How Epic Fury Enhances MAGA

American Thinker 

Not surprisingly there is early criticism from some quarters of President Trump’s base of supporters because of his decision to authorize massive regime-change military strikes on Iran. Such opposition is natural given Trump’s commitment to peace and his vocal “America First” policy orientation, an important part of which was ending wars and prioritizing domestic initiatives.

What these critics need to better appreciate is that sometimes circumstances and opportunities arise that require a change of course. What differentiates us from most of our adversaries is precisely that we want our government to be pragmatic and flexible rather than ideologically rigid. Additionally, with Iran being unwilling to negotiate an agreement to cease missile and nuclear bomb production, President Trump deemed Iran to be a lethal threat to U.S. national security. So, when negotiations failed, he took action that he believed was completely consistent with putting America first.

For the last 43 years the radical Shia Islamic regime in Iran has been at war with the United States, starting with the April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut killing 63, and six months later the U.S. Marines Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 Marine service members. Total U.S. casualties from Iran-linked forces in this period has exceeded 1200. But the loss of American lives inflicted by the radical Iranian regime is much higher. Iran’s improvised explosive devices (IEDS) took many more American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan -- totaling more than 4,200, which was about 46% of all U.S. war zone deaths between 2006 and 2019. In addition, estimates for the IED-wounded, often resulting in ugly facial disfiguration and loss of limbs took an even higher toll, with one official source putting the number at more than 30,000 U.S. service members across both wars.

Additionally, Iran under the ayatollahs has been the number one source of terrorism globally. These facts alone suggest that the takedown of the present theocratic government in Iran is overdue.

Defeating the Iranian regime is by no means a sure thing. First, while there was early success in eliminating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there is no single “second in command” as in a deputy or crown prince. Instead, power is distributed across several powerful overlapping institutions and figures, many of whom have been influenced or appointed by the Supreme Leader. Furthermore, these second-tier figures and bodies that now form the core “leadership layer” who will advise, oversee, and execute military defensive and offensive policy are decentralized. This is not insurmountable, but the military campaign may take a little longer than most would like.

The Iranian military is made of up two parts. Prior to American and Israeli strikes, the IRGC, which reports directly to the Supreme Leader and his surrogate, had around 200,000 personnel including the elite Qods Force. The regular military forces, called the Artesh, which had about 420,000 personnel focused on territorial defense, is less ideological, and more likely to defect. Trump’s promise of clemency if Iranian arms are laid down was primarily directed to members of the Artesh.

Under Article II of the Constitution, the primary responsibility of the President is the security of the American people. And the commander-in-chief has more comprehensive intelligence than anyone.

For instance, Trump’s calculus in making this move includes understanding devastating risks to the U.S. posed from a nuclear EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) attack, likely to originate in international waters from a sea-launched Iranian missile that detonates 50 to 250 miles in the atmosphere above the United States. Other intel that contributed to Trump’s understanding includes cultural elements in Iran (that go unreported). For instance, the fact that Iran has the fastest growing Christian population of any country in the world was undoubtedly a part of the calculus for making the decision to move on Iran. Trump has expressed deep concern about Christian persecution and separately about the slaughter of innocent Iranians. He has also expressed a vision for Iranian patriots and Christians to rise up and eliminate the last elements of the former corrupt radical Shia regime.

The best way to assure a rapid exit and assure there will be no U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran is a next phase in which the U.S. and our allies in the cause -- which now include many Sunni Arab countries -- will join with us in air-dropping appropriate arms for the Iranian Christians and freedom fighters to assure that the last remnants of the old regime are eliminated.

The alleged recent entry of factions under the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) and the Kurdish Regional Government (PRG)’s Peshmerga forces to fight the remnants of the Iranian shia power structure may complicate the present strategy and outcome. While the Kurds can be an asset by bringing additional military force against the Shia government of Iran, there is also risk of creating problems with Turkey and broader escalation in the Middle East.

