Posted inHealth

Parents of trans kids ask: Does California really protect our rights?

by Kristen HwangFebruary 4, 2026

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Paul Ammons protests Rady Children’s Hospital’s decision to end most of its gender affirming care services in San Diego on Jan. 24, 2026. Photo by Zoë Meyers for The San Diego Union Tribune

In summary

The Unruh Civil Rights Act provides the fundamental protection for equal access to health care regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, experts say. The state has not acted to uphold those protections, transgender rights groups claim.

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On Friday evening, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the state’s largest children’s health provider. The complaint accused Rady Children’s Health in San Diego of taking steps to illegally terminate gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

News of the lawsuit spread quickly through chat groups of parents of transgender kids, LGBTQ organizations and the broader transgender community. It was the first major action the state has taken against a hospital that had severely limited or ended transgender health services.

Many in the community see this move as a major step towards protecting transgender health, but some still question why the state’s legal claims don’t rest on broader civil rights questions. Instead, the key argument relies on the state’s corporations code — a provision governing business transactions — to try to compel Rady into continuing gender-affirming care.

The claim filed against Rady alleges the health system violated a merger agreement signed last year when Rady took over Children’s Hospital of Orange County and Children’s Hospital of Mission. That agreement requires Rady to maintain existing services, including transgender health care.

“We have anti-discrimination laws on the books. We have legal protection of gender-affirming care on the books. But if Rob Bonta does not feel confident in his ability to win a case on the basis of those laws do we really have those laws?” said Kanan Durham, executive director of Pride at the Pier, an Orange County group organizing opposition to Rady’s announced transgender clinic closure.

Durham said he was in a room full of trans people when the news of the lawsuit broke. People cheered, he said. But many were conflicted about the narrow application of the claim.

California’s civil rights law — the Unruh Civil Rights Act — is the backbone of the state’s guarantee of equal access to transgender health services, which can include puberty blockers, hormones, surgery and therapy, said Megan Noor, a staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center. The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Noor said that means, for example, if a hospital offers puberty blockers to a cisgender child who is starting puberty too young, they cannot deny access to that same treatment to a transgender child even if it is for a different purpose, such as giving the child more time to explore their gender identity. 

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Other laws require insurers to cover gender-affirming care and protect the privacy of transgender patients and their doctors.

In a press release, Bonta said “We will fight to uphold the law and ensure Californians can access gender-affirming care without facing unfair roadblocks.” His office, in an unsigned statement, said it had no comment on enforcement of the state’s civil rights law.

Ben Metcalf, a spokesperson for Rady Children’s Health, said in a statement that the organization could not comment on pending litigation, but called the decision to shutter gender-affirming care services “very difficult.”

“That decision was guided by our responsibilities as a nonprofit pediatric health care system to continue serving all children and families across our communities, including through participation in essential federal programs,” Metcalf said.

null

Rady notified parents of transgender children in mid-January that it would be closing its Center for Gender Affirming Care on Feb. 6.

Hospitals under pressure

Over the past year, transgender youth and their parents have watched with growing fear as California’s largest health systems retreated from providing transgender health services to people under the age of 19.

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles was the first to stop care. Then Stanford Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and most recently Rady limited or announced plans to terminate care. Sutter had told parents in December that it would stop providing services to their children, but quietly backtracked under fierce public pressure.

Hospitals say their hands were forced by an unfriendly federal government that does not recognize the existence of transgender people. 

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order characterizing transgender health procedures as “chemical and surgical mutilation” and directing agencies to defund any supportive programs. 

Since then his administration has intensified the pressure against health care organizations. Over the summer, federal investigators issued subpoenas to clinics and hospitals around the country, alleging fraud and seeking medical records. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in November published a self-described peer reviewed report “on the medical dangers posed to children” of gender-affirming care.

Rady, in a statement issued prior to the state’s lawsuit, confirmed the Health and Human Services inspector general was investigating the hospital, and said “the environment around gender-affirming care has changed dramatically.” 

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and dozens of independent scientific studies reject the claim that gender-affirming services are harmful to children with gender dysphoria. Instead, they conclude that “trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression” and having access to supportive health care positively impacts youth mental health and decreases suicidality.

Most recently, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is considering proposed rules that would eliminate government funding for hospitals that provide transgender health care to minors. If formalized, the rules would effectively create a near-total national ban on gender-affirming services for young people because nearly all hospitals in the U.S. receive more than 50% of revenue from Medicare and Medicaid payments, according to the American Hospital Association.

Advocates, legal experts and parents say that even with this existential threat hanging over health providers, for now, it’s just that: A threat.

“Nobody needs to stop this care at this point. It is a policy that has been announced. There has not been a law passed, nothing has been finalized,” said Kathie Moehlig, executive director of TransFamily Support Services based in San Diego. “We have to resist.”

Parents and advocates look to leaders to uphold state protections

Bonta has sued the Trump administration multiple times in an effort to protect transgender patient care, but some parents and advocates say his office needs to do more to uphold state law. 

The attorney general must review nonprofit hospital transactions, and can impose conditions to preserve patient care. 

