This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the greatest adventure



The unmoored young man can disappear for days or weeks at a time and move as it suits him. He can throw himself into barroom brawls or start them, testing his knuckles and chin. He can grow a wild beard or shave his head, waste time on pet causes, sample one too many whiskies, and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss.

He can take such risks and liberties because no one and nothing really depend on him.

While his lifestyle has been greatly romanticized and is in many ways now incentivized, the Western ronin likely has no idea that true adventure begins when man sets anchor in truth and love — when he commits to God, to a woman, to children, and to a place.

When roaming, it's easy to intellectualize about starting a family but impossible to understand that when committing to a person for life and then together bringing little people into the world or adopting, your surface area as a human will vastly increase, exposing you both to multiplied risk, reward, suffering and joy. The corresponding responsibility is spiritually enriching. Nothing else compares.

This Thanksgiving, I thank God for the adventure of a lifetime; for the wonderful responsibility to and temporary guardianship over immortal souls; and for the worthwhile challenge of standing my ground by my wife's side until death do us part.

I pray that those solipsistic youth now adrift may similarly come to know such blessings.

The trouble is, however, that there are forces at work trying to preclude a great many from embracing them.

Gender ideologues, pharmacists, and surgeons have set about the sterilization and mutilation of children across the country, all but guaranteeing that the victims will spend their lives roaming. De-populationists and other anti-natalists have fed young people propaganda, promoting a culture of death and dissuading them from starting families. Kept in business by a eudaemonistic culture that promotes freedom from responsibility, abortionists, such as those who helped enrich the woman President Joe Biden recently awarded the presidential medal of freedom, have slain tens of millions of babies who could have loved, been loved, and starred in countless adventures.

When asked whether the attack on the family is a coordinated effort or just a confluence of dark forces that look like they're working in concert, Dale Ahlquist, the president and co-founder of the Society of G.K. Chesterton, told Blaze News earlier this year, "Well, let's go back to the Holy Family."

"How did the [Holy Family] begin? With Satan trying to kill it, all right. Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. So here are the forces of evil at work, first on the Holy Family and then on the rise of the normal family. It is an evil act," said Ahlquist.

It should surprise no one that the institution that evil appears most keen to destroy is that most worth pursuing, building, and protecting.

I pray that our readers enjoy great success in their respective adventures and that their anchors hold.

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Having Babies Might Cure Depression | Guest: Dr. Catherine Pakaluk | Ep 1079

Having Babies Might Cure Depression | Guest: Dr. Catherine Pakaluk | Ep 1079

The paradox of screens: Parents and grandparents wrestle with how much screen time to give kids



Parents and screen time

Parenthood is brutal — it has always been brutal. But in an era of unstoppable tech growth, raising children becomes more difficult by the day.

If you have kids or grandkids under the age of 13, you know the paradox of screens. The chaos of parenthood is relentless, and there’s a special brand for those of us with little kids. Exhaustion of every sort.

Peace is hard to come by for parents and many grandparents, especially those of us with little ones.

I have toddlers. Screen time is one of the constant subjects of examination between my wife and me. We're always assessing our screen time, our personal relationships with our phones, and the behavior we model for our kids.

Handing your kid a phone or tablet is a quick way to buy a moment of silence. We are desperate for the chance to think, to breathe, and sit still.

But this is no ordinary quiet. Screen time offers immediate relief in exchange for destruction that comes later. Parents make this deal constantly regarding screen time. Handing your kid a phone or tablet is the quickest way to neutralize a chaotic environment.

But this pause is deceptive. It doesn’t seem to remedy the situation, and it may even worsen the chaos.

Then there’s the addict-like response kids exhibit immediately after being handed a phone, a slot-machine glaze. They grip it like a starving ape grips bananas, as a tool for survival.

The Mayo Clinic warns that excessive screen time has been noted to lead to all sorts of health issues, including obesity, violent behavior, attention deficit, sleep disruptions, and erratic behavior.

It can even lead to “sensory differences” in toddlers.

There are plenty of detractors who frame the rejection of screen time as part of a moral panic, contending that it’s harmless or even beneficial.

This is one of the bizarre confrontations that have arisen with any new technology over the course of human history: People feel that these recent advancements are causing an incredible amount of harm. The other group claims that “every generation panics about technology, but most of the time their anxiety is actually ignorance and fear."

Reality lies in between the two: The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck.

Big little feelings

damircudic/Getty Images

Fad parenting has always been a problem. And like fads in general, it risks being swept aside at a moment’s notice, leaving a generation of disenchanted parents in its wake.

Each generation winds up with its own parenting philosophy. It’s corrective, a way to address the failures of the previous system. It’s also expressive, allowing each parent to rule the kingdom creatively. It is full of predictions about what matters and what doesn’t, what should worry parents and what shouldn’t — with plenty of outrage and hysteria along the way.

This philosophy is also a response to the folkways, constraints, disasters, luxuries, and technologies of that exact moment in history.

