there's a whole geopolitical play here containing China.
China imports so much energy from Iran.
But the fact that boots on the ground, by all accounts, aren't really being considered.
I guess the reason why I'm just so hesitant right now is because it seems like there's an internal debate in the Trump administration right now.
That's what's fascinating to me.
Because if you notice, JD Vance has been very quiet.
JD Vance has been very quiet.
He's probably the target, the group, he's of the group that you would expect, of the demographic that you would expect that would be opposed to this war most.
He is a millennial and a veteran.
Millennials are similar to the greatest generation and boomers, sort of traumatized by the global war on terror.
And that is why millennials specifically are always so quick to sort of relate any foreign engagement back to the global war on terror, Iraq specifically.
And he is of that ilk.
He's of that demographic.
And then he's a veteran.
The vice president probably isn't in love with this decision that's happened here.
In addition to that, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, infamously, not just anti-intervention, but kind of anti-war across the board.
And she hasn't been, you know, there was rumors after the Iran strike last summer that she was, you know, removed from the situation room, you know, that she was, you know, like on the outs with the admin.
But then the pictures came out from the situation room.
And she was there.
So it completely disproved that.
So I think that says two things, one of two things potentially.
One is that anytime something like this happens, there is an internal debate happening within the Trump administration.
Again, you have your Vances, you have your Gabbards.
Trump's impulse is probably a little bit closer to that.
And then you have the other side.
You have the military apparatus who's always going to be keen on neutralizing threats wherever they may be or even perceived threats.
And then you have lobbyists, right?
I mean, you have, in regards to Iran, you have the obvious.
The Israel lobby, of course, was really keen on us going to war with Iran.
And they have been for a very long time.
But you also have neocons broadly.
I mean, neocons broadly, you have to remember this whole Iran thing didn't start 10 years ago.
I mean, Iran has been viewed as the bulwark to Middle Eastern peace for like 50, 60 years now.
And so that has been the dream of a lot of neocons.
Even neocons removed from like the Israel component.
They all just really, it's a fixation for them, Iran.
They just view them as kind of a holdover from the Cold War, and they want that score settled.
So there's a couple other lobby.
I mean, the energy lobby obviously is going to be weighing in heavily here.
The anti-China lobby, you know, the China hawks, they're in favor of this, again, because it's a containment operation.
There's a lot going on.
But I think what's going on right now is there is this internal battle, an internal debate right now among MAGA.
What else we have in the stack here?
This is just some video.
You guys probably saw this.
This was interesting.
That's what I said at the top of the show.
Iran's very incompetent.
They have zero geopolitical instincts.
They started bombing French bases across the Gulf.
They started bombing various other Gulf states.
Like Iran's strategies just bomb everyone.
They're starting to just bomb everyone, which is ultimately they're going to get dismantled.
I think that's what's going to happen.
Again, I just don't know if it's going to happen internally or externally.
That would be quite interesting.
This was interesting news that broke this morning.
Lebanon's prime minister says Hezbollah will be banned.
The Lebanese military will enforce the decision.
So, if you don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm yawning so much.
I think it's just my brain's moving really quickly right now.
Hezbollah and Hamas are proxies of Iran, which is worth considering.
There's a lot of factors going on here in Lebanon.
Obviously, they're fearful of another Israel had previously, in the previous year, conducted operations in Lebanon to take out Hezbollah.
And I think this is the calculation Lebanon is making: Hezbollah is probably going to be cut off soon from funding, and so they're vulnerable.
And so, now is the time to remove them.
If you're sort of the establishment in Lebanon, this is now the time where you can root out Hezbollah and consolidate power within Lebanon.
It's just interesting that Lebanon's making this decision now, which indicates that across the region, no one is really long on Iran's capabilities of defending themselves, which does give ammunition to the pro-Iran Hawks, the Iran Hawks, right now, who are saying we could actually wrap this up in a few weeks and we'll never have to deal with Iran again.
Because, look, to steel man, what Trump is saying, what a lot of the people that are keen on this operation are saying is that if it is true that in four weeks Iran is out of the way, then that is a massive victory, quite frankly.
That would be huge.
That would probably be the last, no, it would be.
It is true that they kind of are the last non-Western aligned player in the Middle East.
You take them out of the equation, the Middle East becomes, you know, broadly Western-aligned.