Dannie Ceseña, director of the California LGBTQ Health and Human Services Network, said it was meaningful that Bonta did that in Rady’s merger, adding language protecting gender-affirming and other specialty health services for 10 years. 

“What about all of the other hospitals and families that don’t have this protective clause? They are still violating families’ civil rights. They are still stopping access to care,” Ceseña said. “Why isn’t the attorney general doing more in regards to this issue?”

Last February, the California Department of Justice sent a letter to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles warning that its refusal to serve transgender minors would violate the state’s civil rights law. In July, the hospital permanently closed its transgender health clinic.

Ceseña says he feels the state has been inconsistent in its support of the trans community. He and other LGBTQ advocates expected the state to sue Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and others well before the Rady lawsuit. And specifically, to protect civil rights for trans children. 

“We need to stop with the letters. We need to stop with the announcements. We need to see action,” Ceseña said. “Our kids are suffering.”

Others say it’s significant that the state stepped in at all after months of “despair.”

Arne Johnson, a Bay Area parent and organizer with Rainbow Families Action, acknowledged that many members of the community had “complex feelings” about the  latest lawsuit.

But he said he cried after hearing of the lawsuit against Rady. 

“The thing that is so powerful for so many of us who have been working so hard and crying out for someone to do something is that it’s the first time the state has recognized our children are valid members of society and worthy of protection by the laws of this state,” Johnson said. “That’s all we’ve been asking for.”

Parents are fighting back 

Parents of transgender kids say they have been moved to action by the steady erosion of gender-affirming care in the state. In December, hundreds of Northern California parents protested Sutter Health’s initial decision to stop gender-affirming care.

Last month, more than 600 people rallied outside of Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego while another 100 protested at the system’s affiliate Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

Ceseña said this marks a “huge change” since the start of the Trump administration among families who have transgender children and had previously kept their heads down in hopes that the issue would blow over.

That includes Todd, a San Diego native and father to a 15-year-old transgender boy. He asked to be identified by his middle name only to protect the identity of his son.

Before Rady informed parents it would stop services, Todd hadn’t been too involved in the transgender community. But he attended the protest and is looking to do more; Rady’s decision felt like a “betrayal,” he said.

“It felt like people who said ‘you can trust us’ were now collaborating with the people trying to hurt us,” Todd said. 

Todd’s son came out to his parents when he was 11. He saw a therapist for two years before going to Rady’s where, for more than a year, the family spoke with doctors and counselors to “help him understand himself” and “find the words and language to explain to himself what he was feeling.” 

The process looks different for every child and family, Todd said. Some kids think surgery is important to them, while others don’t; some want puberty blockers and hormone therapy, while others just want to be in an environment that is supportive. The process – broadly supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading medical societies – is often lengthy and involves the whole family, Todd said.

“If you’re not dealing with it personally, you don’t have to know those details, but what you do have to do is allow doctors and families to do the correct things to make their families healthy,” he said. 

Todd said he’s optimistic the state’s lawsuit will help Southern California families and build momentum.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit http://www.chcf.org to learn more.

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Kristen HwangHealth Reporter

kristen@calmatters.org

Kristen Hwang is a health reporter for CalMatters covering health care access, abortion and reproductive health, workforce issues, drug costs and emerging public health matters. Prior to joining CalMatters,… More by Kristen Hwang

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A set of internal documents published by the Republican members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (Judiciary GOP) has sent shockwaves through Brussels.

Released under the title The EU Censorship Files, Part II, the investigation presents documentary evidence of a sustained strategy by the European Commission to influence public debate on social media and digital platforms, pressuring major tech companies to censor lawful content, alter their internal rules, and restrict certain political viewpoints.

🚨The EU Censorship Files, Part II

For more than a year, the Committee has been warning that European censorship laws threaten U.S. free speech online.

Now, we have proof: Big Tech is censoring Americans’ speech in the U.S., including true information, to comply with Europe’s… pic.twitter.com/Fg0gxzoTxD

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) February 3, 2026

The revelations go far beyond an abstract debate over content moderation. According to the material made public, the Commission has directly or indirectly intervened in at least eight electoral processes across six European countries since 2023, using high-level meetings with digital platforms in the days and weeks leading up to elections to demand stricter censorship of political speech.

A decade-long censorship architecture

The leaked files show that this policy did not originate with the Digital Services Act (DSA), but dates back at least to 2015. As stated in the Committee’s official thread on X, “it began as early as 2015, when the European Commission created ‘codes’ and ‘forums’ through which it could pressure platforms to censor speech more aggressively.” These mechanisms, publicly presented as voluntary and consensus-based, functioned in practice as tools of regulatory coercion.

Internal communications from the tech companies themselves, included in the dossier, are particularly revealing. They acknowledge that “the Commission sets the agenda, forces consensus, and platforms don’t really have a choice.” The primary goal was not the removal of individual pieces of content, but rather the reshaping of community guidelines—the global rules that define which ideas are allowed to circulate in the digital public square.

From the pandemic to electoral control

During the COVID-19 crisis, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and then–Vice President Vera Jourová actively pressured platforms to remove content that challenged official narratives about the pandemic and vaccines. The report summarizes it bluntly: “They told platforms to change their rules and take down content questioning established narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine.”