The current era of parenting seems largely focused on gentleness. Gentle parenting is the coin of the realm. I’ll give you a rushed, cursory, and probably haphazard explanation.

Gentle parenting, known formally as “attachment parenting,” is guided by empathy, the willingness to sit with a kid who, by most accounts, is being a real piece of work. Gentle parenting is focused on language that often sounds politically correct, like how it emphasizes bad behavior is “action,” not identity. It’s wrong, for instance, to say that a kid is mean. Say instead that the kid is acting mean. Parents are advised to “comment on the action, not the person.”

Every new parent I know has taken a parenting course from “Big Little Feelings.” It may be the most obvious example of Millennial parenting philosophy available. I have to admit, the course has benefitted my parenting tremendously.

The course has an entry on handling outbursts related to screen time, and as a true Millennial philosophy, the solution to screen time tantrums involves an acronym, PREP:

  • P: Plan in advance.
  • R: Reveal the plan.
  • E: Explain the details.
  • P: Put your toddler in charge.

The method remains unproven, but my point here is that it serves as a perfect representation of the parental angst unique to this era of total networking, total communication, total information.

The New Yorker captured this weird disharmony, where, in all of its planning, “gentle parenting represents a turn away from a still dominant progressive approach known as ‘authoritative parenting.’” It feels inherently feminine, yet it’s not. Because we have also seen an unprecedented shift in the father’s role and presence in family life.

At its worst, gentle parenting resembles the performance of a cartoonish NPR host, whispering passive-aggressive slogans that don’t correspond to reality. At its best, it offers a key to peace in the household. It can be annoying and stilted. But it can also be calming.

Screen activism

If you have young daughters or granddaughters, you should read “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier.

She charts the spread of radical gender ideology as the cause of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” in which prepubescent girls who have never expressed any sort of gender confusion suddenly develop an identity centered on gender and body dysphoria.

Transgender activists hate Shrier largely because she exposes the dark side of screen time, which political radicals use for recruitment.

She argues that this fad is unnatural — it has never occurred at any other moment in recorded medical history. She makes a compelling case, and one of the phenomena she cites as proof is the influence that social media has on these girls.

She refers to Jonathan Haidt’s observation that we’re living through a “mental health crisis,” the worst in decades, specifically affecting adolescent girls. Depression and anxiety rates are spiking, along with self-harm.

And Shrier correlates it to the rise of the iPhone and social media. This has left kids today not just depressed and anxious but also socially underdeveloped. She argues that kids today feel like they should be able to live the carefree lives of their parents, but they don’t know how. So they seek the guidance of online personas who appear to have things figured out.

This leads to peer contagion, the cultural spread of a mental pathology. Increasingly, we have seen how this process occurs throughout the education system.

The “trans influencers” behind this fad are devoted to evangelization. Their biggest argument is that early intervention is necessary, the earlier the better. As Shrier puts it, “Trans influencers typically take a by-any-means necessary approach to procuring cross-sex hormones. Whatever you have to do, whatever you have to say — do it. Your life is on the line.”

Shrier’s response to this tactic is one of her most compelling points: Intervention is not a pause button. No studies show that puberty blockers are safe or reversible. They stop sexual maturation and development of bone density from occurring.

Studies have shown that from there, nearly 100% of kids put on puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones. This guarantees that the child will be infertile and have permanent sex dysfunction. In other words, early intervention almost guarantees infertility. We should hammer this in. It’s maybe the most shocking and unacknowledged part of the transgender craze.

In other words, screen time has led to an unprecedented crisis of psychosis-driven mutilation.

Shipwrecked

Tassii/Getty Images

Jonathan Haidt is quite possibly the most reasonable man in America. He is somehow unaffected by the political vertigo of our time, able to connect with every sort of person. He has approached the dangers of social media from many angles: as a tool for activism, as a corruptor of colleges, as a harm to teenage girls, even as a modern version of the story of the Tower of Babel.

In an article for the Atlantic titled “After Babel: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Haidt uses the Tower of Babel as a metaphor “for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit.”

The story of Babel comprises one short chapter of the Bible, Genesis 11. Yet it’s a story everyone knows. He describes “people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.”

Like the people in the story of Babel, America is in trouble: “Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

Social media platforms have damaged our trust, degraded our belief in institutions, and eradicated our shared stories. Haidt has been sounding the alarm about social media for years now, including in his most recent book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

Children born after 1995 are disproportionately anxious. This is largely the result of screen time. Screen time is alienating. It leads to isolation. Hence the alarming rates of depression and anxiety, both rooted in aloneness.

Haidt argues that over the past 30 years, it has led to a rapid decline in “play-based childhood,” which has been replaced in the past decade by “phone-based childhood.”

The Mayo Clinic confirms his assertions.

He notes that the smartphone-driven "great rewiring of childhood" is causing an “epidemic of mental illness.” He suggests four ways to combat this: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools, and prioritizing real-world play and independence.