And if you can get all that wrapped up with a few months to spare before the midterms, I think we're okay.
It's just you can forgive people for being a little skeptical of that, being skeptical of timelines, just considering how every other military operation in the Middle East has gone thus far, typically far over deadlines, far over budget as well.
And then a lot of American lives are cost.
So, this is again just why people, rightfully so, are skeptical, upset, et cetera, et cetera.
Michael Tracy made a good point here.
I kind of the commentary out of stacks, but this is going back.
I think two things can be true in regards to Iran: the Israel lobby does punch above their weight.
There's no question about that.
And if you deny that, like, I don't know what to tell you.
Um, but Israel discussion has broken people's brains for the most part.
I think October 7th just like mind-raped a lot of people.
Um, so Michael Tracy is kind of pushing back on it.
He says, Israel controls Trump.
It was Israel that tricked Trump into abducting the leader of Venezuela.
And that's why he's been threatening to take over Cuba and Greenland.
Absolutely everything should be seen through the prism of Israel, not Trump's megalomaniacal visions of global conquest.
I think that's a good take because some of the rhetoric online is that like, you know, this is done purely at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iran has been the fixation of the United States global military and military industrial complex for a very long time.
The question is overlapping goals.
There are overlapping goals for the United States with Israel and Iran.
For a decision to be made that has zero interest for the United States and 100% interest for Israel, there would be zero overlapping goals.
There wouldn't really be any goals for the United States, quite frankly, but there wouldn't be any overlapping goals.
Where in this situation, that's why Israel participated in the strikes was because they both have an incentive here.
Israel, again, is tired of dealing with Hezbollah.
They're tired of dealing with Hamas.
They're tired of dealing with proxies broadly, and they want to be able to really truly assert themselves as a regional power.
So they see Iran as an impediment to that.
The United States, their interest is obviously taking out Iran, incapacitating Iran.
One, because of the nuclear program, because if you've seen, small states are able to punch above their weight if they have nuclear weapons.
I don't know if you remember from the first term, Kim Jong-un literally got Trump to fly over and then step into the DMZ with him purely because he kept threatening us with nukes.
So having a nuclear weapon does get you a seat at the table.
There's no question about that.
And Iran is a significantly more powerful country than North Korea.
So again, Iran having a nuclear weapon does change the calculus geopolitically quite a bit.
The other goal for the United States, obviously, is, again, it just allows us an off-ramp out of the Middle East is if you can guarantee a withdrawal, a complete withdrawal from the Middle East in which the Middle East is stable, that you don't end up with kind of another Afghanistan situation where you just kind of pulled out of Afghanistan with no plan, no strategy, and the place just collapsed.
The thinking is, you know, if the United States were to completely withdraw every single asset from the Middle East right now, it would just devolve into a regional war.
And you may be sitting home and saying, well, who cares?
You know, finally, let's get out of here.
That's just not how geopolitics works.
Like you have to negotiate from a position of strength.
You have to bargain.
You have to make decisions from a position of strength.
You can't just retract completely.
It just doesn't work that way.
You're going to get walked over.
Trump understands this very well.
So there are overlapping goals here.
The question is just, again, does military operations, is that what's needed to bring about these goals?
It's tough to say, but I'm very, I'm really tired of the rhetoric that, like, oh, Trump is just, you know, slobbering on BB right now.
Because it's like Trump clearly just feels like he has the hot hand right now in regards to Venezuela.
He wants to take Cuba.
He pressured Denmark into a deal over Greenland.
So I think it's more Trump's just really trying to put himself in the history books here.
This is what I was saying earlier.
Iran struck a French naval base in Abu Dhabi.
Oh my God, they're just retarded.
I think that's fair, accurate.
This was funny.
I don't know what happened on Flight Radar last night, but it appeared the Goodyear blimp was engaging the Iranian Navy over Oman.
That's really, that is really something special is that, you know, even the private sector is getting involved.
Goodyear has deployed a blimp to, again, the Strait of Hormuz, and they are engaging the Iranian military.
It really is something special.
I want to get into some reactions.
This is what's interesting.
So online, everyone's freaking out.
By and large, the reaction is negative, very negative.
And people are quite frankly angry.