From 2022 onward, this strategy became institutionalized. Between 2022 and 2024, the Commission organized more than 90 meetings under the Disinformation Code, urging platforms to tighten their moderation rules on a global scale. With the entry into force of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the pressure intensified further, with companies warned that they would have to submit their rules to a “continuous review of community guidelines” in order to avoid sanctions.

The impact was immediate. In 2024, TikTok changed its global rules “to comply with the Digital Services Act,” a move that, according to the documents, resulted in the censorship of truthful information and broad, vague categories of protected speech, even outside Europe. “That’s right: because of Europe’s censorship law, TikTok censors true information in the United States,” the Committee stresses.

Interference in European elections

The most sensitive aspect of the report is the direct link between these practices and specific electoral processes. Since 2023, the Commission held meetings with digital platforms ahead of national elections in Ireland in both 2024 and 2025; in France in 2024; in the Netherlands in 2023 and again in 2025; in Slovakia in 2023; in Moldova in 2024; and in Romania that same year. In every case, the meetings took place at critical moments of the campaign and were aimed at intensifying the censorship of political content deemed problematic.

Internal platform documents show that following these meetings, TikTok censored widely used conservative political claims, such as the (true) assertion that there are only two sexes. The DSA Election Guidelines themselves state that platforms must “adapt their terms and conditions” ahead of elections to combat so-called disinformation. Although officially presented as voluntary recommendations, a senior DSA official admitted in private conversations that they were, in practice, mandatory.

The Romanian case is particularly controversial. A court annulled the 2024 presidential election, citing alleged Russian interference via TikTok. However, the platform itself informed the Commission that it had found “no evidence of a coordinated Russian campaign” to support the winning candidate, Calin Georgescu. Subsequent investigations revealed that another Romanian political party had in fact funded the campaign attributed to Russia.

The Judiciary GOP revelations force a reassessment of the balance between regulation and freedom within the European Union. Beyond the official rhetoric about combating disinformation, the documents describe an architecture of narrative control that strikes at the heart of democratic pluralism and citizens’ right to debate freely without ideological oversight.

Javier Villamor, European Conservative

One of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, has broken his silence following allegations surfacing in the latest round of documents released regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

The focus was always, he knew a lot of very rich people and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health,’ Gates said in an interview with Nine News on Wednesday.

Gates gave his ‘only Australian TV interview’ with the network during a trip to the country for the Australian Open, which ran from January 12 to February 1 at Melbourne Park

The billionaire continued: ‘You know, in retrospect that was a dead end and I was foolish to spend time with him. I am one of many people who regret ever knowing him.

‘Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is, you know, false.

‘I don’t know what his thinking was there. Every minute that I spent with him, I regret and I apologise that I did that.

‘I was only at dinners… I never went to the island, I never met any women, and so, you know, the more that comes out, the more clear it’ll be, that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.’

The latest tranche of documents contains allegations against a number of well-known people including Gates, who met Epstein on multiple occasions to discuss expanding his philanthropic efforts.

email Epstein sent to himself in 2013 shows him frustrated over Gates’ decision to end their friendship and appears to allege Gates contracted an STD and sought his advice to secretly give an antibiotic to his then-wife Melinda.

‘TO add insult to injury you them implore me to please delete the emails mails regarding your std, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis,’ the email with typos reads.

Another section showed Epstein writing he was ‘dismayed beyond comprehension’ by Gates’s decision to ‘disregard our friendship developed over the last six years.’

Does Bill Gates have more explaining to do?

Yes
No
The emails were among the hundreds of thousands of Epstein files published by America’s Department of Justice on Friday morning.

Melinda, who divorced Bill Gates in 2021, earlier on Tuesday said those mentioned in the documents, including her ex, should publicly address the allegations.

During Tuesday’s episode of NPR’s Wild Card podcast, Melinda, 61, said she felt sorry for the victims of Epstein.

‘I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right? No girl, no girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him,’ she said, shaking her head.

She added: ‘It’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were, I remember my daughters being those ages.

As for me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up.’

Melinda and Bill were married from 1994 to 2021 and she has cited his friendship with Epstein as one of the reasons for the divorce, but has not divulged further details. 

Melinda reportedly hired lawyers to plan the split in 2019, after reports emerged about his repeated meetings with Epstein, contradicting the Microsoft founder’s earlier public denials.

She retained counsel after becoming concerned about her husband’s alleged business dealings with the disgraced financier, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A spokesman for Gates previously told the Daily Mail: ‘These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false.

‘The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.’

Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of ‘nonsense’ to The Failing New York Times. Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly! They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful. It was merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed. This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event, and Harvard will have to live with the consequences of their wrongdoings. In any event, this case will continue until justice is served. Dr. Alan Garber, the President of Harvard, has done a terrible job of rectifying a very bad situation for his institution and, more importantly, America, itself. He was hired AFTER the antisemitism charges were brought – I wonder why??? We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University. As The Failing New York Times clearly stated, ‘Some connected to the University, however, think Harvard has no option but to eventually cut a deal. The Administration has repeatedly attempted to cut off research grants, which would be an untenable crises. Like many major research universities, Harvard relies on federal funding for its financial model.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The conflict between Trump and Harvard intensified in 2025 as the administration launched investigations into alleged antisemitism and ideological bias on campus. In response to Harvard’s refusal to implement proposed reforms, including changes to hiring and admissions practices, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal research funding and, in May, barred the university from enrolling students on foreign visas.