For now, the focus should be in arming the non-Muslim freedom fighters in Iran (who represent the majority of Iran’s population) with the most effective weapons to bring an end to the 47-year horror of Shia dictatorship. These weapons should be suited for urban conflict and would include those designed for close-quarters engagement, maneuverability in confined spaces like buildings, breaching doors, and suppressing fire quietly when needed. Long-range sniper rifles are vital, as many of the Iranian freedom fighters live in high-rise buildings, providing them the commanding heights of rooftops from which they can take out regime’s armed remnants.

The sooner we equip and train the Iranian patriots the sooner the U.S. military forces can withdraw, and the sooner that President Trump can focus on the America First agenda at home. That agenda has three important policy objectives: 1) the visible prosecutions and trials of seditious conspirators, narco-terrorists, and Somali and other immigrant fraudsters; 2) the restoration of U.S. election integrity with same-day voting on paper ballots, mandatory voter ID, and proof of citizenship; and 3) increased numbers of deported illegal aliens, the restoration of law and order, and the ending of sanctuary cities in America.  

Success in foreign policy in giving rebirth to a free Iran, combined with success in these three domestic policy areas would assure the Trump presidency a preeminent place in history. All of which would be fitting for this year’s 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 1776.

Podcast thread for March 7

 

springtime springtime. :)

China’s 90-Day Energy Trap

Townhall 

Beijing just discovered it cannot fight, or even wait, without American permission. While China rations its future, the United States is securing the world’s oil on its own terms.

The numbers are brutal and unforgiving. China imports between 11 million and 12.5 million barrels of crude every single day. Between 40 and 50 percent of that supply must thread the narrow needle of the Strait of Hormuz. Total consumption, including refined products, runs 15 million barrels daily. Even after years of frantic stockpiling, Beijing’s combined strategic and commercial reserves sit at roughly 1.1 to 1.4 billion barrels, 90 to 120 days of cover at current burn rates.

Ninety days. Coincidentally, or maybe not, that's the exact timeframe a U.S. President has via a War Powers Resolution before Congress must approve an extension.

That clock started ticking on February 28 when strikes on Iran turned the Strait into contested waters. Public trackers show no formal blockade, but that doesn't matter as the insurance market collapsed, carriers have fled, and tanker traffic has halted. Days later in the Mediterranean, a Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier mysteriously exploded and sank from an unknown assailant. Today, LNG shipping rates have surged more than 40 percent, with spot Atlantic fixtures quoted above $200,000 per day. Energy markets are pricing in prolonged chaos. 

China’s response is telling. Refiners have been ordered to prioritize domestic supply. Domestic diesel and gasoline prices have spiked; Brent crude has breached $100 a barrel in Asian trading. Beijing has realized its vulnerability: we are one sustained disruption away from factory shutdowns, truck queues, and civilian rationing, and they are panicking.

Now turn to Washington. 

The United States under President Trump is now the world’s largest oil producer. We don't need Hormuz. Two days after the Iran strikes, President Trump announced a new full maritime political-risk insurance through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation for all Gulf energy shipments, backed by US Navy protection. This week, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Venezuela’s acting president in Caracas, live on camera, announcing the rapid reopening of Venezuelan fields and minerals to American investment. Trump followed up within hours: “Oil will be flowing again—fast.” The power play is obvious. While China stares at empty tanks in three months, America is adding new supply lines in real time.

Even Chinese analysts are admitting the obvious. In the South China Morning Post and state-linked think-tank papers this week, experts who spent years peddling the “American decline” narrative are suddenly changing their tune. One widely circulated analysis put it bluntly:

“America’s war-making capability depends entirely on its will to deploy such power.” The implication is devastating for Beijing. The United States does not lack the ships, the fuel, the technology, or the capability. It lacked the willingness, and President Trump has made that willingness quite clear.

This is the asymmetry the post-pandemic world is only now waking up to. China built the largest navy on paper and the largest strategic petroleum reserve in Asia, yet it remains one chokepoint away from economic paralysis. America sits atop North America’s energy super-basin, a willing partner in Venezuela’s revival, and a Navy that can ensure and escort global trade AND project power.