He describes “smartphones as ‘experience blockers' because once you give the phone to a child, it’s going to take up every moment that is not nailed down to something else,” adding that “it’s basically the loss of childhood in the real world.”

He concludes with a similar refrain: “The most important change we can make to reduce the damaging effects of social media on children is to delay entry until they have passed through puberty.”

Like so much else as a parent, this process winds up being tough but redemptive.

'There can be ZERO dissent': Parental rights advocate blasts Newsom's law forcing schools to keep kids' transitions secret



California Democrats and the LGBT activists among them have ramped up their years-long campaign to drive a wedge between parents and their children.

Alvin Lui, president of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News that the state has long sought to keep parents in the dark about their kids' manifestations of gender dysphoria and efforts to transition at school. However, some school districts have in recent months bucked the trend of secrecy and grooming at school and have instead clued in parents.

The Chino Valley Unified School District under the leadership of Sonja Shaw, for instance, became the first district in the state to embrace a policy last year whereby school officials must inform parents if their kids request to use the bathroom intended for members of the opposite sex as well as if their confused children ask to use names and pronouns that don't correspond with reality or their official documents.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta took legal action against Shaw's district on Aug. 28, 2023, claiming it violated privacy laws regarding transvestite students. In October, a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge blocked the district from enforcing some of the related policies until the case was resolved.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) went a step further, ratifying Assembly Bill 1955, which forbids districts like the CVUSD from engaging in such transparency.

Lui, who moved his family out of California upon observing how similarly radical policies were transforming the state, indicated, "AB 1955 was passed solely in response to several school boards being flipped because parents were waking up and in order to discourage good teachers and counselors who still respect parental rights."

The law, first introduced by gay Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D) and championed by the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, prohibits school districts, county offices of education, charter schools, and state special schools from introducing or enforcing rules, regulations, or policies that require employees to disclose to parents "any information related to a pupil's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

'The children must be the state's at all costs.'

Contrary to the spin from Newsom's office, educators in all districts must now effectively keep parents in California in the dark about their child's sexual confusion and gender dysphoria unless the mentally compromised minor in question consents to looping them in. School employees in the meantime can hook the child up with possibly pro-transitioning counselors and activist resources.

AB 1955 — which Elon Musk has cited as cause to move two of his major companies out of the state — also shields employees from consequence if they have worked to conceal a child's confusion from their parents.

Courtesy of Courage is a Habit

Assemblyman Ward affirmed Lui's characterization of the law this week, indicating that it will force compliance from those school districts that have tried to keep parents clued in to what's happening with their children at school.

"Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California," Ward said in a statement. "While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family."

"This is what communism is," said Lui. "There can be ZERO dissent. The children must be the state's at all costs."

Lui is not alone in his understanding of the threats AB 1955 poses.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger, whose think tank Environmental Progress published the damning WPATH Files, noted Tuesday that the new Democratic law "makes children vulnerable to irreversible and lifelong medical abuse and mistreatment. And it is all based on the pseudoscientific idea that some children are born into the wrong bodies and that we can change a person's sex through drugs and surgery."

In pushing through AB 1955, it is clear that Democrats chose to ignore the ever-growing mountain of evidence indicating so-called "gender-affirming care" is not as advertised.

England's National Health Service appointed Dr. Hilary Cass in 2020 to lead an independent investigation into the U.K.'s sex-change regime and its youth-facing services. Following a penetrating, multi-year investigation, Cass — an esteemed British medical doctor who previously served as president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health — revealed that so-called gender science was effectively rooted in pseudoscience.

Blaze News previously reported that among the many damning revelations about the sex-change regime in the Cass review was its finding that there was "no clear evidence that social transition in childhood has any positive or negative mental health outcomes, and relatively weak evidence for any effect in adolescence."

While "social transition" of the kind Newsom and California Democrats want to hide from parents apparently had no discernible impact on mental health, the Cass review further revealed that those children so groomed were much more likely to undergo sex-change medical interventions at a later stage.

Contrary to the core claim of sex-change activists, such medical interventions do not lessen the risk of suicide. A peer-reviewed study in BMJ Mental Health revealed in February that "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk."

Besides underscoring the "weak" and unreliable nature of the evidence in support of "gender-affirming care," the Cass review also indicated that clinicians "are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity."

California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Chair Susan Eggman, evidently immune to the scientific insights raised in the Cass review, BMJ Mental Health, and elsewhere, said AB 1955 was "life-saving legislation."

"Safe and supportive schools for all our children should be our top priority. And at the end of the day that's what this bill does, ensures our K-12 campuses remain safe and affirming places for our youth no matter how they identify," stated Eggman.

Those cognizant of the fallout of so-called "gender-affirming care" and supportive of parental rights aren't buying what Eggman and other California Democrats are selling.

'Moms and dads have both a constitutional and divine mandate to guide and protect their kids.'

