October 9, 2026

Photo credit: LordHenriVoton / E+ via Getty Images

In 2020, January Littlejohn’s then-13-year-old daughter told her that she had had a private meeting with school officials about her gender. The officials created a six-page social-transition plan, which gave her the ability to make decisions about her pronouns, which restroom she used, and if she wanted to room with boys on field trips.

Littlejohn and her husband sought out a licensed counselor, who helped them address their daughter’s low self-esteem and discomfort with puberty. They put her in a private school and limited her internet use, and eventually, her distress faded. Florida respected the Littlejohns’ rights as parents to help their own daughter.

Contrast this with the plight of Joseph and Arlene Kutzko. In 2024, Massachusetts authorities took their daughter from their home. They believe their child was removed because they refused to affirm her transgender identity, which the school allegedly encouraged in secret. The state has since gained guardianship.

“Massachusetts courts may yet intervene and restore custody to the Kutzkos while their daughter is still a minor,” Littlejohn writes. “But the fact remains that they have been denied their right to parent and protect her. That right was never taken from my husband and me. We believe that it saved our daughter’s life.”

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On Wednesday, the third anniversary of Hamas’s horrific October 7 massacre of more than 1,000 people, protests across New York City commemorated not the innocent victims—but the terrorist “martyrs.”

Just outside of Columbia University’s gates, about 50 students gathered, referring to themselves as the “Columbia Intifada” and describing intifada as “the only solution.” Downtown near City Hall, the group Within Our Lifetime led a protest where demonstrators shouted, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” The goal? “To bring glory to our martyrs.” At least one participant wore a Hamas headband, while another held a sign that read, “Keep up the good work Iran. Down with U.S. imperialism.”

“If what we saw yesterday represents the views of some significant portion of students and young adults, something is deeply wrong with the soul of America,” Josh Appel writes. “When students at our most prestigious universities and protesters in our public spaces openly glorify terrorism, chant for ‘intifada,’ and celebrate violence as resistance, we should be alarmed.”

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Pornography is often defended as a private choice, but its consequences have far-reaching social implications. Porn shapes how people understand sex and can normalize dangerous sexual practices, such as strangulation, which can result in severe injury or even death. Forest Romm cites research indicating that frequent porn usage is associated with sexually dominant behavior and greater acceptance of sexual violence—and she argues for stronger age-verification laws and restrictions on pornographic content depicting sexual violence.

“Pornography does not merely cater to sexual desire; it shapes it,” Romm writes. “In a crowded attention market, producers introduce increasingly extreme practices, ratcheting up the spectacle required to capture an audience. These practices do not stay confined to screens.”

Romm concludes that we should “stop treating pornography as a matter of private choice and begin to recognize it for what it is: a threat to public safety.”

Read more here.

Last week, a judge in British Columbia’s Supreme Court ruled that addicts have a right to access legal supplies of controlled substances like cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and meth. The ruling, which Adam Zivo calls a “clear act of judicial activism,” will effectively impose drug legalization across Canada unless it is appealed.

The case involves two members of a Vancouver-based activist group who purchased illegal drugs on the dark web, tested them for purity and potency, and provided them to users as part of an unsanctioned program aimed at reducing overdoses. After the pair were convicted for trafficking, they appealed. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray held that criminalizing their “non-medicalized safer supply” program undermined public health and thus violated the Canadian Charter’s guarantee of the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”

“A close reading suggests that the decision was the product of the government prosecutors’ ineptitude and the judge’s credulousness,” writes Zivo. Read here for his analysis of the “junk science” at the heart of the ruling.