The 90-day window is no coincidence. It is the exact duration Beijing can endure before its economy begins to seize. It is also the exact duration the United States can sustain military operations in the Gulf without asking permission from anyone. That alignment is not an accident; it is the cold arithmetic of power meeting will.

Markets already understand. Global supply chains are repricing. European and Asian manufacturers that depend on Chinese parts are quietly dusting off contingency plans. Shipping costs are climbing. The longer the Strait remains contested, the higher the price Beijing will pay in lost growth, lost exports, and lost prestige.

China is learning the hard lesson that stockpiles and pipelines cannot substitute for sea-lane security backed by overwhelming naval power and domestic energy abundance. President Trump did not forget it. Now the rest of the world is watching the proof unfold in real time: energy independence is power. It is the ultimate strategic multiplier, the force that amplifies economic strength, military reach, and national sovereignty all at once. But none of it matters without the will to use it.

The coming weeks will reveal whether the Strait reopens quickly or becomes a protracted test of endurance. Either way, the verdict is already forming in Beijing’s war rooms and on trading floors from Singapore to New York. China’s energy vulnerability has been laid bare. America’s energy dominance and the will to use it has just been reaffirmed.

The 90-day clock is running. Only one side is comfortable with where the hands are pointing.

Condoleezza Rice Has a Message for Trump: Get It Done

Condoleezza Rice Has a Message for Trump: Get It Done

Sarah Anderson for PJ Media

AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice doesn't speak out often, but when she does, I pay attention. Regardless of what we may or may not think about the George W. Bush administration, she's someone I've admired personally for a long time. I'd also love to see her replace Roger Goodell as NFL commissioner or take on the problems college football currently faces, but that's a story for another day. 

Right now, she's speaking out on Iran and has a message for Donald Trump: Get it done.   

Rice appeared on Special Report With Bret Baier on Fox News earlier this week to talk about the current conflict. She made it clear that, despite what Democrats say, Iran has been a major threat to the U.S. for decades, and it's time to put an end to it.   

"The most important thing is to recognize is that Iran has been at war with us for at least 47 years — all the way from 1979. People may forget, they took our embassy hostage for 444 days, they were responsible for the killings of 300 plus marines in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and if you asked people about Iraq, what was the source of many of our casualties in Iraq, you'll get estimates as high as 75-80% were due to Iranian-made roadside bombs," Rice said.   

She added, "They also have developed the military capability to have reach outside of the boundaries of Iran, including Hezbollah and Hamas, which they both arm and equip and continued to arm and equip after the events of the summer. And I, myself, negotiated four security council resolutions, calling them a threat to international peace and security, under Chapter 7, the strongest chapter of the UN Security Council resolutions, because of their nuclear ambitions. So, to say that this regime was not a threat, I think, is simply ahistorical — they've been a threat for a long time."   

Baier pushed back and asked about the skepticism that's out there, pointing to a poll that suggests about half of voters do not think this will make the country safer or make it less safe. Rice pointed out that there is "uncertainty with any military operation and what the aftermath might be. And then she laid out some truth about Operation Epic Fury. 

But I think if the goal of the administration is to render Iran incapable of using its military forces outside of its borders, of threatening our neighbors, our allies, of threatening our bases abroad, which we're seeing they are capable of doing — if it's trying to deny them a conventional umbrella for their nuclear ambitions, that is a worthy goal. 

Now, what comes after — people are, of course, concerned about that — but if you can render Iran essentially incapable of military action against us and against our allies, that's worthy. And I think what they're trying to do is to neuter Iran as a military power in the region.  

And, by the way, the Iranians, who I think made a strategic blunder in attacking the Gulf States, like the UAE, or Kuwait, or others, is demonstrating that it is its goal to be a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Yes, you can still be concerned about what may come after, you can still be concerned about the uncertainties of warfare, but to render this awful regime incapable of using its military power, that's a worthy goal.