In September 2025, a federal judge reversed the funding freeze, ruling it violated constitutional free speech protections and federal law, while also claiming the administration had a legitimate interest in combating antisemitism and criticizing Harvard’s past tolerance of hateful behavior.

Trump’s administration has maintained that Harvard acted with “deliberate indifference” toward Jewish and Israeli students and has cited a series of incidents—including physical altercations during anti-Israel protests and the hiring of individuals previously involved in such events—as grounds for punitive action. The Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, led by Leo Terrell, has made campus antisemitism its primary focus and has conducted investigations at multiple universities, including Harvard.

Alan Garber, who assumed the Harvard presidency amid campus turmoil following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, has repeatedly discussed institutional failures in public statements and interviews. In a March 2025 letter to the Harvard community, Garber wrote that antisemitism “is present on our campus,” adding, “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president.” 

In a January 2026 podcast appearance, Garber said the university “went wrong” by allowing faculty activism in classrooms, stating that such conduct “chilled free speech and debate on campus.” He has also acknowledged complaints about ideological imbalance, saying the administration has heard that “conservatives are too few on campus and their views are not welcome,” and conceding that, “insofar as that’s true, that’s a problem we really need to address.”

Despite those remarks, Garber has pushed back against the Trump administration’s methods. During an interview on NBC Nightly News, he stated:

What they are indicating is that they want to directly review who we hire on our faculty. That has implications for what kinds of views can be expressed on campus. They also want to be able to tell us who we need to fire and they also want to intervene in our admissions processes. That is what we are objecting to.

Harvard’s attorneys also issued a formal response to the administration’s demands, writing in a letter reported by Breitbart News:

“It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention for the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.”

In Minneapolis a war is raging, and it’s no longer limited to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Thanks to criminal indictments, the battlefront has moved from city streets to federal courts. At issue are two different rights, each guaranteed by the First Amendment: freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Two defendants invoke the former, while members of the church that was the target of protest invoke the latter.

The star of this legal drama is former CNN anchor Don Lemon. On the morning of Jan. 18, according to prosecutors, Mr. Lemon joined 20 to 40 agitators in a “coordinated takeover-style attack” on Cities Church in St. Paul during Sunday service.

On Friday, Mr. Lemon and eight others were criminally charged on two counts stemming from that attack. The first is conspiracy to deprive Cities Church congregants of their religious liberty, and the second is interfering with their religious liberty in a house of worship. Though Mr. Lemon is the much bigger name, another arrested and charged was Georgia Fort, an independent journalist with roughly 8,000 followers on YouTube.

Those who broke up the service were protesting ICE deportations. They chose Cities Church, they say, because one of the church pastors, David Easterwood, is also an ICE official. In a statement after his client’s arrest, Mr. Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, invoked Mr. Lemon’s First Amendment right:

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Mr. Lowell wrote. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

He’s correct—up to a point. Mr. Lemon’s constitutional right to report at Cities Church isn’t in question. But another part of the First Amendment is implicated here. The right of Americans to the “free exercise” of their faith is mentioned in the same amendment that protects Mr. Lemon’s speech. That is a right the protesters violated when they disrupted the service.

Scott Johnson, a St. Paul resident who writes the Power Line blog, cuts to the heart of the competing First Amendment claims with this question about Mr. Lemon and his fellow Cities Church protesters:

“Do they have a First Amendment right to interfere with the First Amendment rights of others?” asks Mr. Johnson. “I think the question answers itself.”

It isn’t an intractable clash of absolutes. Much will come down to factual rather than constitutional distinctions: Was Mr. Lemon inside Cities Church in his capacity as a journalist? Or was he also part of the group that plotted and executed the storming of Cities Church? Does it matter that the people accused of violating religious liberty here are private protesters and not state actors?

The attack itself was ugly—and the ugliness didn’t come from the Cities Church faithful. Protestors shouted at children, “Do you know your parents are Nazis? They’re going to burn in hell.” Amid the disturbance some must have wondered if this was the lead-up to another church shooting. The chaos and confusion were part of the plan.

The Justice Department has shown what it thinks. Prosecuting newsmen is a delicate proposition because it implicates a constitutional right. But religious liberty is also a constitutional right, even when exercised by mostly white Southern Baptists.

Their religious liberty claims haven’t received the attention they should from a media almost exclusively worried about Mr. Lemon’s claim to First Amendment protections—which he invoked that day. “I’m not here as an activist,” Mr. Lemon said during his livestream as the protestors disrupted the church. “I’m here as a journalist.” Another fact not getting attention is that the pastor said he asked protestors to leave the church and they didn’t.

We’ll see how it all plays out in the courts. In the meantime, here’s one last, basic fact that appears to be misunderstood: The First Amendment doesn’t give journalists a right to disobey laws.