And again, I think everyone has the right to be, you know, because there hasn't been a super clear explanation yet as to what the win condition is.
This is interesting, though.
Offline, I don't think people care that much.
I certainly don't think people are furious.
I think people generally are, again, more focused on domestic policy.
And this is why my position broadly is: if this operation in Iran, again, is needed to sort of enact our domestic policy, then so be it.
Let's make it happen.
If it's not, then we're going to lose in the midterms.
That's just the reality of the situation.
To this point, though, I mean, Michael Tracy puts up polling.
As of a month ago, Republicans were far more likely to support a regime change in Iran.
Expect that number to skyrocket even higher, especially among self-identified MAGA Republicans.
So again, among the like the among the electorate, among the like everyday Americans, they are actually in favor of regime change in Iran.
Keep that in mind.
You know, online, the discourse is like, no, everyone's like isolationist or something.
That's just not the reality in the American public.
I'm sorry.
I was at their casino when the news broke Friday night and with a bunch of Gen Z guys.
No one cared.
Yeah.
Nobody cared.
No one cared.
Everyone's just like, oh, what?
Yeah, take him out.
Like, whatever.
We can do whatever we want with the military.
Or we're the superpower, that sort of thing.
So people don't really think about these things much.
And again, they do support this.
So there is an argument to be made that, again, the American people will give Trump four weeks to conduct this.
If it starts to go over a month, people are going to start having some questions.
They say, is this a war?
Are we at war now?
Like, what's going on?
Four weeks.
And online, it's going to be, you know, it's going to drag.
But again, among the general public, even the Democrats, the majority of Democrats, 51% support regime change in Iran.
This is polling via Harvard.
So I don't know what to tell you.
I mean, it is a very online thing.
I think Charlie Kirk had the great take here.
This is broadly my take.
Charlie Kirk, this was on the night we bombed Iran last June.
As you might say, Charlie, do you support or oppose this?
I support President Trump.
That's my answer.
I know the man.
He's the man for the hour.
So in a situation like this, I support my friend.
He has had my back.
So I have his.
Again, this is why I'm just hesitant to go crash out on the timeline or whatever.
Because there's just so much information coming in.
I just don't have access to the intel yet.
I just have trust in President Trump.
I really do.
You know, he's gotten us to this point.
I'm not going to, you know, trune out yet.
Maybe one day I'll turn out.
Who knows?
But not today.
Not today.
Today is not the day.
This was Matt Wall or Mehdi Hassan.
This is the left.
This is the left's reaction.
All of everything I've been reading discourse-wise is just in-house.
It's just, you know, Republicans going back and forth.
And then you go and see what the Libtards are saying, what they're up to.
Absolutely hilarious.
Mehdi Hassan, it's an illegal attack.
There is no evidence Iran is about to strike Israel or about to acquire nukes.
There's zero justification under international law for Israel bombing Iran.
Bro, we're talking about international law.
So this is where the Libtards are at.
They're still hung up on international law.
This is why I'm still kind of long on the midterms, even with this war, because it's just like the left is just not a serious.
They're not serious whatsoever.
So this is what's interesting.
This is why I speculate.
Sorry, it's all out of sorts here.
I'm really trying to get this all organized as the news is breaking.
This is why I'm having to go back and forth on topics here.
This is why I say there is sort of an internal dialogue happening within the Trump administration.
Because you see here, like Laura Loomer, you know, she's crashing out over JD Vance or Tulsi Gabbard.
So Trump was in Mar-a-Lago.
Mark Orubio was at Mar-a-Lago with them.
Vance and Gabbard are back up at NDC.
And yeah, she's crashing out over Vance and Gabbard, not just like crying tears of joy at the mere thought of Iran being bombed.
And she's saying, you know, attacking MTG here, which is typically a good idea.
But in this instance, I don't know why, unless you are just bloodthirsty.
MTG is appealing to JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard here.
And then Laura Loomer is just crashing out over this.
This poster here, at Guerrilla Rape, it's a very interesting at here, but he's always has some really good commentary.
Reminder, it's Vance.
It's always been Vance.
Everyone who doesn't want Vance is a retarded idiot or explicit enemy.
I think it's fair.
I think it's fair that Vance, for what it's worth, is sort of seeming like the, you know, the kind of voice of the base in the administration right now.