Rice concluded that she believes a series of events most likely led up to this conflict, but doubled down that it's a worthy goal. She added that it's important to avoid mission creep, and taking care of Iranian military operations and capabilities is the top priority. She also said that if something can be done about security forces in Iran, she is hopeful that the Iranian people can take their future into their own hands, but we're a long way off from that.  

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Why Islam Seeks Shelter Under The Banner Of The Left

Islam is not a decorative addition to the progressive cause; 

it is on the verge of becoming its animating spirit.

The Federalist

To his supporters, Donald J. Trump is the 47th president of the United States. For our enemies, he is something far more intolerable: the de facto leader of Western civilization. He is nothing less than the obstacle to a civilizational transformation they have already advanced in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Ottawa.

This enemy has a name: the Red-Green alliance. It is the political covenant between the left and Islam. Its strength is precisely that it is not external. It votes. It holds our passports. It sits in our legislatures and city halls. It shouts down, as in the example of Democrat Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, our president’s State of the Union. This is the enemy within: a left who mobilizes blocs of Islamic voters whose only shared objective is the destruction of the West.

Trump is alone among Western leaders in saying this plainly. When pressed as to whether British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to assist U.S action against Iran was due to his “pandering to Muslim voters,” Trump refused to recite the ritual lie.

He grasps what our elites seek to conceal: that the U.K., like France, Germany, Spain, and Canada, are leftist regimes now constrained by Islamic voting blocs whose potential for domestic turmoil and electoral punishment dictates the limits of policy. When fear of one constituency sets these limits, a nation has surrendered its freedom in everything but name.

This is precisely what the American left hopes to reproduce here. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s machine, where leftists deliberately organized and mobilized dense immigrant Islamic districts into a distinct electoral bloc, is the opening salvo. Even the recent terrorist attack in Texas confirms this trend: Ndiaga Diagne was not an “illegal alien” but a naturalized citizen. We obsess over silent sleeper cells and yet we refuse to see the closer threat of those who carry our passports, vote in our elections, and despise our civilization.

For President Trump, this is not some quaint foreign oddity. Rather, it is a portent for the United States and the West at large.

The success of the Red-Green Alliance does not lie in the might of Islam or the truth of its doctrines, but in the visible weakness of the West. What passes in polite discourse as “progress,” “social justice,” and “democracy” is, in fact, the open expression of anti‑Western hatred dressed in the moral language we once reserved for liberty and right. We still have eyes, but we have educated them not to see.

The so‑called “Red‑Green alliance” is not a partnership of equals. It is a disguise: Islam in leftist drag. The left and Islam do not share a positive account of the good life; they share a common enemy. The left condemns the West as oppressive, racist, colonial, patriarchal, capitalist. Islam condemns it as impious, decadent, rebellious against its god. They converge not in what is to be built, but in what is to be destroyed.

Two Admissions

To call this what it is, anti‑Western hatred, would require two admissions that our modern conscience cannot bear.

First, it would require acknowledging that “the West” is something more than an empty slogan. It is an inheritance of reason, natural rights, constitutional government, and a particular moral and religious tradition. To speak of anti‑Western hatred is to imply that the West has substance, that it can be known, judged, and defended, that our way of life has a determinate meaning and might even be good.

Second, it would require admitting that there are those, both foreign and domestic, whose beliefs are profoundly incompatible with our way of life. They are not merely “misinformed” or “mentally ill.” They grasp the essentials of the West more clearly than we do and they deliberately reject it root and branch.

Instead of taking them at their word, we translate enmity into pathology. Those who hate the West are said to be “alienated,” “radicalized,” “marginalized.” To call them crazy is our most soothing sedative. A madman does not have to be refuted. He can be administered. In so doing, we excuse ourselves from the labor of taking their doctrines seriously and from the more painful question of whether, in their way, they are more serious about their first principles than we are about ours.

The Muslims who organize under leftist banners are not ideological flotsam. They possess a coherent teaching about God, law, politics, and history. They regard the West as an enemy to be humbled and subjugated. They deploy, with intelligence, the left’s language of oppression, decolonization, and racism because it is effective. It radically disarms us and recruits allies already schooled in hatred of their own civilization.