“Don Lemon has exactly the same First Amendment right to barge into a church and disrupt a worship service as I would have to walk into his home and start reporting on his private dinner party—namely, none at all,” says Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

“Neither journalists nor protesters enjoy any constitutional right to invade someone else’s private space to report on the news or proclaim their message. By Lemon’s logic, the KKK could claim a First Amendment right to storm a black church during services and stage a protest. That gets the First Amendment completely backwards.”

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.

William McGurn, Wall Street Journal

Humans possess a natural sense that there is something higher than themselves. Throughout history, some thinkers even argued that merely understanding the word “God” proves His existence. If God means the greatest possible being, and existing in reality is greater than existing only in the mind, then God must exist. Others claimed that since truth cannot be denied, and God is truth itself, God’s existence must also be undeniable.

These arguments sound convincing. Yet experience tells us that God’s existence is not obvious to everyone. A math equation may be clear to a trained mathematician and completely confusing to someone without that background. In the same way, even if God’s existence is implied by His nature, we do not directly know God’s nature. Because of that limitation, God’s existence is not self-evident to us.

People long for happiness or fulfillment, but that does not mean they automatically recognize God as the source of that desire. Simply thinking about something does not make it real. We can imagine a perfect island or a superhero, but imagination alone does not bring them into existence. If God exists, He must be more than an idea in the mind.

Some argue that belief in God belongs only to faith, not reason. St. Thomas Aquinas disagreed. While many truths about God are known through faith, some truths can also be known through reason. Even though God is far beyond our full understanding, we can know that God exists by looking at His effects in the world, moving from what we can see to what we cannot see, from visible realities to an invisible cause.

The Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas offers five ways of reasoning to God that begin with ordinary experience and work backward to a necessary source.

The argument from motion begins with change. Things move and change, but nothing moves itself into existence. Every change depends on something already actual. If we follow this chain back far enough, there must be a first source of motion that itself is not moved. This Unmoved Mover is what we call God.

The argument from cause and effect observes that everything in the world has a cause, and nothing causes itself. Causes form an ordered chain that cannot extend infinitely in the present moment. There must be a first, uncaused Cause that sustains all others. This First Cause is God.

The argument from possibility and necessity notes that many things come into being and pass away. They are contingent, they might or might not exist. If everything were contingent, then at some point nothing would have existed. If nothing ever existed, nothing would exist now. Therefore, there must be at least one necessary being that does not depend on anything else for existence. This necessary being is God.

The argument from degrees of perfection points to the fact that we judge things as better or worse, truer or less true, more or less beautiful. These comparisons only make sense if there is a highest standard by which all lesser degrees are measured. That ultimate standard of goodness, truth, beauty, and being itself is God.

The argument from design observes that non-intelligent things in nature act toward consistent goals. Trees grow in predictable ways. Planets follow stable paths. Natural processes operate with order and direction. Just as an arrow reaches its target because an archer directs it, nature appears ordered toward ends beyond itself. That directing intelligence is what we call God.

Quickly Answering Common Objections

Some object that an all-good and all-powerful God would not allow evil. Aquinas responds that God permits evil only to bring about a greater good. Evil does not exist on its own; it is a corruption of something good. For evil to exist at all, goodness must come first, and that ultimate Goodness is God.

Others argue that nature and human reason explain everything, making God unnecessary. Aquinas replies that nature itself requires a source and a goal, and human reason can fail or change. Anything that changes or can fail must depend on something that does not change or fail. That unchanging foundation is God.

Going Further

God’s existence may not be obvious at first glance, but it is knowable. By reflecting on motion, causality, contingency, degrees of perfection, and design, we are led beyond the visible world to an invisible but necessary cause.

God is the explanation for change, cause and effect, existence itself, objective standards of goodness and truth, and the order we observe in nature. These arguments do not give us everything about who God is, but they do show us that God is.

Mike Schramm, Intellectual Takeout

Florida stands at a consequential moment in the national debate over illegal immigration.

The state has already moved decisively to protect taxpayers, reinforce the rule of law, and support federal agents. What comes next should be durable, voter-approved, and immune to the shifting moods of Washington.

A Florida-tailored constitutional amendment modeled on the core framework of California’s Proposition 187 represents the logical next step, not as nostalgia, but as evolution.

Properly adapted to Florida’s legal system and adopted through the state’s referendum process, such a measure would anchor immigration control in constitutional certainty. Simultaneously, public confidence would be bolstered, after being shaken by the Minnesota episodes and their mixed response inside the Republican Party.

The urgency is not abstract. Late last month, prominent Florida Republicans publicly criticized the Donald Trump administration’s immigration stance following the firestorm in Minnesota.

Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia told The New York Times that anti-illegal alien measures had “gone too far.” She cited family separations, aggressive raids, and the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Garcia warned that the White House’s approach could cost Republicans the midterms, explicitly blaming Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller.

Garcia, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) public affairs official and co-founder of Latinas for Trump, described a culture of fear and personal concern for her own family. This channeled legacy media figures substantial wattage for their anti-GOP noise machine.

Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar echoed Garcia’s concerns in a Washington Examiner op-ed. She argued that aggressive moves against illegal immigrants were eroding Republican support among Hispanic voters. She warned that Hispanics were “leaving the GOP in large numbers” and urged DHS to focus on major public safety threats rather than broadly targeting illegal aliens.