Shellenberger stressed on X, "What Gavin Newsom has done is actively prevented schools from informing parents that their children have been put on a medical pathway."

"This is an outrageous attack on the rights of children and parents. Children have a right to go through puberty. No adult should be able to block their puberty. And parents have a right to know if their child thinks that they are the opposite sex or were born into the wrong body," continued Shellenberger. "The new law creates the grave risk that activist teachers, students, and outside groups will convince their children that they were born into the wrong body, and hide their 'social transition' from parents, which will lead to harmful medical mistreatment."

Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, denounced AB 1955, noting, "Moms and dads have both a constitutional and divine mandate to guide and protect their kids, and AB 1955 egregiously violates this sacred trust."

California Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R), who unsuccessfully attempted to advance legislation requiring parental notification in schools, said in a statement, "Today, Governor Gavin Newsom defied parents' constitutional and God-given right to raise their children by signing AB 1955, which codifies the government's authority to keep secrets from parents."

Essayli noted that the bill's ratification is "immoral and unconstitutional" and promised to challenge it in court.

Already, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit challenging AB 1955 on behalf of the Chino Valley Unified School District and several Californian parents with children in the system.

Blaze News previously reported that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) and 15 other attorneys general recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of their respective states asking that the U.S. Supreme Court take up a case regarding schools' covert efforts to transition children into sexually confused transvestites behind their parents' backs.

If the Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area School District is taken up by the high court and the plaintiffs succeed, then there is a strong likelihood that AB 1955 and comparable laws across the nation will fall.

Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali also condemned AB 1955, writing, "It is truly terrible news for children and for many Americans a key reason not only to flee California but also the Democratic Party. The madness and mass child abuse really has to stop."

Lui emphasized that while children are now at greater risk in California, particularly in those districts that once resisted the preferred policies of the sex-change regime, the problem is not limited to the Golden State.

"Parents must understand that public K-12 have already been keeping transgender secrets from parents in ALL 50 states through school counselors and 'mental health' Trojan horses," said Lui. "This isn't just a California or New York thing. Moving to another state doesn't get you away from it any longer. That is the fallacy that gives parents a false sense of security."

"I certainly advocate for all Americans to leave California, but whichever state you land in, you will still have to fight for and protect your children," added Lui.

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MUST-SEE: Teachers Union President Goes on UNHINGED Viral Rant

MUST-SEE: Teachers Union President Goes on UNHINGED Viral Rant

Parents can't fully access their kids' medical records after judge partially blocks parental rights law



Washington state's Republican-backed Initiative 2081, referred to as "A Parents' Bill of Rights," was approved earlier this year by the state legislature in two landslide votes. The Democrats who control both chambers apparently permitted it through knowing they will likely be able to transmogrify it in the next legislative session.

Nevertheless, to the chagrin of leftists and other groups ostensibly keen on cleaving children from their parents, Republican state Rep. Jim Walsh's Initiative 2081 became law on June 6.

The law declares 15 rights that parents and guardians of public school children necessarily have, such as the right to:

  • examine textbooks and curricular materials used in their kid's classroom;
  • inspect their kid's public school records, including their health, academic, mental health counseling, vocational counseling, and disciplinary records;
  • receive prior notification when medical services are being offered to their child, except in the cases of emergency medical treatment;
  • receive immediate notification if their child is being taken or removed from campus without their permission;
  • receive assurance that their kid's school won't discriminate against their child based on the family's religious beliefs; and
  • receive written notice and opt out of student engagements that include questions about the child's sexuality and sexual experiences or the family's moral and political views.

Walsh underscored that the focus of all the elements of the bill was information.

"Custodial parents and guardians cannot be kept in the dark about what their minor children are going through in their lives," Walsh said last month. "Parents have to be told — whether it's things happening at school or things happening in the healthcare or mental healthcare space connected with school, or really anything affecting a minor child."

The legal acknowledgement of such natural rights in a state where the family is otherwise under siege prompted legal action from a number of radical LGBT organizations, represented ultimately by the activist firms QLaw and Legal Voice along with the ACLU of Washington.

They sued last month to halt the implementation of the initiative. This week, a judge granted them a minor victory.

Upon filing their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the legislation in the Superior Court of Washington for King County on behalf of various LGBT groups, the pair of legal outfits and the ACLU of Washington recycled debunked rhetoric intimating that a failure to allow kids to transition at school behind their parents' backs and receive "affirmation" with the help from adults outside the family would result in "irreparable harm."

Adrien Leavitt, staff attorney for the state chapter of the ACLU, claimed, "The initiative passed because of deception and confusion, and it will cause life-altering negative outcomes for queer and trans students if it is implemented."

According to their complaint, the Parents' Bill of Rights "undermines, contradicts, and amends numerous laws that protect students' rights to privacy, healthcare, education, and an affirming and inclusive school environment."