Three Reasons for its Success

This Trojan horse succeeds for three related reasons. First, the left flatters itself that it can control Islam, treating Islam as more raw material for its emancipatory project. Iran has already answered this conceit. The shah was deposed by just such a “Red‑Green alliance.” Once power was taken, the Ayatollah shot the leftists. Islam did not become progressive; the progressives became corpses.

Second, Islam gratifies the left’s vanity. That an avowedly non‑progressive, devout, patriarchal, non‑Western community adopts the jargon of liberation convinces the left of its own universality and blinds it to the fact that its “partners” do not share its ends.

Third, in its most corrupt form, the left treats Islamic forces as an auxiliary militia. This is an imported proletariat that genuinely hates the West and is prepared to act upon that hatred. Islam supplies the belief and will to intimidate and destabilize the West of which our academics only posture. They are the practical instruments of a theoretical hatred.

The left fails to recognize that it too is being conquered. Islam is not a decorative addition to the progressive cause; it is on the verge of becoming its animating spirit. In the universities, media, and halls of power where the left thinks and feels, the rhetoric of emancipation is being infused with foreign theological and civilizational content. What appears as an alliance is, in truth, an Islamic colonization of language, sentiment, and institutions. The left imagined it was incorporating Muslims into its universal narrative; in fact, it is supplying Islam with a moral vocabulary and an army of useful idiots.

Crisis of Belief

All of this meets so little resistance because we in the West are experiencing a crisis of belief. We no longer affirm that our principles are true. We speak of “values,” as if they were consumer preferences, and not truths. We are taught that our founding documents are mere instruments of domination and that our history is an unbroken ledger of crimes. A people educated to despise its own foundations cannot recognize, still less resist, those who seek to destroy them.

Courage presupposes conviction. No one risks his life for a “social construct.” At its best, the West affirmed that reason can discover standards of right; that man is by nature free and equal; that rule by reason is superior to rule by force. These were claims about man as such. Because they were believed, it was possible to see those who sought to abolish them as genuine enemies, not as additional perspectives to be “included.”

It shows what happens when a serious belief, however erroneous, encounters a civilization that no longer believes in itself. If the United States in particular, and the West as a whole, continue to educate their young to despise their own foundations, they should not be surprised when those foundations disappear.

Defense presupposes love, and love presupposes belief. We are approaching a point at which our incapacity to say “this is good, and that is its enemy” will be faced by an adversary who knows exactly who we are and what we deserve. Then it will be unmistakable that the alliance we were too sophisticated to name has become the soul of what still calls itself the left, and that our cultivated silence was its most faithful collaborator.

An Old Clip of Marco Rubio Warning About Obama’s Iran Deal Is Going Viral, and It Aged Perfectly

Townhall 

A viral clip of then, Senator Marco Rubio from 2015 has resurfaced, showing him laying out exactly what he believed would happen if President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal went into effect. A decade later, much of what Rubio warned about appears to have come to pass. Now, with Rubio serving in the Trump administration, the United States is approaching Iran in a way he argued it should have all along.

"I do want to be recorded for history's purposes before I know what is going to happen in regards to this if it goes through. Iran will immediately use the money that it's receiving in sanctions relief to begin to build up its conventional capabilities," Senator Rubio said at the time. "It will establish the most dominant military power in the region outside of the United States and it will raise the price of us operating in the region. They're going to build anti-access capabilities, rockets capable of destroying our aircraft carriers and ships. They'll continue to build these swift boats that are able to come on us, these fast boats that are able to swarm our naval assets. And they'll make it harder and harder for U.S. troops to be in the region."

They'll also work with other terrorist groups in the region to target American servicemen and women. And they may or may not deny that they're involved, but they will target us and raise the price of our presence in the Middle East until they hope to completely pull us out of that region. They'll also continue to build long-range missiles, missiles capable of reaching the United States.

Those are not affected by this deal. And they'll continue to build them as they've been doing. And then at some point in the near future, when the time is right, they will build a nuclear weapon.