Around the same time, Congressman Carlos Gimenez told Newsmax that high-profile raids and the Minneapolis deaths were politically damaging. He bluntly opined that Trump administration tactics were hurting Republican chances in the midterms.

These comments followed notorious events in Minneapolis that reverberate nationwide.

As everyone and his or her great-grandmother surely knows, two U.S. citizens were fatally shot last month by federal immigration officers during enforcement operations. Renée Nicole Good was killed amid an ICE raid after advancing her car into an agent. Alex Pretti, an armed anti-DHS protester, was shot while physically interfering with officers who were making an arrest.

Both deaths were captured or contested by video evidence and sparked mass protests, press scrutiny, and bipartisan rancor. These incidents intensified debate over law enforcement tactics, use of deadly force, and the politics of immigration control.

The path forward is not retreat, hesitation, or rhetorical softening. It is clarity. A Florida constitutional amendment modeled on Proposition 187 would shift the focus from theatrical federal raids to clear, lawful, state-grounded rules that protect public resources while crippling illegal immigration.

California’s Proposition 187, passed by voters in 1994 by a near-20-point margin, sought to deny illegal aliens access to most state-funded public services. It required verification and reporting of immigration status by state and local agencies.

Its provisions included barring illegal immigrants from non-emergency public benefits, denying non-emergency publicly funded healthcare, restricting access to public education, mandating cooperation with federal authorities, and imposing penalties for false documentation and noncompliant public employees.

Proposition 187 also attempted to construct a parallel state enforcement architecture that went further than many remember. The initiative required state and local police to verify immigration status during arrests for suspected violations of state or federal law. This meant reporting those individuals to federal immigration authorities, embedding immigration screening into routine policing.

Furthermore, Proposition 187 directed the California Attorney General to create and maintain a statewide system for collecting, tracking, and transmitting reports of suspected illegal aliens from schools, hospitals, and social service agencies to federal officials. It also authorized civil actions against state or local agencies that failed to enforce its provisions. Private citizens were empowered to sue government bodies for noncompliance, thereby adding a layer of citizen-driven accountability.

At the same time, Proposition 187 explicitly preserved access to emergency medical care, disaster relief, and immunizations. Clearly, its architects intended exclusion from taxpayer-funded benefits to function as a deterrent, not as a denial of lifesaving aid. This broader enforcement ecosystem, largely erased from public memory, is precisely what makes a carefully-modernized, constitutionally-grounded Florida adaptation so essential today.

Although most of Proposition 187 was enjoined and ultimately nullified through federal district court agreements by 1999, its underlying premise remains politically potent and widely supported.

Florida is positioned to do what California could not. The legal pathway is clear.

Article XI of the Florida Constitution allows amendments through legislative referral or citizen initiative. A legislative referral requires a three-fifths vote in both chambers and then approval by 60 percent of voters at a general election. A citizen initiative requires signatures equal to eight percent of the votes cast in the last presidential election statewide and in at least half of Florida’s congressional districts. This is followed by Florida Supreme Court review and the same 60-percent voter approval.

Both routes ensure broad consensus and democratic legitimacy.

Florida has already laid the groundwork. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, the state enacted Senate Bill 1718 in 2023, mandating E-Verify for employers with 25 or more employees. It criminalized human smuggling with enhanced penalties, requiring hospitals to collect immigration status data, and penalized businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

In 2025, Florida expanded these efforts through Senate Bills 2-C and 4-C, allocating more than $298 million for immigration enforcement infrastructure. In-state tuition for illegal aliens was repealed, while a State Board of Immigration Enforcement was created. All police agencies in Florida were made to fully cooperate with DHS, and some, including all statewide departments and county sheriff’s offices, were deputized to administer immigration law.

This facilitated large-scale joint operations that have resulted in thousands of arrests, with multitudes more certain to follow.

A constitutional amendment, featuring every aspect of Proposition 187 with each one tailored to Florida law and binding judicial precedent, is the logical next step. Court challenges would be inevitable. Proposition 187 faced immediate injunctions over federal preemption and equal protection claims, particularly regarding education.

Fortunately, the legal landscape has changed.

Florida, with its solidly Republican state government and largely GOP electorate, is the ideal staging ground for a clean, contemporary test case. Any resulting litigation would almost certainly reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Its 6-3 conservative majority has shown openness to state authority that complements, if not amplifies, federal law enforcement.

Florida would not be acting only for itself. Success would send a signal nationwide.

Just as California once shaped national policy debates, Florida could now lead a new chapter by demonstrating that firm immigration law enforcement can be constitutional, voter-driven, and crystalline in its clarity. The Sunshine State would become a beacon for states seeking to protect public resources, and stymie the scourge of illegal immigration, without surrendering to political chaos or moral panic.

The faded California dream does not need to remain phantasmagorical. In Florida, it can be reborn through constitutional action that reflects the will of voters, restoring confidence in immigration control. This offers a sound model for national renewal grounded in law, order, and democratic legitimacy.

America needs it now, more than ever.

Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto is the creator, host, and producer of News Sight, delivering sharp insights on the key events that shape our lives. He publishes Dr. Cotto’s Digest, sharing how business and the economy really impact us all. During the 2024 presidential race, he developed the Five-Point Forecast, which accurately predicted Donald Trump’s national victory and correctly called every swing state. Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt.

BREAKING: In a HUGE win, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro says Washington DC is now solving the MOST homicide cases in HISTORY after President Trump surged the feds, even the DEMOCRAT Mayor is stunned Imagine that — the experts were wrong, AGAIN!

“We are solving this problem. We are solving more homicide cases than we ever have in the district!” “And the mayor now is seeing what this combined resource allocation is doing.” “We’ve got all kinds of benefits with technology and new databases and plugging in all kinds of tracking that she didn’t have before.” “And, you know, the mayor now, the mayor is always believed in making the city safe. What the president has done and what the Attorney General Pam Bondi has done is they’ve created the equation and the pieces to the equation that get us to the point where we get a good resolution.”

Yigal Carmon, President and cofounder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), issued a blunt warning to President Trump in a Daily Brief published January 30, 2026: Hamas and similar Islamist groups are locked into a jihadist ideology that no amount of economic prosperity can break. Carmon argues that even if Gaza were rebuilt into a luxurious “Middle East Riviera” with beaches and hotels, these groups would still prioritize ideology such as martyrdom and Israel’s destruction, over material comforts or the “good life” ideal, which he argues motivates the West. He points to pre-October 7 Gaza, where residents enjoyed restaurants, promenades, and modern buildings, and Hamas leaders’ repeated rejection of generous statehood offers as evidence that ideology always prevails over incentives.

Carmon’s focus on the enduring power of radical indoctrination is valid. Extremist beliefs are deeply rooted and resilient. Yet his view is overly pessimistic and overlooks how shared economic interests have repeatedly moderated conflict in the Middle East. Even though he doesn’t buy into a stark binary, i.e., “Riviera or ideology,” he nonetheless downplays prosperity and mutual investment as empirically successful mechanisms for creating new political realities, even among former adversaries.

History demonstrates that when parties gain a direct stake in peace through finance and security, behavior changes. The Abraham Accords provide the strongest recent proof. Starting in 2020, nations like the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, once aligned with anti-Israel rhetoric, normalized ties with Israel. This led to more than simple diplomatic gestures: direct flights, tech partnerships, tourism booms, energy deals, and billions in trade and investment. Emirati and Bahraini leaders, previously influenced by the same ideological currents, now oversee hotels, tech hubs, and ports that rely on stable relations with Israel. Their citizens encounter Israelis as tourists and business partners, normalizing what was once unthinkable.

These shifts didn’t require abandoning ideology entirely; they recalibrated it because peace proved profitable and secure. Similar patterns hold in Jordan and Egypt, where decades-old peace treaties endure amid turmoil thanks to economic benefits, U.S. aid linked to stability, and military cooperation.

Carmon suggests that only “corrupt jihadis,” such as certain leaders, can be swayed. But corruption and ideology coexist, and shared investment builds vested interests in stability that, over time, sideline extremists.

In fact, many Arab and Gulf states deploy incentives that mold ideological objectives in providing for their own security, for example, by exporting extremism to shield their own regimes. They fund or openly court groups like Hamas, Hezb’allah, or the Houthis to direct radical energy outward, preserving domestic calm and protecting oil wealth. Qatar hosts Hamas leaders in luxury, while Iran arms proxies regionally. This keeps palaces and skyscrapers safe.

Trump’s approach simply reverses this dynamic. Rather than paying extremists to stay quiet, it invites regional players to invest in Gaza’s rebuilding, with commitments to security and deradicalization. The “Riviera” vision isn’t a direct bribe to street-level fighters; it’s an opportunity for Gulf sovereign funds, Egyptian contractors, Jordanian firms, and moderate Palestinian entrepreneurs to develop hotels, ports, and tech zones they own and profit from. Once capital is committed, these stakeholders have every reason to block rockets or tunnels that threaten their returns

This mirrors the Abraham Accords: former enemies became co-investors, turning mutual vulnerability into mutual protection.

Carmon frames the proposal as naively offering luxury to figures like Yahya Sinwar or Ismail Haniyeh. That’s a misreading. The plan, floated by Jared Kushner and others, conditions reconstruction on Hamas’s defeat and removal, with governance shifting to entities committed to security and development. Rewards like investment, trade, tourism revenue, and normalized ties aim at pragmatic elites among Palestinians, Arabs, and internationals who can enforce stability.

These leaders would drive deradicalization: reforming schools, diversifying media, and creating jobs that rival the appeal of martyrdom. Grassroots change takes generations, but it gains traction when former hardliners (like Anwar Sadat, once sympathetic to Nazis, or UAE figures who boycotted Israel) become advocates because their prosperity depends on it.

Carmon’s implied alternative, that ideology must be crushed militarily, with no moderation possible, risks endless cycles of destruction and resurgence. Gaza has been leveled repeatedly, yet Hamas rebuilds. Military victory alone creates vacuums that extremists exploit.