On Friday, King County Superior Court Judge Michael Scott, appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee in 2018, granted a temporary block against parts of the law. Specifically, Scott blocked the requirement that parents are to be granted access to all of their children's medical and mental health counseling records and the requirement that school districts promptly turn such records over, reported the Washington State Standard.

Most parts of the Parents' Bill of Right will, however, remain in place for the time being.

While Scott figured the plaintiffs had done enough to demonstrate harm and potential unconstitutionality, he stressed, "It's not this court's position to determine whether that's good policy or not."

In response to Scott's ruling, Leavitt intimated in a statement it's not enough for parents to only partially be left in the dark.

'It is the student's decision when and if their gender identity is shared, and with whom.'

"We are pleased with this ruling as it will prevent parts of I-2081 from causing further harm while we seek a final decision in this case — but this is not the end," said Leavitt. "We will keep fighting this case in hopes of a final judgment that shows this harmful law violates the State Constitution and should not be implemented or enforced."

Walsh, meanwhile, indicated he was "encouraged that the judge left the bulk of the parents' bill of rights in place," reported the Seattle Times.

Democratic State Superintendent Chris Reykdal indicated that while the court did not block the remainder of Initiative 2081, he would effectively usurp the power of lawmakers and instruct Washington school districts not to apply aspects of the law.

"Until additional clarity is provided on the areas where the initiative conflicts with existing state and federal law, school districts should not make changes to any policies and procedures that are implicated by the conflicting sets of law," Reykdal said in a statement. "When in doubt, school districts should follow federal privacy laws."

In his statement, Reykdal also emphasized that schools don't have to disclose a student's transvestism at school to their parents.

“Our state's guidance has maintained that, in order to protect student privacy and safety, schools should communicate with students who disclose they are transgender or gender expansive about the student's individual needs, preferences, and safety concerns," Reykdal continued. "It is the student's decision when and if their gender identity is shared, and with whom."

Brian Heywood, a businessman from Redmond who helped bankroll the effort to advance Initiative 2081, suggested Reykdal was actively "shredding democracy."

"WA state Superintendent of Schools believes he is above the law and that the state knows better than parents what is best for your children," added Heywood. "In November he needs to go."

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Yes, Parents Should Know If Their Child Is Gay

Children need their parents to put boundaries around them, boundaries LGBT activists relentlessly work to remove.

Blaze News investigates: BPA is no longer the stuff of baby bottles, but it still might be a big problem



A chemical once commonplace in baby bottles was singled out for concern and investigations in the mid-2000s after it was linked to possible health risks. Selective bans and restrictions on the chemical Bisphenol A soon followed in a number of Western nations.

The perception that sufficient action was ultimately taken largely put the controversy over BPA to bed, although scientists continued looking into BPA's effects on animals — as well as into the impact of its all-too-similar alternatives.

Studies conducted at home and abroad in the years since have highlighted various links between BPA and infertility, obesity, cancer, poor fetal development, early onset puberty, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments.

While there are outstanding concerns about BPA and its relatives, which are still used in rigid plastic consumer products, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains — to the great chagrin of some scientists — that the chemical is safe "at current levels occurring in foods."

Echoing American scientists ostensibly ignored by their regulator, a European health agency recently sounded the alarm, revealing that exposure is too high and that contrary to the suggestion of the FDA, BPA does pose a danger.

Blaze News recently reached out to the European Food Safety Authority, the FDA, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for insights into the current state of scientific knowledge about BPA, the selective reduction in the recommended tolerable daily intake, and possible outstanding risks to the general public.

What is BPA?

BPA is an industrial chemical that has been produced in massive quantities since the 1960s. An estimated 22 billion pounds of BPA are produced a year.

BPA is frequently used as a structural component in clear plastic consumer products, including eye wear, cosmetics, clothing, tableware, thermal paper receipts, water bottles, water pipes, and in the epoxy resins used to line the insides of metal food cans.

The BPA market reportedly accounted for $22.69 billion in 2022 and $23.52 billion last year.

Concerns mounted earlier this century over the likelihood that when BPA leached into the food and drink it was supposed to help contain, it would adversely impact human beings' health, especially that of unborn babies and newborns. In addition to exposure via food, humans can also absorb BPA through the skin.

BPA is a known endocrine disruptor, meaning that it can alter hormone activity thereby adversely impacting various biological processes regulated by the endocrine system, including those related to reproduction — at a time when fertility problems are on the rise.

In its 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated there were detectable levels of the chemical — which mimics the effects of estrogen in the body — in 93% of over 2,500 urine samples from people over the age of six. Later studies highlighted the presence of BPA in the blood and tissues of adults and children alike, and in breast milk, amniotic fluid, and placental tissue.

Protecting kids

Around the mid-2000s, the controversy around BPA largely centered on its use in baby-related food delivery services and packaging. The U.S. was among the countries that responded to the outrage with investigations and partial bans.