"And they will do so because at that point they will know that they have become immune, that we will no longer be able to strike their nuclear program because the price of doing so will be too high," he added. "This is not just a work of imagination. It exists in the world today."

Rubio went on to argue that the same pattern had already played out with North Korea before explaining why he believed Iran posed an even greater danger. In his view, Iran was not a typical geopolitical adversary but a regime motivated by a revolutionary Islamic ideology, which he warned made its leadership more willing to take drastic actions.

"And never in the history of the world has such a regime ever possessed weapons so capable of destruction. Iran is led by a supreme leader who is a radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future," he said. "He is not a traditional geopolitical actor who makes decisions on the basis of borders or simply history, or because of ambitions. He has a religious apocalyptic vision of the future. One that calls for triggering a conflict between the non-Muslim world and the Muslim world. One that he feels especially obligated to trigger."

And he's going to possess nuclear weapons? This is the world that we are on the verge of leaving our children to inherit. And perhaps we ourselves will have to share in it. And so I want to be recorded for history's purposes, if nothing else, to say that those of us who opposed this deal understood where it would lead.

Not only was Rubio warning about the future, he is now in a position to help lead the effort to ensure Iran no longer threatens the United States. While past administrations sought negotiations with hostile regimes and allowed far weaker countries to stall Washington with promises of a rosy path to peace, the Trump administration is making clear that nations like Iran cannot test American resolve without deadly consequences.

The Democrats Laughed at Space Force. They're Not Laughing Anymore

Townhall 

The Democrats mocked President Trump during his first term for creating the United States Space Force, but it has played a crucial role in the success of Operation Epic Fury over the past week.

"Space Force is a critical mission right now," Fox News' Jesse Watters said. "They deployed heat-seeking infrared beams that detect missiles the second they launch so that our guys can take shelter when the rockets get neutralized."

Adding that "Space Force is working on U.S. soil, so they're out of harm's way."

Established in 2019, the U.S. Space Force plays a vital role in guiding and protecting air and naval operations, as they track enemy missile locations and determine when and where to strike.

Brent David Ziarnick, former professor in the Space Force program at Johns Hopkins University and retired officer in the US Air Force, explained that "satellites that have infrared sensors" are able to locate "where rockets are being fired" from.

“They can spot the missiles and pinpoint where the launchers are. The missiles can be intercepted and destroyed [often with Patriot missiles]. Field forces get notified that an attack is coming, so they can go to shelters or bunkers.”

While the U.S. and Israeli militaries can intercept incoming missiles, the real challenge is locating their launch sites and neutralizing the batteries to prevent further attacks. The Space Force has been instrumental in this effort, as, according to ABC News, hundreds of Iranian missiles have already been destroyed using this technology.

From the NY Post:

Crews work inside radar domes, called Radomes. Resembling giant golf balls, they receive information in the sky in real time, calculate the trajectory of missiles and, therefore, their likely destination — and act accordingly.

The fact that the US has been able to keep boots off the ground and only suffered six casualties in four days of fighting is a testament to the advanced tech being deployed, according to an ex-Space Force colonel.

This comes as several new weapons have been deployed in Operation Epic Fury, including the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, which is a laser weapon that delivers a 60-kilowatt beam that can neutralize drones, missiles, and fast-attack craft at the speed of light.

Parents Can’t Be ‘Assigned At Birth’ Any More Than Sex Can

 Parents Can’t Be ‘Assigned At Birth’ Any More Than Sex Can

Through a legal doctrine known as ‘intent-based parenthood,’ you no longer become a parent by creating a child.

Josh Wood for The Federalist 

The phrase “sex assigned at birth” was dreamed up to suggest that biological sex (male or female, determined at fertilization and encoded in chromosones) is not an objective reality but a label slapped on a baby by a doctor in a delivery room. As if maleness and femaleness were within the purview and authority of adults to decide. As if the biology was negotiable.

Most people now recognize this for what it is: a denial of biological reality. The fact of male and female can be suppressed for a while — dress it up, pump hormones into a body, issue new documents. But like pushing a beach ball under water, the truth surges back to the surface. Doctors cannot assign sex. We can only recognize it.