Incentives, exposure, and shared stakes provide the only viable alternative to destruction. Education shifts when children view Israelis as partners. A Gazan engineer collaborating on a joint tech project with Emirati and Israeli colleagues sees the world anew. Economic opportunity undercuts the narrative that jihad offers the only path to dignity.

Carmon is correct to highlight the strength of ideology and the irredeemability of some actors. Reform won’t be easy to attain, and it will not occur overnight. But he overstates its permanence and undervalues the transformative potential of shared investment. The Abraham Accords showed that even entrenched hostility can evolve when elites gain concrete stakes in peace. Applying that model to Gaza, offering returns, security, and a stable future to those willing to dismantle hate, isn’t naive. It’s the strategy that has succeeded in the modern Middle East without condemning the region to endless war.

Carmon is also correct to wonder whether any “alliance” with enemies might alienate friends. Every grand compromise, however, begins with such a concern. Any effort to hard reform is easily dismissed as impossible or dangerous, but reform is no more impossible or dangerous than is acquiescence as an agent of change. The very depth and resilience of ideology demands concerted, coordinated, and equally resilient pressure to reform.

Dismissing the effort risks perpetuating the very conflict Carmon warns against.

Monte Donohew, American Thinker

Organizations including the Chinese-American Planning Council and the Chinese Progressive Association — both of which have ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence network — are among the signatories urging Congress to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol.Subscribe

Those groups joined more than 1,000 organizations in a coordinated letter demanding that lawmakers halt all funding for federal immigration enforcement agencies, a move that would effectively eliminate interior enforcement and deportation operations nationwide. The letter, organized by Amnesty International USA, does not call for reforms or oversight but for the removal of enforcement capacity itself.

The records of the Chinese-American Planning Council and the Chinese Progressive Association illustrate how foreign-linked financial and personnel networks intersect with domestic immigration activism at the same time Congress is being pressured to dismantle federal immigration enforcement.

Chinese-American Planning Council

A review of CPC’s financial records discovered Chinese government-linked sources pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the nonprofit in recent years. CPC is currently under investigation for these China ties and immigration enforcement obstructionist agenda.

The council has received as much as $445,969 in donations from sources with ties to the Chinese government since 2018. State-run enterprises such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Bank of China have provided financial assistance to CPC in recent years, records show.

CPC also appears to have significant financial and personnel links to a New York-based nonprofit, which, in turn, has extensive ties to Beijing and a CCP influence and intelligence arm.

The Daily Caller has revealed these ties extensively.

Chinese Progressive Association

CPA has received considerable media attention for its ties to the Chinese Communist Party, dating back to its founding and continuing well into the present.

The association was founded in San Francisco in 1972 by operatives of the Maoist militant group I Wor Kuen, which supported the Chinese Communist Party.

From the start, it was doing pro-China work.

As one of its founders, Fay Wong, explained: “China was an inspiration to us, many of us were from China and those us who were not just found what China was able to accomplish, with the revolution, was very inspiring.”

A few years later, I Wor Kuen also set up groups called the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston and New York, the latter of which signed the Amnesty International ICE demand letter.

When he was executive director of CPA-San Francisco in 2012, Alex Tom started the China Education and Exposure Program to deepen ties between American leftists and China. “We built relationships with people in the [Communist] Party,” Tom said on the May 26 episode of “The Red Nation” podcast.

Other senior officials at the CPA-San Francisco worked to further the aims of Hanban, the Chinese government entity that runs controversial Confucius Institutes in the U.S.

Confucius Institutes embed deeply inside universities to show students a sympathetic view of China replete with propaganda. They also try to censor what the host university can discuss regarding China and have been flagged for espionage ties.

The CPA in Boston has even worked officially with the Chinese Consulate in New York.

CPC also appears to have significant financial and personnel links to a New York-based nonprofit, which, in turn, has extensive ties to Beijing and a CCP influence and intelligence arm.

The association was founded in San Francisco in 1972 by operatives of the Maoist militant group I Wor Kuen, which supported the Chinese Communist Party.

The Daily Caller has revealed these ties extensively.

Chinese Progressive Association

CPA has received considerable media attention for its ties to the Chinese Communist Party, dating back to its founding and continuing well into the present.

Other senior officials at the CPA-San Francisco worked to further the aims of Hanban, the Chinese government entity that runs controversial Confucius Institutes in the U.S.

From the start, it was doing pro-China work.

As one of its founders, Fay Wong, explained: “China was an inspiration to us, many of us were from China and those us who were not just found what China was able to accomplish, with the revolution, was very inspiring.”

A few years later, I Wor Kuen also set up groups called the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston and New York, the latter of which signed the Amnesty International ICE demand letter.

When he was executive director of CPA-San Francisco in 2012, Alex Tom started the China Education and Exposure Program to deepen ties between American leftists and China. “We built relationships with people in the [Communist] Party,” Tom said on the May 26 episode of “The Red Nation” podcast.

Confucius Institutes embed deeply inside universities to show students a sympathetic view of China replete with propaganda. They also try to censor what the host university can discuss regarding China and have been flagged for espionage ties.

The CPA in Boston has even worked officially with the Chinese Consulate in New York.

Natalie Winters