Minnesota passed the first selective state ban on BPA in 2009. Connecticut was reportedly next up, then a dozen more states adopted policies regulating the use of the chemical in consumer products.

Lawmakers and consumer groups across the country leaned on companies to stop manufacturing baby bottles and toddler cups using the chemical ingredient. Companies like Playtex and Gerber obliged them in short order.

Despite the FDA noting in an August 2008 draft report that BPA remained safe in food contact materials — a stance it maintains to this day — it was met with a citizen petition months later from the Natural Resources Defense Council requesting that the Commissioner of Food and Drugs issue a rule barring the use of BPA in human food and packaging and revoking regulations permitting the use of any food additive that might lead to BPA food contamination.

The FDA effectively told the concerned citizens to pound sand and reiterated its commitment to continuing its investigations into the chemical's health effects. In an apparent act of appeasement, the FDA did, however, amend its food additive regulations, effective 2012, to no longer "provide for the use of polycarbonate (PC) resins in infant feeding bottles (baby bottles) and spill-proof cups ... because these uses have been abandoned [by manufacturers]" — not because of safety concerns.

Responding to a petition from Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the FDA amended its regulations in 2013 to no longer provide for the use of BPA-based epoxy resins in packaging for baby formula.

During the uproar over BPA, other Western nations similarly took precautions even though the science was unsettled.

Canada, for instance, which had been the first country to declare BPA a "dangerous substance," determined that while most citizens had low to very low exposure levels of BPA that ostensibly did not pose a health risk, "There was a potential concern for infants, which led to added protective measures."

The northern nation ultimately made it illegal to manufacture, import, advertise, or sell polycarbonate baby bottles that contain BPA.

In 2011, the European Union banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and toddler cups.

Rat problems

The European Chemicals Agency's Member State Committee unanimously agreed in 2017 that BPA-A is a "substance of very high concern because of its endocrine disrupting properties which cause probably serious effects to human health."

In recent years, other agencies at home and abroad have similarly expressed concern about persisting threats posed by the profitable chemical.

The FDA, however, maintains that "BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods," having apparently been unswayed by various recent damning studies, including those which revealed:

In the face of continued disagreements stateside about BPA, the FDA, the NIEHS' National Toxicology Program, and other agencies collaborated on a multi-year rat model-based BPA research program called the "Consortium Linking Academic and Regulatory Insights on Bisphenol A Toxicity," or CLARITY-BPA.

This multi-agency initiative published its draft core report in 2018 and then a compendium of findings in October 2021.

Blaze News reached out to Dr. Brandy Beverly, a health scientist with the Office of Health Assessment credited with helping design and draft the final BPA report, for comment. A NIEHS spokesman responded and highlighted some interesting takeaways:

  • "The core study showed no changes in brain tissue in rats. University researchers found some structural changes, and they observed alterations in the expression of estrogen and androgen receptors. They also discovered changes in the expression of genes involved in sexual differentiation and neuroendocrine function in the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala, and limited sex-specific effects on learning and memory, among other results."
  • "Cancer rates in female rats increased following administration of the lowest BPA dose in the core study, but authors of that study concluded that was not due to the chemical because effects were not seen at higher doses. University scientists found that low-level exposure in rodents caused changes in mammary gland development that may contribute to increased cancer risk, whereas higher doses did not cause those changes."
  • "Neither the core study nor the investigative research reported cancerous lesions in rodents following exposure to BPA. However, BPA did increase cancer following a later-life estrogen exposure simulating the aging human male, with the greatest effects observed at the per-day dose of 2.5 micrograms BPA per kilogram body weight. Also, evaluation of the developing male prostate and urethra showed a smaller urethra following exposure to low doses of BPA or ethinylestradiol, a synthetic estrogen."

The spokesman noted that despite the "illuminating" collected findings, the authors of the multi-agency report "did not reach a consensus."

While the FDA subsequently declared BPA "safe for the currently authorized uses in food containers and packaging," there was apparently a great deal of resistance to the regulator's framing.

'Their decisions rely on 4 incorrect assumptions.'

According to a peer-reviewed 2020 review published in the journal Endocrinology, "A majority of the academic scientists that participated in the CLARITY-BPA study disagreed with the FDA's published conclusions."

In the CLARITY-BPA's draft core study report, a "wide range of adverse effects was reported in both the toxicity and the mechanistic endpoints at the lowest dose tested (2.5 micrograms/kg/day), leading independent experts to call for the lowest observed adverse effect level (LOAEL) to be dropped 20 000-fold from the current outdated LOAEL of 50 000 micrograms/kg/day," said the review.

"Despite criticism by members of the Endocrine Society that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s assumptions violate basic principles of endocrinology, the FDA rejected all low-dose data as not biologically plausible," said the 2020 study.

'The harmful effects from BPA can occur at minuscule levels.'

Instead, the FDA doubled down on its longstanding position.

"Their decisions rely on 4 incorrect assumptions: dose responses must be monotonic, there exists a threshold below which there are no effects, both sexes must respond similarly, and only toxicological guideline studies are valid," added the review.