I have a lot of faith, again, in this administration because of people like Vance staffing.
I think Lomez had a really good write-up.
I won't read this entire thing because we are running out of time, but I just give his cliff notes here.
You know, Lomez says, I'm opposed to the war with Iran, not because it's bad in and of itself, but because the consequences of a war like this are too indeterminate.
And history tells us it can often spiral into ugly, protracted engagements that make the geopolitical platform a geopolitical problem you're trying to solve worse rather than better.
This is sort of what I've been trying to outline: again, there are overlapping goals for the United States with Israel.
There are some serious geopolitical plays that can be made.
I'm not denying that.
Like in a vacuum, this makes sense, I suppose.
Again, it's with the context of what Middle Eastern entanglements typically look like, in addition to the fact that wars of powers of the size of Iran are going to get ugly.
This is why I agree with Lomez's protracted engagements that can make the geopolitical problem we're trying to solve worse.
There's a serious situation in which Iran's proxies just go balls to the walls and it gets ugly.
But he finishes off his post here.
If it's happening, it behooves the admin to do this very quickly and surgically and apply max pressure to regional partners to pick up a lot of the slacks we can get out of there as soon as possible.
That is true.
Again, the primary issue for Trump is immigration.
So again, if this is what's needed to bring about domestic policy, great.
If not, then what's going on here?
God bless Trump.
This is what he says.
He is real.
I am not.
His entire presidency exists in defiance of the political laws and constraints that seemingly keep everyone else from doing successful action.
That this will be another case of Trump doing what only Trump can do is not an unreasonable expectation.
We will see.
And I think that is true.
I think people do realize, don't realize how entrenched a lot of these sort of interests are in DC that Trump is trying to go up against.
It really is something.
Cerno put this up, and I think this is really salient.
If this was needed to enact the domestic agenda, then fine.
If it's for nothing, that is a loss that will be felt in turnout in November.
This is absolutely true.
Again, it's just, it's early.
It's tough to tell.
I don't like it.
I don't think it's good.
I never have, for the record, I've never have been crazy about engagements with Iran.
But I understand what the argument is.
And if there were anybody else, I'm glad it's Trump in charge, quite frankly.
I do have faith that we're going to navigate out of this.
It's kind of the classic meme: how's old Dani gonna wriggle out of this jam?
And then Trump easily wriggles out of the jam.
Well, nevertheless, so I think there's a situation in two to three weeks where we are just, again, everything's fine.
And then a bunch of people troomed out, but we're fine at the end of the day.
And we look back and we go, well, you know, that was interesting.
I don't believe he's ready yet, but I'm on standby.
Cool.
All right.
Well, that's good.
Guest is still in the chamber.
We'll have to see.
I'm going to take a look here at this article.
We're going to change gears a little bit.
We had this guest on the schedule.
I was really keen on talking to him.
And I was thinking, you know, Iran's probably going to be in the news all week, four weeks, according to Trump.
I wanted to switch it up a little bit because, again, I think everyone in the Rumble Line is going to be giving their takes on Iran, this, that, and the other, you know, pro, for, against, et cetera.
You might be burned out a little bit.
I do want to talk about this because this is kind of a white pill.
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, fairly, not the flex, but fairly easily bring on sitting congressmen, 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.
I'm serving in my first term in majority leadership as majority whip here in the Ohio House.
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 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, you know, people have heard some, I guess, more high-profile instances of this happening, you know, 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 right 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 an 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 lightem 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 get involved and child protective services gets involved, they can do it at the request of the court, at the request of the guardian at Lydum, 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 confirmed, 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 Republicans, solid Republicans like you try to get anything done, it's these like weak, you know, soft Republicans that you know 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 this 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 than 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.
Cause I mean, you probably know better than anybody that, you know, as soon as a lot of Republicans, especially get hit with the act of that second wave you're talking about, that activist wave, because 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 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 is 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 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, there's 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?
Um, 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, their, their, their supporters are a way for the Democrat Party to create a designated lifelong Democrat voter.
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, you know, 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.
Pushing Boundaries: Testimony from Gender Clinics00:09:44
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.
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 going to be 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, 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?
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, 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 at the college level.
If you're teaching kids from birth that they are an oppressor if they're white and they're 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 polled 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, Troxo 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 ninth 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.