Now another denial of biological reality is surfacing, one that has quietly reshaped American family law for decades, and one most people don’t even know exists: surrogate parenting.

Parent Assigned at Birth

Every child ever born is the offspring of one man and one woman. One sperm, one egg. That biological fact creates a relationship as real and observable as the child’s sex. That child belongs to those two people, looks like those two people, and ideally is loved by those two people.

For most of human history, the law recognized this. The state did not create the parent-child bond any more than the delivering doctor created the baby’s sex. The state simply recorded what nature had already established.

That is no longer the case.

Through a legal doctrine known as “intent-based parenthood,” people no longer become parents only by creating a child. They can become parents by wanting a child badly enough and proving it with enough money, contracts, and lawyers. The adults who intend to be parents are legally declared to be parents. The child’s actual biological mother or father (who were often paid for their “contribution” of sperm, egg, or womb) are then thanked for their service, shown the door, and replaced on the birth certificate by whoever the adults have chosen. Labeled donors. Vendors. Nonessential actors in the creation of their own child. As if biology were a clerical error the courts can correct.

Adult Desires are Paramount

Notice the operating principle. It is the same one driving gender ideology: adult desire is sufficient to override biological fact. A child is born male, but if an adult really wants that child to be female, really wanting it is enough in the new regime. A child is born to a specific mother and father, but if an adult really wants that child to be theirs, really wanting it is enough. In both cases, a biological reality about a child is denied and overwritten because an adult’s desire demands it. The child’s biology is not a fact to be respected but an obstacle to be overcome.

If “sex assigned at birth” strikes you as Orwellian, “parent assigned at birth” should terrify you.

For decades, this played out in pockets. California led the way when its courts ruled in Johnson v. Calvert (1993) that “intent to parent” could determine legal parentage, later extending it in Buzzanca (1998) to establish “parents” with zero genetic connection to the child. Other states held the line, maintaining that children had a right to belong to the mother and father who created them.

Then came Obergefell. The 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage granted same-sex couples the “constellation of benefits” that opposite-sex couples enjoyed. One of those benefits: the right to be recognized as the parents of your children from the moment they are born. But here the court confronted an uncomfortable biological fact — two men or two women cannot both be biological parents of the same child. So how can access to that benefit be equalized? The court could have acknowledged that the marital presumption of parentage functions differently when biology functions differently. Instead, it mandated that every state provide adults full access to unrelated children, requiring them to legalize the mechanism to assign parents, not recognize them.

Two years later, Arkansas tried to push back. In Pavan v. Smith (2017), the state argued that birth certificates are biological documents, medical records giving children access to family health history. Surely the court didn’t intend to pretend children come from two women?

Wrong. Birth certificates, the court ruled, are also part of the “constellation” attached to marriage. The biological document that once recorded who a child came from became an instrument recording who the state assigns to that child.

Parent Assigned at Birth Became Constitutionally Mandated

The consequences of surrogate parenting for children are not theoretical. Donor-conceived adults describe “genealogical bewilderment,” a disenfranchisement from their own body. The largest study of donor-conceived adults found they were twice as likely to report substance abuse, twice as likely to report problems with the law, and 50 percent more likely to report mental health struggles, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors. Nearly half feared being romantically attracted to an unknown biological relative. Forty-three percent said they felt confused about who was even a member of their family.

The right to have your sex recognized and your parents recognized are two sides of the same coin, connected by biological facts. “Sex assigned at birth” says the state can override what your DNA tells you about your body. “Parent assigned at birth” says the state can override what your DNA tells you about your family. Both are lies, sold with compassionate language — “gender-affirming care” for one, “modern family” for the other.

We know better. The data is clear, the testimonies devastating. Children have a right to their biological mother and father, not adults assigned to them by the state, not strangers connected by contract. Their actual mother and father.

Any legal regime that gives the government the authority to assign parents at birth is an injustice to children. And any Supreme Court ruling that mandates it nationwide must fall.