The review did not mince words, concluding that the "FDA has abrogated its responsibility to ensure the safety of food and food/beverage packaging in the US, and the FDA continues to allow industry to declare chemicals such as BPA to be safe."

Dr. Linda Birnbaum, former director at NIEHS and NTP, said in a 2022 statement when petitioning the FDA to reconsider the safety of BPA in food packaging, "The scientific evidence is now more than enough to require strict limits on the use of BPA in packaging and plastics that come in contact with our food."

Too much BPA

The European Food Safety Authority, which admittedly applies different methods for quantifying risk in humans than some other major agencies, alternatively concluded last year that BPA is a health concern — not just for unborn babies and newborns, as long suspected — but for all age groups.

It also lowered its estimated tolerable daily intake for BPA 20,000-fold — a decision celebrated by some scientists and criticized by others.

Dr. Claude Lambré, chair of EFSA's Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes and Processing Aids, indicated that upon reviewing over 800 BPA studies published since 2013, the panel "observed an increase in the percentage of a type of white blood cell, called T helper, in the spleen. They play a key role in our cellular immune mechanisms and an increase of this kind could lead to the development of allergic lung inflammation and autoimmune disorders."

The potential for autoimmune disorders extra to possible consequences for the reproductive, developmental, and metabolic systems prompted the EFSA to greatly reduce the tolerable daily intake from the figure they set in 2015 and concluded that consumers with "both average and high exposure to BPA in all age groups exceeded the new TDI, indicating health concerns."

"Based on all the new scientific evidence assessed, EFSA's experts established a TDI of 0.2 nanograms (0.2ng or 0.2 billionths of a gram) per kilogram of body weight per day (kg/bw/day), replacing the previous temporary level of 4 micrograms [4,000 nanograms] per kilogram of body weight per day," said the agency.

A 2014 FDA hazard assessment indicated that the estimated dietary intake of BPA was 1.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight a day for children under the age of 2 and 0.5 micrograms for those 2 and older.

An EFSA spokesman clarified to Blaze News that the new TDI represents the amount "that can be ingested daily over a lifetime without presenting an appreciable health risk."

"Exceedance of the Tolerable Daily Intake does not mean consumers face immediate harmful effects," said the spokesman. "Even in the cases where the exposure exceeds the TDI, not all individuals will necessarily develop adverse reactions over time, as is generally true for any chemical exposure. The probability that harmful effects on the immune system would develop over time can be influenced by several factors, including other stressors, genetics and nutrition.”

The EFSA apparently takes "conservative exposure scenarios" to maximize protections for even the most sensitive and vulnerable consumers.

'Studies show BPA can be absorbed into skin in minutes.'

While the EFSA now maintains the BPA is a health concern for people of all age groups, the spokesman informed Blaze News that the "population groups most exceeding the TDI are those with the lowest body weights, so they include infants, toddlers, and children."

When asked whether the FDA should change its position on BPA, the spokesman underscored that while the two health agencies were in regular dialogue, they simply drew different conclusions.

"Different scientists can have different views on methodologies and approaches," said the spokesman. "This is a normal part of the scientific process. This is how science moves forward and develops. Approaches may also differ according to the scope and objectives of different assessments. It is part of a broader conversation within the scientific community on how findings from intermediate endpoints in animals can be integrated into safety assessments in humans."

Blaze News reached out to the FDA about its markedly different view but did not receive comment by deadline.

Protections and protectors

BPA is omnipresent, but there are both groups who continue to flag its presence in various consumer products and ways for people to reduce exposure.

The Center for Environmental Health, a nonprofit watchdog that seeks to protect kids and families from toxic chemicals, is among the groups campaigning against the use of BPA in various products.

In recent years, the CEH has noted the presence of high levels of BPA in various articles of polyester-based clothing with spandex, including socks, sports bras, and athletic shirts. The watchdog went a step further, sending legal notices to various companies, including Patagonia, Sketchers, Nike, Reebok, New Balance, and Activ Pro, noting that their clothing "could expose individuals up to 40 times the safe limit" of BPA, according to California law.

On May 31, the CEH successfully struck a legally binding agreement with 30 companies including Hanes, Victoria's Secret & Co., Asics, and Dollar General, which will apparently reformulate their products accordingly.

"Studies show BPA can be absorbed into skin in minutes. Bisphenols have no place in socks made for adults, children, or babies, whose body systems are only just developing," Shakoora Azimi-Gaylon, senior director of toxic exposure and pollution prevention at the CEH, said in a statement.

The NIEHS has noted some ways to prevent or reduce exposure to BPA:

  • Don't microwave polycarbonate plastic food containers, which can break down over time and at high temperatures.
  • Reduce use of canned foods.
  • When possible, opt for non-plastic containers (e.g., glass, porcelain, or steel), especially for hot foods.
  • Check packaging to indicate it is BPA free.

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Fallout of union-championed pandemic school closures is worse than imagined



School closures had a deleterious impact on at least one generation of American children. Not only did kids' academic capabilities suffer during what became the longest interruptions in schooling since formal education became the norm; they also faced spikes in mental illness, suicide, obesity and diminished immune systems.

It turns out that the kids whose initial experience of public school was limited to those fleeting moments classrooms weren't shut down at the behest of teachers' unions are not all right.

According to the Education Week State of Teaching survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,500 pre-K through third-grade teachers, kids are struggling with social-emotional skills and basic motor function. The use of scissors, pencils, and crayons, as well as the practice of tying shoelaces, are apparently far more challenging tasks for kids today than they were for students of the same age five years ago.

94% of teachers indicated that listening and following instructions are now much or more challenging for their students. 77% said that students had difficulties using basic tools and writing instruments. 69% of respondents said kids were struggling to tie their own shoes. 85% of teachers said they saw a massive difference between the new and old cohorts when it came to "sharing, cooperating with others, and taking turns."

The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University found that whereas other emotional and social issues have improved since the pandemic, kids' difficulty making friends, sharing, and getting along with their peers has worsened.

While pandemic kids are having trouble making friends, they appear to be really good at making enemies. Another survey by the EdWeek Research Center revealed in April that 70% of educators observed students in their schools misbehaving more than compared with the fall of 2019.

Steven Barnett, the senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, told Education Week that the pandemic precluded some parents from enrolling their children in preschool and kindergarten, which may have had an effect. Even if they had enrolled their kids, the union-supported school closures — which reportedly did not prevent community spread of COVID-19 — and the corresponding push toward remote learning would likely have had the same result.

Barnett suggested that poor kids may have been disproportionately impacted in terms of functionality.

"There is a concern that low-income kids did not come back to preschool as quickly as other kids," said Barnett.

According to the State of Teaching survey, 79% of teachers who reported kids having trouble tying their laces worked in schools where the vast majority of students received free and reduced-price lunch. Challenges with shoelaces were also more pronounced in schools where the majority of students were black.

Khy Sline, supervisor of curriculum development at KinderCare Learning Companies, told The Hill, "It definitely doesn't surprise me. I think that we all anticipated that the pandemic would have implications far beyond lockdown for not only young children but all children."

Sline indicated that such is the fallout of "losing that much time of connection while we were locked down and spending time primarily in our homes and just not necessarily having the same experiences and exposures to other children."

'I can imagine that that would be a very draining experience on a daily basis in the classroom.'

As during the pandemic, teachers have found a way to make this problem about them. Education Week noted that children stunted by school closures and deadly containment protocols might be disruptive to the classroom environment.

"As a teacher, if I feel that none of the children are listening, I can imagine that that would be a very draining experience on a daily basis in the classroom," said Sarah Duer, director of the Hollingworth Preschool at Teachers College.

Alex Gutentag, a former public school teacher, recently assigned blame for the fallout of the school closures in an article for Tablet magazine: "School closures were a yearlong exercise in anti-solidarity. Teachers expected essential workers to deliver food for them, pick up their trash, and literally keep the lights on — all while the union withheld real education from these workers' children."

'It is this fealty — not labor principles or educational concerns — that currently drives the union's actions.'

Gutentag suggested that teachers' unions' "fixation on 'safety' was a mania that amounted to the psychological abuse of children, and it has had lasting effect. This mania had little to do with actual safety and more to do with signs of fealty to the Democratic Party. It is this fealty — not labor principles or educational concerns — that currently drives the union's actions."

Blaze News previously reported that American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten called the Trump administration's proposal to reopen in-person learning in 2020 "reckless" and "cruel." While the AFT resisted a return to real work, union affiliates joined in, staging sickouts and going so far as to call reopening schools racist.

The National Education Union called for all schools to be shut down in spring 2020, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exempted them. The union's president, Becky Pringle, reportedly made over $500,000 while fighting to keep schools closed between September 2020 and August 2021.

According to researchers at Stanford University and Harvard University, millions of the kids whom the AFT, the NEA, and like-minded groups successfully kept out of the classrooms have not yet made up for their academic losses.

"Over the course of the 2022-2023 school year, students in one state (Alabama) returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in math," the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research team said in a release. "Despite progress, students in seventeen states remain more than a third of a grade level behind 2019 levels in math: AR, CA, CT, IN, KS, KY, MA, MI, NC, NH, NJ, NV, OK, OR, VA, WA, and WV."

As for achievement levels in reading, students still showing up for class in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi returned to 2019 achievement levels in reading. The same could not be said of students in dozens of other states, who remain more than a third of a grade level behind.

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‘Lessons In Liberty’ Helps Us Work Like James Madison, Think Like Clara Barton, And Multitask Like RBG

Teacher Jeremy Adams' new book offers lessons in wisdom for a struggling generation of kids.